Table of contents for INDESIGN #72 - Work-Live-Play in INDESIGN

Did you know Australia has the world’s largest percentage of open plan offices? 42 per cent to a global average of 23 per cent. That’s pretty significant. We’re also the most flexible with our employees – more than half of Australian workers can choose to work remotely, should they wish. The jury is still out on just how this impacts Australian business in positive productivity terms. And it will be years before we gain a wider perspective on the impacts – good and bad – that new working typologies have on our personal and professional lives. What we do know, though, is that Australians are leading the world in workplace design. We are constantly metamorphosing our designs to adapt to changing user needs – whether that be employees, clients or…

“You don’t have to be a chef or even a particularly good cook to experience proper kitchen alchemy: the moment when ingredients combine to form something more delectable than the sum of their parts.”– Erin Morgenstern “The kitchen space is continuing its journey to the centre of the home. What used to be the family’s meeting point is turning out to be a ‘future living room’, a place where we entertain and host.”– Raanan Zilberman Think back, carefully. Think back to the memories that charm you most. Undoubtedly, a large proportion of them occur in a kitchen – and this comes at no surprise. After all, the kitchen has always been a perennially popular stage upon which we let our lives play out. A place to cook, a place to…

Some people might feel stifled, unsettled, or even anxious as they approach what seems to be the peak of their career. Where do you go when you’ve lead great projects, gained recognition and respect from peers and mentors, and held top-dog positions at architectural firms of high standing? What comes next? Look to Simone Oliver, recently appointed to the role of principal at Fender Katsalidis (or FK) after 22 years at Geyer, many of which spent as Peter Geyer’s personal protégé, and, consciously or otherwise, she’s reached new heights. She didn’t stop climbing. Oliver has never been afraid of the unknown. Never one to rest on her laurels or stick to what seems safest. “Many moons ago” she was studying journalism at the University of Queensland, and in a serendipitous…

Can you design emotional intelligence into a workplace? The trail-blazing EY Centre in Sydney gives it a red hot go, with a human-focused approach to both the development and design of the building. EY Centre’s appeal proved irresistible for Mirvac which, half-way through the development process, decided to locate its headquarters across six floors of the building. The key word here is ‘integration’ because the development process was so fully integrated that the design of Mirvac’s own workplace over six vertically connected levels of the building was always going to be an extension of the building fabric itself. Mirvac owns the land and was both developer and builder. It is also 50 per cent owner of the building as well as managing it and being its own tenant. From the…

Sometimes the most evolved designs are those left incomplete. When conceptualising the new Suncorp headquarters in Sydney, Geyer worked to the idea of ‘designing to 80 per cent’. The result is a radical take on workplace flexibility. While the building caters to its occupants in the present, it comprehensively avoids dictating their needs going into the future. “The space needed to be elastic and fluid; Suncorp knew that, considering how fast technology is changing, everything would need to be transformed, so they didn’t want to make it so that everything was integrated… They wanted stuff to be easily swapped in and out.” To state the obvious, design is – at its core – for people. The best commercial designs work on a granular level to ensure that the most idiosyncratic…

Mirvac headquarters at EY Centre, Sydney Interior Design Davenport Campbell Builder Mirvac Change Management Puzzle Partners Services Consultant Mirvac Davenport Campbell davenport-campbell.com.au Mirvac mirvac.com Furniture Workstations, Haworth, Steelcase. General chairs, Steelcase, Jardan, Hub Furniture, Cult. Stools, Anibou, Jardan, Workarena. Meeting chairs, Cult, Wilkhahn, Stylecraft. Tables, Arredorama, Stylecraft, Workarena. Lighting Lighting throughout, Cult, Euroluce, Artemide, Light Project, JSB Lighting, Eagle Lighting, Living Edge, KKDC, Light Culture, TEC LED, Great Dane Furniture, Spence & Lyda, Xenian, iGuzzini, Koda Lighting, Zumtobel. Finishes Paint throughout, Dulux. Fabric generally throughout, Warwick, Mokum, Woven Image, Kvadrat Maharam, Instyle, Febrik, At Work with Camira. Leather upholstery, Pelle Leathers. Blinds, Flexitrack. Laminate finishes, Polytec, Laminex. Carpet, Interface. Access floor finishes, ASP. Coir flooring, Natural Floor Coverings. Resilient flooring, Forbo Flooring Systems. Floor coverings generally, Regupol, Amtico. Timber veneer,…

The ‘workplace revolution’ is generally dated from Veldhoen & Co’s innovative rethink of the Amsterdam police headquarters in the early 1980s. But, as I suggest elsewhere in this issue, it could just as easily go back to Frank Lloyd Wright’s extraordinary Johnson Wax headquarters (1936-39) with its organic building form reflected inside with an open plan office, tree-like supporting columns, bespoke Steelcase furnishings echoing the form of the base building, use of natural light and its ‘biophilic’ experiment with internal trees and plantings. This bespoke approach will be one of the dominant trends in coming years. Another associated trend will be to do with change management. Just as off-the-shelf design solutions don’t work for different businesses, so it can’t be assumed that workplace strategies suited to one business will work…

