Table of contents for INDESIGN #68 - Work-Live-Play in INDESIGN

Does anyone else feel like agile is kind of old news now? We get it, that’s a little controversial! Particularly seeing as it’s become the paradigm upon which modern workplace design is based. But in a world where change is the only constant, we’re pretty sure that ‘agile working’ – at least as we know it – is on a limited shelf life. So we’re moving forward, looking at where the future of workplace design is heading and courageously calling the shots on a new commercial revolution. In this edition of Indesign: the ‘Work, Live, Play’ issue, we cut the buzzwords and vague terminology to uncover what our industry is facing in the world of workplace design. We ask, if agile has become the norm, then what will the new,…

“We are curious about people. How they live, where they live, what they do and how they use things.” The Fisher & Paykel culture is one of open innovation, which allows people to work collaboratively to find insights and ideas that connect with customers and respect our planet. “Our belief in innovation and creativity isn’t limited to our design teams,” says Fisher & Paykel’s General Manager of Design Integration, Mark Elmore. “We foster resourceful and imaginative thinking across the company. Even from way back in the early days, we have always maintained this egalitarian approach to ideas.” This is a uniquely valuable and advantageous feature for us architects and designers, who – for once – are given the opportunity to influence product direction based on what we are experiencing in…

The more time we seem to be spending in the office, the more we come to the realisation that our working environments need to be places of calm and comfort. For Charter Hall Flexispace, a new co-working style office, the brief was to create an environment that would truly embrace these qualities. So much so that it felt like a second home. The specific needs of the Charter Hall space were complex. Clients of the brand for example, can come in and rent a desk, rent an office, a conference or function room – and as such, the environment needed to be truly flexible, and capable of catering for a wide variety of clientele. But how can you achieve the needs of many in a single space, while keeping an…

How are advances in technology allowing industrial design engineers to create an agile working model for their industry? FJMT’s recent 200 George Street project featuring AR-MA demonstrates the outcome of a sophisticated digital design, capitalising on the hybrid skills of technology-native architects. “3D models are data-driven and parametric; able to adapt to and accommodate design changes flexibly throughout design, development and fabrication. But it’s not about being dogmatic about one medium or one way of doing things,”says AR-MA director, Gabriele Ulacco. “We really focus on making comprehensive 3D models for production. Sometimes that means we’re actually bypassing paper altogether, and the outputs are digital files that go straight to machines in the factory…” Much of technology’s impact on architecture to date has resided in the ability to process vast quantities…

When happiness is a valuable currency, is designing emotions a thing? Author and nutritionist Lola Berry and coffee mastermind Salvatore Malatesta have joined forces with Fiona Lynch Design Office to launch Happy Place. A juice bar-café designed to deliver a sense of health and happiness to each and every customer. We know from biophilic design studies that timber elementally connects us back to nature. In doing so it actually encourages greater levels of productivity, as well as conjuring feelings of positivity and creativity. Plants and natural hues of blues, greens and browns, too, help to make us feel happy and inspired, as opposed to anxious, bored and disengaged. Really, it’s no wonder we’ve seen such a proliferation of plywood fit-outs and verdant indoor greening creep into hospitality, retail and commercial…

The future of hospitality is multi-sensory: touch, taste, smell, sound and so on. How then are we personifying our clients in the design of their spaces, and how can we pull this off without being gimmicky? A new Hong Kong restaurant and bar by Joyce Wang Design Studio takes a different approach, encapsulating the chef’s character and culinary style in the space itself. For chef, Nathan (‘Nate’) Green, Rhoda is a highly personal project. The British chef ran contemporary tapas joint 22 Ships for two years before Yenn Wong, CEO and founder of JIA Group, entrusted him with his own restaurant in Hong Kong’s Sai Ying Pun – a place where he could let his passions roam free. And these passions don’t just come through in the food, they also…

r.a.w Melbourne Architect Travis Walton Architecture + Interior Design Joinery Tri-Vision Budget $1million Travis Walton Architecture + Interior Design traviswalton.com.au Furniture Custom banquettes, Paris D’ecor. Mesh panels, Locker Group. Lighting Lighting throughout, Ambiance. Philips Lighting Headquarters Architect LAVA Project Management Brink Groep Space Planners BICG Structural Engineers Adviesbureau Tielemans MEP Engineers Deerns Total Floor Area 10,700 sqm LAVA l-a-v-a.net Lighting Lighting throughout, Philips. Finishes ‘Terrazzo’ floor covering, Durabella. Bamboo decking, floor and wall tiles, Moso. ‘Twist’ carpet, Desso. ‘Marmoleum’ linoleum, Forbo. Epoxy coating, Bolidt. Wall paint, woven wallpaper, Reinweiss. Wooden ceiling, Derako. Fixed & Fitted Aluminium screen frame, Basaltgrau. Ceiling islands, acoustic ceiling, Ecophon. Sink and closets, Sphinx. University of Melbourne Arts West Architects A+A (ARM Architecture + Architectus) Builder Kane Construction Structural Constulant IrwinConsult Project Management AURECON Building Surveyor…

