The future of the workplace issue 50. 2012 AUstralia $16.50 New Zealand $17.50 SinGapore $12.95 Hong Kong $155 USA $21.99
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welcomeindesign
letter from the PUBLISHER issue 50, 2012 When Indesign began just over twelve years ago with a small team of four in a two-bedroom apartment in Woollahra, I could only imagine what it would become 50 issues later. But, of course, nothing is realised without a vision, and here we are today, as strong a presence in international design publishing as I could ever have hoped for. With each issue, we have built Indesign as a leading voice with a focus on commercial workplace design. Today we have a global reputation, and have defined the Australian design landscape on an international scale. And, the Indesign brand continues to break new ground across the Region. Last year, we launched our first issue of Indesign Indonesia and introduced a Singapore office, cementing our position within the Asia Pacific region. Of course, Indesign wouldn’t be where it is today without the support and dedication of many. Our thanks must go to our advertisers who have supported us throughout the years, the committed team that works behind the scenes on every issue of the magazine, the website, and our events, not to mention our loyal readers. Indesign has a unique approach, and as we head into our next 50 issues and beyond, we will continue to bring you our vision of the best design and architecture from the Region and around the world.
Above Editor, Paul
McGillick with Deputy Editor, Mandi Keighran
Raj Nandan – publisher
indesignlive.com
letter from the editor
For over twelve years now, Indesign has been bringing you the best commercial projects from Australia and around the world. This Indesign marks our 50th issue, and to celebrate we are dedicating it to the future of the workplace – looking at 50 products, projects, people and ideas that explore the changing landscape of workplace design and new ways of working in Australia and around the world. This issue also brings with it a few changes. Paul McGillick, who has been Editor of Indesign for a decade, has moved into the position of Editorial Director, and I have stepped into the role of Editor. After three years at Indesign, it is an exciting challenge, and I look forward to continuing to work on the magazine in a different capacity. In this issue, we have also introduced two new regular feaures. The first is Fuse, a new lighting section that will explore issues in and around lighting design in the built environment – an area of particular interest given the rapid technological advances in the industry – and bring you the best and newest lighting products. We will also be teaming up with industry leaders to bring you exclusive photoshoots, showcasing leading products relating to a particular theme. This issue, we have partnered with acoustic finishes leader Woven Image on a shoot that looks at acoustics in the workplace. Most of the projects within these pages come from Australia. As the experts we have spoken to will tell you, Australia is a global leader in workplace design. Over the past decade, many of the best workplaces internationally have come out of Australia, and Indesign has been there to cover them. As we head into our next 50 issues, we look forward to continuing on this journey with you, our readers. mandi keighran – editor
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Issue 50
introduction 027 Paul McGillick discusses workplace design in Australia 028 Timeline of key Australian workplaces
EVOLVE 035 Bite-sized portions from the latest people, places, products, events
052 Evolve
11 068 Review: Quiet
21 124 Dandenong Government Services Office, Melbourne, by HASSELL
31 190 Luc Kamperman of Veldhoen + Company on why Australia was ready for ABW
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036 Evolve
038 Evolve
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1 052 Evolve
in this special 50th issue of indesign, we bring you 50 products, projects, people, and ideas relating to the future of the workplace
054 Evolve
12 fuse 071 AndrĂŠ Tammes on the importance of light
22 how we work 140 Westfield Head Office, Sydney, by Woods Bagot
32 193 Michael Trudgeon of Crowd Productions tells us why the future is already here
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040 Evolve
056 Milan Furniture Fair
13 076 The best new lighting products from Light+Building in Frankfurt
23 147 Patricia Nelson discusses Environmental Graphic Design
33 zone 195 Stefana Broadbent looks at social habits in the digital world
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4 14 Sound Theories 081 Woven Image and Indesign showcase the best acoustic products for the workplace
24 152 Amanda Stanaway on wellness in the workplace
34 195 James Calder on the future of the workplace in Australia
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060 International Furniture Fair Singapore
15 indesign luminary 090 James Calder is changing the way we think about workplace
25 outside the office 158 Hospital Special: Robina Hospital, Queensland, by BVN Architecture
35 195 Genevieve Bell discusses the importance of boredom
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sept–nov, 2012 042 Evolve
044 Evolve
6 062 Clerkenwell
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046 Evolve
048 Evolve
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7 064 Brisbane Indesign
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066 Comment
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where we work 098 Microsoft Australia, Jones Lang LaSalle, and Interpublic Group, Sydney, by Futurespace
26 158 Hospital Special: Liverpool Hospital, Sydney, by Rice Daubney
36 204 Caia Hagel discovers ‘made in Germany’
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050 Evolve
9 068 Review: Falls the Shadow
19 114 Ropemaker Place, London, by Clive Wilkinson Architects
27 172 UTS, Sydney, by Woods Bagot, and Gardner Wetherill & Associates
37 sustain 209 The evolution of the sustainable workplace
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28 178 Paul McGillick on the third-place workspace
