offices of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
Smart companies are keeping the top talent and getting the most from them by making sure their workplaces incorporate the best in office design. Report: Kath Walters
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December152011¡January262012 l www.brw.com.au
• The corporate problem of the moment is productivity; the answer is office design. The problem is reducing staff turnover, disengagement, time wasting and poor communication; the answer is office design. In this story, the cream of the crop in office design is on display. Each example is groundbreaking in its own way, through the design of individual and collaborative work spaces incorporating natural light, fresh air, a sense of open space and vistas and measures to encourage the development of a healthier workforce, such as internal stairs to discourage the use of lifts and encouraging short walks to coffee stations, meal rooms and printers. The selected projects pass two tests. First, they are winners or short-listed contenders for the top professional awards for architecture and interior design in 2011. The second is the test of their tenants, the real people who inhabit them and get about their daily tasks with more ease, enthusiasm and ftm. There are many studies today investigating the impact of office design on staff performance, but the debate has shifted. A recent research paper by architectural firm Woods Bagot says: "From
any perspective the need for a high-performance workplace is compelling [but] creativity, innovation and productivity are supplanting efficiency as the primary drivers of change as organisations seek a sustainable competitive advantage." In the past, "efficiency" has come down to meaning desks per square metre, but that paradigm led to a backlash against the openplan office. Woods Bagot encapsulates the dilemma in another paper, The Catch-22 of Open-Plan, which reveals that we work faster and harder when we have some people around us, but too many can inhibit our performance. "What has occurred over the past few years is that there is more focus on support spaces around the open-plan areas," architect Fiona Dunin, a judge in the 2011 Victorian Architecture Awards, says. "This is so people car go somewhere to be isolated or to communicate with one or two people and they're not always within open plan. At somewhere like Google [offices], there's a diversity of support spaces allowing every personality to find a place somewhere in the office." Continued on page 49
DESIGN INNOVATION Development and Innovation
Ecosciences Precinct, a single collaborative research centre, keeping costs down and encouraging knowledge exchange and discovery. Offices, labs and support zones accommodate a range of group sizes and functions. The spaces and furnishings are
LOCATION: Brisbane
flexible and adaptable. An internal north-south street
WINNER: The Harry Seidler Award for Commercial
of staff commons, library and meeting rooms is linked vertically by atrium stairs and passenger lifts. This way of organising the office is a major
ARCHITECT: Hassell CLIENT: Department of Employment, Economic
Architecture, Australian Institute of Architects WINNER: The Beatrice Hutton Award for Commercial Architecture (Old), Australian Institute of Architects
innovation. Scientists are co-located by scientific outcome, not organisational boundary, and work in
A thousand scientists from four state agencies and six CSIRO divisions work together in the
flexible, stimulating, light, open and transparent research areas.
collaborative work environment. The move aspires to encourage cultural change, improve productivity and efficiency and create a new direction for the organisation. The design of the six-level headquarters on the edge of Brisbane's CBD provides large, flexible workspaces, organised
LIGHT AND BRIGHT
Australia. Despite its large scale, ANZ Centre is
around a lift that opens straight into the workplace. There are three atriums within the building that
ARCHITECT: Hassell
designed to encourage small-scale engagements between the ANZ staff.
link all levels. Staff can see across the levels. Communal spaces, such as casual and formal meeting rooms, are clustered around the edges of the three atrium spaces close to sculptural
CLIENT: ANZ Banking Group LOCATION: Melbourne COMMENDATION: Australian Interior Design Awards, 2011 Corporate Design
staircases connecting the floors. Modular
ANZ Centre was awarded a six-star Green Star Office Design rating from the Green Building Council of
FLEXIBLE SPACE ARCHITECT: BVN Architecture CLIENT: Energex LOCATION: Brisbane SHORTLISTED: Australian Interior Design Awards, 2011 Corporate Design More than 1700 Energex staff, formerly dispersed throughout Brisbane, now work together in this open,
workstations can be moved and changed easily.
A public "common" on the ground floor of the building brings clients and the community into the heart of the organisation. This space is designed to allow daylight to penetrate deep into the building and to accommodate a variety of work styles.
SIMPLY RATIONAL ARCHITECT: Bates Smart CLIENT: Lease Infrastructure Services Business LOCATION: Sydney WINNER: Australian Institute of Architects Award for Interior Architecture (NSW) Lend Lease Infrastructure Services Business (formerly Conneq) is a fast-growing engineering division specialising in infrastructure. The design of the new office is intended to generate a culture of transparency, equity, flexibility and forward thinking. The Infrastructure Services division occupies three levels, with a dramatic central void and stair. The levels are inverted so that staff areas are on the top floor with prime views over adjacent bushland. The stair features 12-metre steel tubes, inspired by and reflecting the engineering industry. Cladding panels made from simple site shed sidings have been refinished in warm metallic tones. Planning is simple and rational; enclosed spaces are away from the perimeter. The mood is elegant and restrained, merging hospitality and corporate design. Sustainability is addressed by using materials of low "embodied energy", which are also recyclable, and by making an effort to minimise the amount of material used.