Agile workplaces are nothing new these days. Over the past decade, work environments that offer employees a variety of flexible spaces and ways of working have become the norm – particularly at large companies that want to attract the best talent. The same goes for remote working. Working from home or a café is fairly commonplace, and some companies, such as Upworthy and WordPress, are completely distributed, with no centralised workforce. So, what happens when you combine these two concepts? That’s the thinking behind #dojowheels, a mobile workspace designed by Belgian design studio, FIVE AM. “We often design workplaces for others, and we were thinking about flexible ways that we could work,” says design partner, Mathieu Bellens. “It was supposed to be a low budget, low profile personal project, just…

“One person who worked in the famous Chiat/Day office said, ‘it was like sitting inside a migraine’.” I’ve got a dirty little secret: I am a great admirer of Gaetano Pesce. All that melted resin, the spew-like hues, the joyously informal shapes of his table, chair and lighting designs. But even I would not have wanted to work within the Pesce interior of advertising agency Chiat/Day. When it was unveiled in 1994 Chiat/Day Los Angeles was hailed as the manifestation of a new era in post-industrial office design. When it was shuttered five years later, it was widely descried as a flop. Armed with Motorola flip-phones, Chiat/Day boffins struggled to attain meaningful mobility – or even somewhere to sit. Twenty years later, we’re almost completely unleashed, but still we’ve not…

“It all goes back to this idea of feel–think–do,” says Stevens. “It all sounds a bit cliché.” Yet, in founding forpeople, Stevens’ intention was to be thoroughly different. “We’d delivered many design projects that took a completely different approach, but it all came back to this idea that if you don’t think as designers, rather, you think as people…” Stevens’ unspoken words here are this: it reframes the argument, shifts where the perceived challenge lies, and creates a new value proposition for customers that also, importantly, resonates at a business case level. “We often have clients who come to us with briefs shaped by ‘all this research says this’. That’s really great, but the massive gap that remains is, ‘What does it all mean?’” For Stevens and team, the research…

How can non-physical design elements such as ‘light’ bring people together? Philips by LAVA uses “intelligent lights” in a parametric designed ‘tree’ to boost communication, creativity, interchange and wellbeing for staff and visitors. For the new HQ of Philips Lighting in the Netherlands, globetrotting architecture office LAVA was asked not only to provide innovative workspaces and an impressive reception area for receiving guests, but also to demonstrate the use of lighting to improve people’s lives. “How light affects humans and how we can use it to create better living spaces,” says LAVA director Alexander Rieck, was therefore the inspiration behind the design, which revolves around a 3,250 square-metre atrium dominated by an installation known as the ‘Light Tree’. “We thought about the experience of light. Light is only visible when…

Working with architect-designer, Travis Walton, health and fitness company Ready And Willing (r.a.w. for short), has created a very un-gym environment. It takes many cues from modern office design, bringing warmth to an industrial space. Each space however, is unashamedly about health and fitness. In Australia, the gym is probably the last great bastion of bad design experiences. With a handful of exceptions, they are generally designed around rows of bulky equipment, with only cosmetic attempts at making them inviting, while ‘wellness centres’ tend to follow the blonde-wood Scandinavian aesthetic. When Ready & Willing (r.a.w. studios) found its subterranean space on Melbourne’s Russell Street, the health and fitness operator knew they had to create something different—they wanted a fitness space that was more lifestyle club than gym. “They were really…

Could thinking like a kid be valuable in the workplace? Ku.Be by MVRDV and ADEPT is a new typology for a community building designed to encourage play and bring out the inner child in users. “There were very serious men in suits climbing walls and taking slides. They were people that you would never expect to be playful if you saw them on the street,”says ADEPT co-founder, Martin Krogh. “Everybody has some kind of playfulness in their character. Ku.Be is designed to bring that out of people. The whole building is a play element.” Visitors to the new community centre in Copenhagen’s Frederiksberg district could take the stairs, but the climbing walls, slides and rope ladders are a much more fun way to move around – and they are definitely…

How does the world’s most influential auditing firm self-audit? Designed by Geyer, the new Deloitte Head Quarters in Perth is a stellar case study for self-analysis and designing for the (sometimes opposing) needs of many in a single space. “It’s difficult to break the mentality of ‘oh no, that area is for lunching in, not working in’, but we eventually moved passed that line of thinking,”says Deloitte Perth’s managing partner, Michael McNulty. As I write this article, I am noticing my colleagues across the office. Some are on the phones; some gathered around a computer are judging magazine layouts; two are laughing across a table; some are working independently with focused intent. Though we all occupy the same space and work toward a common goal, the way we get there…