38 212 Setting the standard in sustainable furniture
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29 178 Caia Hagel introduces the ‘Digital Bohemia’
39 214 Joost Bakker and working sustainably
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10 068 Review: Live-Work: Planning and Design
20 124 Sentosa Cove House, Singapore, by Aamer Taher
30 pulse 185 Leo Schouten, founder of PROOFF, on the tools that will enable new ways of working
40 ps 216 Meet the Indesign editorial team
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introductionindesign
words PAUL MCGILLICK
Reinventing Work Whether by luck or design, Indesign magazine has tracked the most exciting decade in workplace design in Australia. Editorial Director, Paul McGillick was there for all of it. indesignlive.com
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people places PRODUCTS events
Vivid Sydney Now in its fourth year, the Vivid Sydney festival again lit up the harbourside city in June with an array of visual installations, performances and ideas. The most prominent part of the festival is the lighting of the Sydney Opera House sails, and this year festival organisers invited multi-award winning German design collective URBANSCREEN to create a new artwork for the sails. No stranger to large scale installations, URBANSCREEN used their iconic canvas to explore the form of the Opera House as well as its function as a home for music, dance, and drama. “We create unique video art that perfectly fits on the architecture,� says Daniel Rossa of URBANSCREEN. The resulting work makes the Opera House sails appear as actual sails, blowing in the wind; showed large scale people crawling across the space, disturbing the tiles of the sails with their movements; and featured dramatic mosaic visuals that made the sails appear to be transforming Inception-style. [Text: Mandi Keighran] Vivid Sydney (61 2) 8114 2400 vividsydney.com URBANSCREEN post@urbanscreen.com urbanscreen.com indesignlive.com
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Marble Magic As always, the work of superstar designer Patricia Urquiola was everywhere at this year’s Milan fair – and with good reason. One of her most interesting works was a collaboration between Urquiola and Italian marble company Budri for the annual trade show for stone design and technology, Marmomacc. The impressive installation, titled ‘Nat(f)use’ was on show at the Triennale di Milano, and included a collection of tables that fused marble with resin, benches, a range of vessels, wall and floor coverings, and modular panels. “Working with marble is the exact opposite of industrial design because marble is a very powerful hybrid, a historic material that is still being reinterpreted today,” says Urquiola. “They achieved things that I believed were impossible. When I sent in some drawings, I thought, ‘No, they’ll never manage these,’ – and now here they are.” [Text: MK] (Photography: Alberto Parise) Budri (39 5) 3521 967 budri.com Patricia Urquiola (39 2) 8738 1848 patriciaurquiola.com Marmomacc (39 45) 829 8111 marmomacc.com
Intelligent Companion The ‘Companions Writing Desk’ is designed by London designer Ilse Crawford of Studioilse as part of a new family of furniture designed to support daily life. The desk is crafted in solid Chestnut with a cork bowl for wires and plugs, and a top that can close to hide away papers and laptops. Slim line and proportioned to fit small spaces, the desk answers to human needs whilst maintaining its beauty as a natural material. The rest of the ‘Companions’ family includes a bedside table with cork bowl; the ‘Sidekicks’ occasional tables; and the ‘Companions Small Dining Table’ with polished aluminium tabletop set upon solid Chestnut legs. The bedside tables and ‘Sidekicks’ pieces are available in various sizes and come in either a solid Chestnut or polished aluminium finish on top. The ‘Companions’ collection is available in Australia through Anibou. [Text: CR]
Anibou (61 2) 9319 0655 anibou.com.au
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stack it Stack and unpack as you like with the ‘Stack’ tables by Singaporean designer Nathan Yong for Living Divani. These versatile containers are a modern day ‘nest of tables’. Consisting of three tables of different heights, punchy colours and clever handiwork (employed to produce the stackable legs) are what immediately attracts and engages. The legs are crafted in solid Beech, and each container is made from 6mm lacquered Birch plywood. Living Divani is available in Australia from Space Furniture. [Text: Alicia Sciberras]
Living Divani (39 3) 163 0954 livingdivani.it Space Furniture (61 2) 8339 7588 spacefurniture.com.au
waves and ripples
Mobile Merchant
Combining understated aesthetics with minimalist design, the latest addition ‘Giro’ vanity basin for Porcelanosa Grupo echos natural forms, sculpted into furniture. The double-ridged bowl evokes the ripples created by a drop falling into a pool of water, maintaining an aquatic theme perfectly suited to its setting. The 80x50cm dimension provides a practical ledge area with an integrated soap dish, and the ‘Giro’ vanity basin comes with a lacquered base structure. [Text: LL]
Global e-commerce giant PayPal has teamed up with Yves Béhar of fuseproject to launch PayPal Here, a mobile credit card-swiping gadget that potentially turns anyone into a mobile merchent and brings the online company into the physical world. Designed for small businesses, PayPal Here – with its blue arrow motif – provides an easy way to accept credit card payments directly into a PayPal account. It also responds to the growing number of flexible businesses without fixed location. [Text: MK]
Porcelanosa Grupo (61 2) 9211 1998 porcelanosakitchens.com.au
fuseproject (1 415) 908 1492 fuseproject.com indesignlive.com
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Simone Leamon the creative workplace needs to strike the right balance between ‘studio’ and ‘office’. But how to manage this complex juggling act? portrait James Geer illustration Collage by Frances Yeoland
