Fishermans Bend is Australia’s largest urban renewal project in the heart of Melbourne.
By 2050, an area three times the size of Melbourne’s CBD will transition to become home to 80,000 residents, a place of work for up to 80,000 people and host more than 20,000 tertiary students.
At the centre of the largest precinct, the National Employment and Innovation Cluster (NEIC), the former Holden manufacturing site will be transformed into the Fishermans Bend Innovation Precinct. The University of Melbourne is building a new engineering and design campus, joining existing industry partners such as Boeing, Siemens and the Commonwealth’s Defence, Science and Technology Group in Fishermans Bend.
From the roll-out of the first Australian designed and built production vehicle, to the invention of the black box flight recorder, and the development of world-leading carbon fibre technology, Fishermans Bend has a proud legacy of turning bold ideas into tried and tested inventions.
Building on that legacy, the vision is for the NEIC is to become an ‘internationally renowned centre of innovation in advanced manufacturing, engineering and design.'
Innovation is at the heart of the vision for Fishermans Bend and is vital to realising its full potential.
Yet a vision this large takes years to fully realise, and during that time the opportunity for innovation begins with the changing place itself.
Innovation Through Experimentation
Change as Opportunity
As sites are vacated, repurposed or change hands they create fertile ground for seeding an innovation culture, inviting collaboration, experimentation and testing possibilities not available in established places and precincts.
From commercial offices to warehouses, hardstand sites and open space, the diverse mix of spaces, buildings and areas in Fishermans Bend allows for a range of potential activity.
FB IDEAs is working to transform underutilised spaces into new sites of innovation, diversity, experimentation and activation.
Spaces in Fishermans Bend have the potential to be utilised for everything from short term event space to co-working spaces for startups to transitional homes for growing manufacturers, project spaces for university and industry R&D, affordable maker spaces, assembly and production spaces, unique performance spaces, film and screen sets, sound studios and much more.