Case study · Corporate workplace
Medibank, Wollongong
Fourteen zones of adaptive soundscaping, including an arrival soundscape co-created with Dharawal Elders, supporting focus, neurodiversity and connection to Country.
Project details
- Client
- Medibank
- Location
- Wollongong, NSW
- Sector
- Corporate workplace
- Valeo Technology role
- Adaptive soundscaping design, delivery and commissioning
- Scale
- 14 activity-based zones with integrated sensing
- Installation partner
- ADM
- Cultural collaboration
- Arrival soundscape co-created with Dharawal Elders
- Recognition
- One of ten projects shortlisted worldwide, Corporate category, Inavation Awards 2026, credited to Valeo Technology. Corporate category finalist, Inavate APAC Awards 2026, credited to ADM and Valeo Technology
Watch
The two minute version of this page
A walkthrough of the Wollongong floor, with Dharawal Elder Drew Longbottom on the thinking behind the arrival soundscape. It is the place on this site where you can hear the work rather than read about it.
Headphones are recommended to hear the detail. The soundscape is the point, and most of it is lost through a laptop speaker.
The challenge
Three jobs, one floor
A regional hub for a national health insurer, on a floor that had to work for concentrated individual work, team collaboration and a genuine sense of place, all at once.
A health organisation’s workplace also carries an expectation that the environment itself supports wellbeing, and that it holds up whether it is a quiet Monday or a full Wednesday.
The approach
Zoned by activity, not by architecture
The floor was zoned by what happens in each area rather than by where the walls fall: calmer environments where people concentrate, more energetic ones where they come together.
Integrated sensing lets the soundscape respond to how busy each zone actually is, so the system adjusts to changing conditions across the day rather than being set once and left. Acoustic data is processed into metadata for sound levels, frequency and events. It is not conversation recording. The design was built for neurodiversity from the start, giving people a floor they can move around to suit the work in front of them.
Connection to Country
Journey to Country
The arrival soundscape, co-created with local Dharawal Elders, carries visitors from the coastal Five Islands to the summit of Mount Keira.
Recordings of local wildlife (kookaburras, bell miners, cicadas, and evening owls) keep the environment alive through the day, and spoken word recorded on Country welcomes people in the morning and marks the shift to evening. The first thing you hear in the building belongs to the place the building is in, and it was made for this place rather than drawn from a library.
An Acknowledgement of Country on a wall is a statement of intent. What a building sounds like when you walk into it is that intent carried into the fabric of the place, heard by everyone who arrives, every day, whether or not they stop to read anything.
Sound is also how a Welcome is carried: song, clapsticks, language, the sound of feet on the floor. The hub opened with a Welcome ceremony performed on Country, and the arrival soundscape sits alongside that tradition rather than borrowing from it, which is why it was co-created with Dharawal Elders rather than assembled from a library and named after the region.
We are a supplier on this project, not a custodian of the culture in it. The recordings were made on Country, and the people who hold that knowledge led that part of the work.
Outcome
Fourteen zones, commissioned by activity and supported by integrated sensing, designed for focus, comfort and speech privacy.
The arrival soundscape gives the building a sense of place that staff and visitors notice from the door, and the project was recognised as one of ten shortlisted worldwide in the Corporate category at the Inavation Awards 2026.
Arrival
Water, before you see any
The corridor into the floor is lined with a rippled reflective ceiling that reads as moving water. It is the visual half of the arrival, and the arrival soundscape is the other half, so the two senses tell the same story about where you are before anyone says a word.
This is the argument for designing sound with the materials rather than after them. On their own, each element is a nice detail. Together they make the arrival one coordinated experience.
Photography: Makker Studio · Zach Bowden.