OPEN INTERACTION ARCHITECT: Woodhead CLIENT: Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations LOCATION: Canberra SHORTLISTED: Australian Interior Design Awards, 2011 Corporate Design The interior fitout for DEEWR's national office accommodates 2500 staff over 11 levels. It is designed to perform at a 5 Green Star/4.5 star Australian Building Greenhouse rating level. Consulting with DEEWR senior leaders, Woodhead established guiding principles for the project, resulting in a workplace that demonstrates accessibility and visibility, both literal and metaphorical. The environment engages human emotions, a place where the boundaries of work life and home life are blended. A connecting stair intersects all11 floors to break down departmental barriers and foster communication. Community areas adjacent to the stairwell alternate between large and small. These social spaces promote a sense of activity and movement, and encourage interaction and collaboration between staff and visitors.
December 15 2011 -January 26 2012
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Continued from page 46 Yet Google's approach might be meaningless in, say, an accounting company. "You have to understand the culture of the company," Dunin says. "They have to understand who they are, who their staff are and how they want to work." The best interiors are a result of high-quality building design. A building's architects control the penetration of natural light, fresh air and access to stairs. In buildings such as the ANZ Centre in Melbourne's Docklands, by architects Hassell (see page 47), the design also affords vistas across the large space, a horizon that makes the building seem to be its own city. Even in poorly designed buildings a creative interior design can transform the dynamics of a space. US medical researcher and author of the book Healing Spaces, Esther Sternberg, puts a compelling argument that the best-designed spaces have the power to heal, to calm and to lessen illness and absenteeism. A study of office workers showed that when they were transported from old, dingy and dark offices to a space filled with light and fresh air, there was a decrease in stress - even after they left the office to go home at night, Sternberg says. If there is no opportunity for such views, however, a picture of nature works almost as well. A plant, even a fake one, or a picture of a beautiful tree or landscape, is almost as likely to boost the happy hormones, Sternberg found. "The best thing to have in your office is something that reminds you of a happy, wonderful, comfortable place, a favourite place you have visited," she says. English academic Craig Knight found productivity improves by 16 per cent when plants and pictures are introduced into an office. And we are our own best friends when it comes to workplace design: giving the plants to staff to arrange according to their own preferences consistently produces an average 32 per cent rise in productivity. "Job satisfaction is easy to measure," Knight says. "But we also noticed a fall in sick-office syndrome, which is when people say they are too hot or cold, or the lights are too bright or dark, or they have headaches." Knight, a psychologist, has car ried out studies with more than 2200 office workers since 2006. Associate interior designer for John Wardle Architects, Kirrilly Wilson, says the big change to office design in recent years has been the move to green star ratings, which has improved use of natural amenities (light and air) for heating and cooling and natural materials for building. Managers Jove open-plan offices; persuading their staff of the benefits takes education and time, Wilson says. "We still need to do a bit of educating, especially in Australia," she says. "We do a lot of institutional projects. It's hard to get academics into open-plan when universities are used to cellular offices. It's all about education and engaging the end-users with consultation and workshops in the design process." JRV.
CREATIVE HUB
shaping the interior of the untouched concrete shell to create River Studios. Over three levels and
ARCHITECT: Breathe Architecture
2000 square metres, 70 studios of varying size and
CLIENT: City Of Melbourne, Arts Victoria and building owner
enclosure are strung between informal gathering areas: a kitchenette, service spaces and bicycle
LOCATION: West Melbourne WINNER: The Australian Institute of Architects Award
parking. Studio partitions are assembled from a
for Small Project Architecture (Vic), Australian
variety of alternative, recycled and rudimentary materials. Collaborating with artists and students led
Institute of Architects
to novel and inventive solutions, reflecting the core
Melbourne's art and design culture has a rich history
intentions of the brief. The tight budget restricted the scope of the design, but kept the project affordable
of enlivening rundown urban buildings and precincts.
($1 00/ sqm) and accessible to the target tenants. The
In an abandoned warehouse on the banks of the Maribyrnong, the process of rehabilitation began with
design gets tenants talking to each other and fosters a community that is resilient and inclusive.
DESIGNED TO WORK
instead focuses on the qualities inherent in the site to achieve a sensitive and sophisticated work
ARCHITECT: Wilson Architects CLIENT: Wilson Architects LOCATION, Brisbane WINNER: Australian Interior Design Awards, 2011
environment. The thoroughly researched project has been guided by the concept of "living" in an interior to create spaces for work. The design heightens the
Corporate Design
meaning of elements and maximizes the possibilities of spaces in between. The workplace design
Jury Citation: This small-scale project makes a huge contribution to corporate interior design practice by
relevance. The interior designer has skilfully exercised restraint to create a human workplace that
suggesting a new direction for workplace design. The project ignores trend-driven influences and
is timeless and beautiful yet, at the same time,
simultaneously retains the site's heritage and gives it
humble and endearing.