Located at the end of a runway the liquid oxygen facility at Richmond RAAF Base west of Sydney is not your everyday building. A building with a unique form compared with other buildings scattered around the military base.
Liquid oxygen or LOX. The Liquid Dry Breathing Oxygen Maintenance and Storage Facility, to give it its full name, performs a specific task for the Royal Australian Air Force, it tests, maintains and services the oxygen (and nitrogen) used on military planes.
"The new facility had to accommodate LOX liquid," architect Guy Luscombe of Campbell Luscombe Folk Lichtmam Architects said. "It has two main functions, storage and maintenance."
"For safety reasons each function is housed in a separate building. The storage building, essentially a rain and sun protection shelter, services the planes directly and abuts the main runway. "The maintenance building, the 'command module', is the more sophisticated structure and sits about 100 metres away. It has three main testing laboratories / workshops with smaller rooms for specific testing functions."
The basic design and shape is of a plane's wing. The building's single, streamlined form was primarily influenced by its location at the end of the main runway and designed to resist noise and wind pressure. Colorex tiles with its leading conductive properties was selected for the facility and laboratories to comply with strict safety and performance criteria along with durability and ability to handle heavy loads.
| Architect | Campbell Luscombe Folk Lichtmam Architects |
| Location | Western Sydney Australia |
| Date of completion | 2008 |