INDESIGN Luminary I won’t admit to how long it has been since I last met up with Mia Feasey, but it scarcely matters since she remains the youthful and ebullient person who launched Siren Design all those years ago. The company has grown to match its success, but it remains an inclusive group of equals, proud of its flexibility and openness to new ideas. And the company has multiplied. Nicole Pollak set up a Melbourne studio, Penny Sloane took them offshore to Singapore, Jeanne Chan, having performed with Feasey in an all-girl band (à la The Spice Girls, but “of Asian appearance”) in London during the 1990s, has recently joined the company as chief operating officer along with Tamara Sheeran as practice manager. Feasey had made a number of false…

Here’s a fashion brand that steps away from the retail chorus line, to whisper its story in quiet and intimate tones. Women’s clothing and lingerie label, Lonely, uses its latest branding touch-point to invite the curious and deliver the unexpected. “The Lonely brand speaks strongly about layers of intimacy so a space that focuses on the customer, their experience, and the process of buying lingerie remains essential,” says designer Rufus Knight. Lonely is something of an enigma in the world of retail. A globally successful brand, it treads a careful line between promotion and intimacy, exposure and privacy, fragility and confidence. The attitude is borne out of founders’ Helene Morris’ and Steve Ferguson’s distaste for the highly sexualised lingerie industry. They reject the push-up bra, don’t want models in makeup…

There are no new ideas, says Flack Studio. But there is certainly a ‘Flack’ way of doing things. This manifests through a cheeky blend of cultural and design references that are at once eclectic and tasteful, and oh so very Flack. In tackling the design of his studio space, David Flack went down the proverbial ‘rabbit hole’, constructing a working model of his own inner workings. For his team and clientele, the studio is a deep dive into an immersive world of design – and all of Flack’s own making. “Everything we spec’ is here for clients to see. We want spaces that are layered, so not necessarily to feel like you’re buying culture, or buying personality.” A quick peek around Flack Studio’s new space in Fitzroy reveals no white,…

Every industry has its in-joke. Ours? A designer’s bank balance. But as we approach our annual multibillion-dollar blowout – Salone del Mobile di Milano – the in-joke is beginning to enter the water supply. In the coming months, this sheer inequity will no longer prompt its usual exasperated eye rolling but, rather, substantial column inches under scandalised headlines. And I, for one, cannot help but agree with Ilse Crawford’s notorious quip for The Guardian: “Designers too often end up being voluntary workers for millionaires.” That we’ve become an industry of over-enthusiastic debtors is no longer a point of contention. After all, many of the objects at Salone will be prototypes exhibited by designers in the hopes of snagging a royalty. Whether emerging or emeritus, most continue to chase manufacturers to…

What’s in a chair? Not much that should meet the eye, according to Edward Barber of Barber & Osgerby. His minimal, meaningful approach to furniture design is the antithesis of a rising culture of over-productivity and under-design. His new Vitra Pacific chair is a clear statement of intent. Seated (appropriately) on Vitra’s new Pacific chair amid the luminous expanse of Vitra’s Sydney showroom, Edward Barber is soft-spoken, animated, and a little jet-lagged. On the third day of a whirlwind tour of Australian cities organised by the Swiss design company to present its latest product, Barber’s schedule has been packed with meetings, interviews, photo shoots and presentations. “Vitra is a really strong believer in having the designer launch the product because if the designer is explaining why they’ve done something, it’s…

When your client is competing in a saturated market of gourmet fast food, how do you ensure their offering says something different? With a new designer diner in Melbourne’s Collins Street, Architects EAT and 8bit talk brand evolution, the significance of Super Mario and the sophisticated art of casual hospitality. “At Collins Street we thought, ‘Okay – now we can really take 8bit on a journey.’ Just like when Mario jumps into one of those pipes, he comes out into another world.” From smashed avocado to share plates, Melbourne’s no-fuss food culture hits upon a winning formula for chefs, restaurateurs and foodies the world over. Hospitality design is booming, and the influx of smart new cafés and walk-in eateries reflects an appetite for familiar, affordable eats in an on-trend ambience.…

One way to engender a paradigm shift in organisational culture is to shed one’s old skin and seek out new horizons. Pioneers of change, design directors Sandra Furtado and Niall Durney are taking Crone Architects on a journey of transformation that starts with people and place. Think of Crone Architects and you probably think of high-rise commercial buildings. But Crone has been quietly re-inventing itself, led by young design directors, Sandra Furtado and Niall Durney. Hence, the practice has recently completed small-scale projects like the Orange Regional Museum (winner of the Sulman Medal for Public Architecture 2017), and The Connection – Rhodes Community Centre. Although at 850 square-metres with a 7.2 metre floor-to-ceiling height it is anything but small-scale, Crone’s new studio at Sydney’s World Square is a stunning metaphor…

THE HOLY GRAIL FOR TODAY’S WORKPLACE IS OPTIMUM CREATIVITY. SO HOW DO WE OVERCOME THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN ENABLING SPACE AND ENABLING TECHNOLOGY? It seems we have been talking about the future of the workplace forever – or at least since Frank Lloyd Wright’s visionary Johnson Wax Headquarters in 1939. But today, with technology metastisising seemingly overnight, we live in a post-future age when the present becomes the past before we can even get up in the morning. Today the workplace is increasingly defined by the potential of rapidly changing technology. This is a workplace where the imperative is creativity – not just for competitive advantage, but to simply keep up with a constantly evolving business environment. However, despite the extraordinary transformation of the workplace in terms of its amenity over…

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