The $65 million Plant Futures Facility at the University of Queensland in Brisbane houses laboratories and greenhouses for researching sustainable agriculture and how plants adapt to climate change.
There's nothing else quite like it in Australia, and the building is among the winners at the national architecture awards announced in Brisbane on Thursday night.
The new Sydney fish market, the city's Central Station, and Melbourne's new Footscray Hospital were also recognised.
Inside the UQ facility's high-tech rooms, researchers can adjust temperature, humidity, light and carbon dioxide concentration to replicate growing conditions from the Gold Coast hinterlands to Far North Queensland.
"You actually walk into a room and dial it up, it's quite amazing, we can get the equivalent of outdoor daylight in these rooms so you're wearing sunglasses," said Michael Christensen from M3 Architecture, who helped design the building.
He said researchers initially asked for a box with no windows so the interior environment could be precisely controlled.
"It's a bit of a weird brief for an architect, because it's the complete opposite to what you normally get," Christensen told AAP.
But the architects tried to stay away from typical laboratory design, installing mirrored panels and coloured lighting in corridors so that scientists would experience a changeable environment, just like the plants in their experiments.
Outside, the exterior is actually a map of the geological soil profile of Queensland, a nod to the ground that supports the plants inside, with bricks made from local clay.
There's also a house in the NSW Southern Highlands that's built of brick, but for very different reasons.
EA House, designed by architect Jeffrey Bokey-Grant, sits on a bushland rock escarpment, a site with the highest bushfire risk rating of BAL-FZ (Flame Zone).
"It's a very constrained site, and we knew that because the build was going to be difficult, we had to keep it compact and strategic," said Bokey-Grant.
The four bedroom home sits on top of rock and was built from brick and concrete for about $1.6 million, with wood used inside.
Select winners of the National Architecture Awards 2026
* Residential Architecture – Houses (New): EA House, Bokey Grant (NSW)
* Residential Architecture - Multiple Housing: 443 Queen St, WOHA, Architectus & Kris Kowalski Architects (QLD); 9 Wilson Ave, MA+Co (VIC); Merri Northcote, Six Degrees Architects (VIC)
* Commercial Architecture - New Sydney Fish Market, 3XN, BVN and ASPECT Studios (NSW)
* Educational Architecture - Plant Futures Facility, m3architecture (QLD); ECU City Campus, Lyons with Silver Thomas Hanley and Haworth Tompkins (WA); The Forest, Woods Bagot (TAS)
* Heritage - Entertainment Hall White Bay, DunnHillam Architecture + Urban Design (NSW)
* Public Architecture - Central Station, Woods Bagot, John McAslan + Partners (NSW); New Footscray Hospital, COX Architecture and Billard Leece Partnership (VIC)
* Sustainable Architecture - The Forest, Woods Bagot (TAS); Younghusband, Woods Bagot (VIC)
* Urban Design - Balam Balam Place, Kennedy Nolan (VIC)
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