Carved from the land: The immersive architecture of Alba Thermal Springs

Alba Thermal Springs & Spa rises from the rolling terrain of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula as a place where landscape, architecture and wellness converge with rare precision.

Alba Thermal Springs rises from the rolling terrain of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula as a place where landscape, architecture and wellness converge with rare precision. 

It is not merely a destination, but a meticulously choreographed retreat, one that feels carved from the land itself, steeped in mineral warmth, coastal air and the quiet drama of dune topography. Every curve, every material, every pool is calibrated to elicit a sense of unhurried luxury, the kind that settles slowly into the body.

Its selection as the exclusive prize partner for the Sustainability Summit, proudly carried by Architecture & Design, speaks directly to the integrity of its vision. Alba is a benchmark for how sustainability and sensory sophistication can coexist, not as competing ambitions but as a unified design language. 

Here, regenerative landscape strategies sit comfortably alongside geothermal innovation, while architecture dissolves into nature with a confidence that feels both ancient and emphatically contemporary.

The project’s architectural heart, its main buildings and Hemisphere precinct, was designed by Hayball, who approached the site as a place where calm should not be designed but revealed. 

The practice describes Alba as “a new wellness destination with a strong connection to site, light and nature that captures the client’s vision for a contemporary thermal springs venue, a place to rejuvenate and recalibrate within a natural environment and benefit from the healing properties of water.”

This principle guided every decision, beginning with nestling the architecture into the soft rolls of the Mornington Peninsula’s “Cups” landscape. Curved forms, a quiet natural palette and a choreography of light and shadow shape an atmosphere that feels immediately grounding.

For Hayball, the building was conceived less as a statement and more as a gentle interlocutor between guests and the surrounding environment. “The restrained materiality and low-slung nestled form allow the building to recede as a backdrop and a frame for the landscape,” notes the Hayball team.

It is an architectural performance in which nature is foregrounded: reflected on ceilings by the movement of water, framed through curving corridors, and experienced physically through the geothermal pools that thread throughout the site.

Materiality and sustainability form the structural and conceptual foundation of the complex. Concrete, chosen for its thermal mass and calm presence, collaborates with a green roof to stabilise internal temperatures. The building is fully electric, supported by a solar array, and underpinned by a geothermal loop that warms interiors while cooling the mineral-rich water. 

As the Hayball team explains, the system is sophisticated enough that “the filtration system is so effective that it indeed improves the water quality from extraction to reinjection.” 

The attention to environmental stewardship is further amplified by the site’s regeneration, undertaken with landscape architect Campbell Morris from Mala Studio: thousands of endemic seeds were collected and planted, with no introduced species brought onto the land.

If Hayball’s architecture establishes Alba’s sense of quiet purpose, Mala Studio’s landscape and pool design gives it pulse and poetry. “Our strategy right from the start was to let the land lead,” says the Mala Studio team. 

Rather than imposing form, they designed at 1:1 scale directly on site, positioning pools and pathways as “quiet continuations of the terrain.” The result is a bathing landscape that feels discovered rather than constructed.

Each of the 32 geothermal pools is tuned to its immediate ecology, some perching above swaying spear grass, others hidden in gullies where dappled light animates warm stone. The pools are elemental in form, yet deeply sensory in experience. 

Their placement frames “a view, a reflection of sky, the whisper of wind through grasses, the warmth of stone,” says the Mala Studio team. Wayfinding is intuitive, guided by simple geometries branching off meandering stone paths. This is landscape as a sensory journey, not an amenity: a place where time stretches, slows, and settles.

Mala Studio’s sensitivity to ecology and atmosphere is central to Alba’s environmental identity. “Alba Thermal Springs is an ambitious 15-hectare tourism venture with rejuvenation at its heart,” the Mala Studio team reflects. 

The transformation of depleted farmland into a thriving, endemic landscape is not only ecological repair but an invitation for visitors to participate in the restorative rhythm of place. As they add, Alba “is above all about experiential opportunities, and the chance to allow people to connect with themselves and their environment in a truly immersive way.”

That sense of immersion extends into the accommodation, The Sanctuary, reimagined by Kate Walker Design (KWD). Originally a cluster of seven villas, the buildings were transformed into cocoon-like spaces that bridge Alba’s contemporary architectural language with the site’s history.

“Our vision centred on synthesising the evocative history of the original villas with the contemporary, monolithic aesthetic that defines Alba Thermal Springs,” says Kate Walker. The approach was neither nostalgic nor radically interventionist; instead, KWD crafted a gentle dialogue between structure and landscape, ensuring the villas sit as quietly within the environment as the pools and main buildings.

Budgetary constraints meant working within existing footprints, prompting KWD to explore a subtler form of luxury, one defined by materiality, intimacy and atmosphere rather than excess. 

“Our interventions are quietly transformative,” notes Kate Walker, describing a palette of bronzed hues, warm neutrals and tactile finishes. Interiors are composed as calm sanctuaries, where stone, linen, timber and brass “age gracefully and respond dynamically to changing daylight.” 

Large windows dissolve boundaries between interior calm and the surrounding landscape, while strategic lighting creates a “cocooning sense of warmth and tranquillity after dusk.”

Crucially, KWD’s work was shaped through close collaboration with the existing architectural and landscape fabric. “The Alba architecture and landscape was inherited,” Walker explains, “so collaboration involved working closely with what already existed.” The result is accommodation that feels integrated, not appended, a continuation of Alba’s overarching sensorial narrative.

Despite the project’s scale and complexity, each design collaborator describes the journey in terms of experience rather than challenge. For Hayball, the true triumph is the intangible: “the palpable feeling of calm that descends on entering the building,” proof of the “combined power of architectural volume, tactile surfaces, and modulated natural light.” 

Mala Studio speaks of witnessing the role of time in shaping both dunes and human experience. KWD reflects on “the sense of serenity and understated luxury that permeates every aspect of the villas,” hoping guests feel “embraced, restored, and subtly enriched.”