Why would you remaster An Icon? In response to their decision to remaster The Beatles’ discography, Abbey Road Studios said that by “treating the material with respect, but not shying away from the application of modern technology, it was felt that fidelity to the group could be improved.” Remastering icons is certainly nothing new; think the Volkswagen Beetle, the Apple computer, the digital re-re-release of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – the list goes on. However, what’s most important here is that none of these classics were ‘recreated’ – but rather ‘remastered’. When the Aeron chair by Herman Miller first launched in 1994, it was unlike any chair the world had ever seen. Instead of a padded throne, designers Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick did away with foam and…

Panzeri has been in the lighting business since 1947. Today, the Italian company remains wholly owned by the Panzeri family who maintain a high degree of hands-on involvement in the design and manufacturing of a wide range of decorative, semi-decorative and technical light fittings. So, what distinguishes this range from that of numerous other manufacturers? Importantly, Panzeri does not make ‘glowing furniture’. Its full range of 70 product families is designed to be functional in terms of light distribution, glare control, efficiency and the use of high-end LED technology; the range does include a relatively small number of purely technical downlights as well as linear and track based lighting systems, but this is not where its major strength lies. One of the company’s guiding policies is to be independent of…

It’s been almost 30 years since Snøhetta’s Norwegian founding partners established their first office in Oslo. The choice of location was certainly logical, but following the architectural practice’s inaugural commission to reconceive the Alexandria Library in Egypt, its ‘small town’ base was suddenly called into question. Unsurprisingly, there were those who thought one of the bigger European cities would have been a more appropriate place for such a globally-focused firm to be operating, especially considering the significance of its growing portfolio. Those same commentators were probably just as bemused when the practice established a studio in Innsbruck and most recently (and, quite possibly, most unexpectedly) Adelaide. Although Snøhetta’s second office is in New York and it now also has studios in San Francisco and Stockholm, it’s become a hallmark of…

“When I say ‘unique’ I’m referring to a design’s relevance and connection to its client, the brief or the specific location of the project. ‘Unique’ is the responsiveness to the needs of an individual project. And when you really tap in to the core nature of the brief, or the client or the site, then you end up finding its unique qualities. I’m a true believer that buildings and interiors need to be and feel site specific; they need to have a sense of locality and place not just in terms of materiality, but largely through site and context. For example, we’re in the process of completing a transport project here in Sydney called Wynyard Walk, which is a transit orientated development. It’s a project that connects the city to…

Given the many constraints, it’s amazing that any original architecture ever gets built. But a young Sydney industrial design outfit has re-written the rules and at the same time become an international Australian success story. How to make the shells? That was the great challenge that threatened to stop the Sydney Opera House in its tracks. And it’s the kind of challenge that continues to inhibit architectural creativity. Industrial designer, Tim Phillips quickly lists the things that limit architectural freedom: traditional construction methodology and what builders will do; materials and manufacturing knowledge; design limitation such as understanding of mechanical; structural and electrical design; and of course – inexperience. It is just precisely issues which Phillips’ company, TILT, addresses as part of its package to provide customised industrial design solutions to…

What is ‘salon learning’ and how is design responding to this new educational format? Arts West, Melbourne University’s riotous new Arts Faculty by ARM Architecture and Architectus, reimagines on-campus learning via the philosophy of object-based learning. Universities around the world are grappling with the same pointed questions in this era of online learning. What’s the function of a physical campus nowadays, and what should they look like and feel like to inhabit? How can design herald change in the philosophies underpinning education and attract new cohorts without alienating existing staff and students? Can landmark buildings designed to reflect contemporary ideas like hands-on, interactive, object-based learning (OBL) adapt easily to accommodate new pedagogies in the future? For educational design specialists Architectus and civic and cultural doyens ARM Architects, the answers lay…

How can ‘smart workplaces’ stay flexible when advancements in integrated technology move so quickly? Unispace’s new Melbourne studio exhibits a built-in fluid and mutable working style that transcends the clunkiness of faddish design trends and wire-driven technology. “We love to collaborate and it comes back to ego. We have no ego, we’re about disrupting traditional methods of working and embracing different points of view; everyone’s encouraged to contribute and co-create,”says Unispace global design director, Simon Pole. Have you heard of Unispace? They’re a relatively new design business, having come onto the scene some five-and-a-half years ago. With studios located around Australia and internationally, the company is not what you’d call your traditional design firm, having originated in strategy, design, project management and building/construction backgrounds. “We sit in the middle,” says…

Norway’s criminals are famously treated humanely. Even violent offenders serve time in liberal penitentiaries like Bastøy Prison, where inmates and guards work together tending to animals and farming, taking classes and playing tennis. And, in Norway, this experimental approach to correctional services tends to be the rule rather than the exception. The hope is that encouraging principles like respect, collaboration and responsibility – similar to the values promoted in today’s workplaces – will promote rehabilitation and lower rates of repeat offenders. Increasingly, design practice, with its focus on problem-solving and reflective thinking, is included in this approach. In a fitting twist of fate, ceramics from one of these ‘prison design workshops’ were bought by Johan Laursen, the head chef at Fru K, for use when serving up the restaurant’s five…

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