[2] The design intent of the original building portrays the identified requirements of Walter Baldwin Spencer for natural light and ventilation to enter a space containing the biology research department involving microscopic and dissecting work.

[3][4][5] The original building contained a lecture theatre which can seat two hundred students, well-lit laboratories, a museum for teaching purposes and store rooms.

The building contains many interiors that are still intact from the 1890s, with many original elements of architecture such as the staircases; specifically the staircase within the conical roofed turret, the ceiling of the library with cast-iron columns and crocket capitals, initial laboratory spaces and equipment, as well as the steeply tiered lecture theatre complete with wooden seating and desks.

[3][4][5] The key architectural elements include the heavily rusticated freestone walls, buttresses, a conical roofed round turret with spiral stair, dressed stone arched window heads, drip moulds and a parapet decorated with trefoils.

Historically this building is significant for showing the new era of science teaching and original research that revolutionised educational policy in Victoria during the late nineteenth century.