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published 3 October, 2006
Digital Harbour Technology Precinct is about to start construction on its third building, named Life.lab. A lifestyle environment, commercially and residentially driven comprising an eight storey building located on Harbour Esplanade offers exciting office facilities within Digital Harbour’s technology ‘urban campus’ community and the option of SOHO style living.
Welcome to Life.lab, the future of modern working and living has arrived! The original idea developed by Digital Harbour Executive Director, David Napier will become reality in the middle of October as construction gets underway on the latest addition to the Melbourne Docklands.
Otherwise known as the “lifeblood of innovation”, Life.lab will soon be a hub close to the Melbourne CBD with immediate access to all modes of transport, waterside lifestyle activities, as well as magnificent waterside views.
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Life.lab scenario 1: An Executive Director of an Interactive agency, who lives and works in Life.lab wanted to create opportunities for his growing business which offers online branding, database development and telephone messaging services to large corporate businesses. As he recognised that many of the companies based at Digital Harbour were potential customers, being part of Digital Harbour made smart business sense. While lunching in a restaurant in Docklands he recognizes Dean who heads up the Mobile phone content department in Telstra who he met at a Digital Harbour seminar series and strikes up a conversation. They plan to meet; they regularly talk about their business capabilities and subsequently after a few months decide to collaborate on a project.
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Imagine a 24/7 digital community, fully integrated into a network of systems that support, nuture and encourage innovative ideas. With infrastructure which is adaptable, at your finger tips and business synergy which could happen as soon as you walk out of your office and bump into a potential client or casually form a creative partnership over coffee.
Digital Harbour Director Russell Nisbet, said “Life.lab is about creating critical mass and clustering so that small to medium sized enterprises (SME’s) can be able to compete for a larger part of the market”, and “that by offering services to larger corporates and being located close to creative clusters you can keep abreast of the general community when it comes to the latest innovative technology and software developments”.
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Life.lab will offer a unique opportunity for SME's to rub shoulders against some of Australia’s leading organisations in the only technology park of its kind on the edge of a modern city. All ready to date Digital Harbour has attracted exciting tenants including Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), Film Victoria, VicTrack, Business Strategies International (BSI), Telstra Innovation Centre, WebAlive Technologies, Australia Customs Service and Wompro.
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Life.lab scenario 2: A global technology company with a growing Australian presence, owns a Life.lab office. Several of the company's consultants representing their Australian interests arrive in Melbourne from Sydney & Singapore. They are in Melbourne for a range of meetings with a number of Melbourne based companies as they are planning to engage them to support the ongoing role-out of their new technology into the Australian market. The consultants are able to base themselves at the Life.lab office during this time. During their visit they are able to work from their office and also hold a number of meetings in the Life.lab serviced meeting rooms and a media launch in the adjacent Innovation Building’s Theatrette, both of which were reserved in advance remotely from Singapore.
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The concept behind Life.lab seeks to blur the fine line between work and play, office and live space, business and pleasure. The City of Melbourne now joins other major world cities including London and New York in a bold move forward that is helping to shape a new lifestyle choice.
These bold, new lifestyle choices ready to be taken up by entrepreneurs will play a decisive role in catalysing the local economy of Melbourne and eventually influence global markets in information technology and innovative business models.
Internally, the building is designed around an internal atrium offering two types of business and architectural solutions; firstly, strata offices ranging from 40sqm to 120sqm for both potential investors or owner occupier and secondly, apartments catering to the SOHO market.
These are small Office Home Office units – offering unique modules ranging in size from 80sqm to 180sqm with separate apartment living (one or two bedrooms) as well as adjoining and completely self-contained working spaces.
Externally, the Life.lab building façade borrows from the revolutionary International Modern style developed in the 1920’s by Architect Le Corbusier and the Bahaus movement in Berlin. The historical architectural references being made here are also punctuated with Australian modernist colour field abstraction that offsets the buildings geometry with a contemporary cutting edge design developed by award winning architects Moull Murray.
Life.lab’s sophisticated design sensibilities fuse aesthetically with the surrounding Docklands built-in environment and give it a futuristic feel set against the Australian sky.
The completion of Life.lab building is scheduled for first quarter 2008. Why wait? Become a part of Life.lab and the digital community located in Docklands and modelled on the most successful and progressive technology precincts from across the globe.
published 3 October, 2006
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