h, work: with synonyms like toil, drudgery, grind and effort, it’s no wonder it has negative connotations. As for the term ‘workplace’, it is usually defined as a place where work is done – hardly an inspiring proposition. But within the creative industries, surely a ‘workplace’ must be more than that? In his book The Creative Economy (2001), John Howkins looks at the relationship between creativity and economics. Having coined the phrase ‘from mind to market’, he reminds us that creativity needs to take shape and be embodied in a good or service, which is then traded as an economic product. Working in the creative industries is not just about feeling creatively content; it is also about turning a dollar. As designers and architects, how are we managing creativity in the workplace? How can we keep creativity flowing, while also taking charge of business? Are we getting this juggling act right – and if not, how could we do it better? Perhaps the answer lies in striking the right balance between studio and the office. In our field, the workplace needs to function as a kind of hybrid of these two spaces: as creative studio and pragmatic office. It must be a one-stop site for ideation, creativity and production – along with project management, promotion and sales. A place where creativity and admin co-exist. The concept of the ‘studio’ is linked with that of the ‘artist’. Between the 15th and 19th centuries the artist’s studio, or atelier, was a highly organised workshop. Much more than a production facility for artistic output, it was a place for creative research, experimentation, and learning. The atelier was renowned for unique ideas, methods and creative expression, and the artist was wellversed in the technological, social and political issues of the day.
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Nowadays, popular culture would have us believe that the ‘artist’s studio’ is a place for inspired self-expression, a discipline-free zone where creative outcomes are conjured up via some obscure, semi-magical process. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It downplays the importance of research, experimentation, critical thinking and exploration, and demotes the idea of creative process to the status of mere folly. But it is a very powerful myth. Have today’s entrepreneurial creatives bought into it? How much room are we devoting to our creative process? Is it enough? Swamped by the drudge of running a small business – or being a part of one – how many of us are simply designing by numbers, while telling ourselves that we lack the time and energy to do otherwise? This brings us to the concept of ‘the office’, a term that belongs to the culture of administration. In ancient Rome, a document called the Notitia Dignitatum listed the thousands of imperial, provincial and military officium of the day, assigning ranks, stations and duties to dignities, officials and staff. The officium (plural for office) was a conceptual organisation of human capital. Focused on record-keeping and document management, modern offices aimed to centralise human capital so people could do their paperwork with maximum efficiency and minimum cost to business. An economic model encompassing location, productivity and specialisation, the office has engendered particular ways of working. But times are changing. As Seth Godin, Yahoo’s former Vice President of Marketing, puts it: “The way we do business is changing fast and in order to keep up, your entire mentality about work has to change just as quickly.” Jeanne C. Meister, co-author of The 2020 Workplace (2010), says our future workplaces will be shaped by three key
trends: global access to markets and talent; the emergence of Web 2.0, digital and mobile technologies; and multiple generations in the workplace. Enterprise structures are changing, transforming the way human capital is recruited and organised, and how we work. Today’s productivity tools – including cloud platforms such as SharePoint, Google Apps, Zoho and Huddle – are enabling greater communication, collaboration and increased peer-topeer learning. Used in collaboration with a media tablet, laptop or mobile device, they can potentially transform the workplace from a fixed office into an agile worksphere – and help us do a better job of managing creativity. Yet if the grumbling I hear from the industry is any indication, I suspect that as a community we’re not adapting fast enough. We’re letting the admin-heavy office side of the equation leach away valuable creative time. Tying down creatives with antiquated admin practices is akin to asking them to be creative on the side. There’s no such thing. Since, as creatives, we are in the business of applied creativity, why not be creative about the way we do business ourselves? To free up more creative time – to swing the balance back from office tasks to studio work – we need to be more time-efficient. To recalibrate the office/studio relationship, so we can get on with the business of being creative. This means getting to grips with this new suite of digital tools, and making them work for us.
I’m about to relocate my studio to the former J.H. Boyd Girls’ High School, in Melbourne’s Southbank district. It’s one of 23 spaces in this complex now being leased to people working in the creative industries, through the City of Melbourne Creative Spaces initiative. Populated by artists, designers, writers and filmmakers, it’s a proverbial hotbed for creativity. My workspace will house the tools, materials, and resources I use in my creative process and output. However, it will extend beyond its physical dimensions. Having recently got my head around these new digital systems and tools, I plan to cut down the untold hours of admin that have been slowly wearing me down. I hope this change in management works. My creative workplace depends on it!
Simone LeAmon is a designer, artist and the director of Simone LeAmon Design and Creative Strategy.
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Investigating the latest trends and products in lighting
In this new section, we discuss how rapid change in the lighting industry is affecting the ways in which the built environment is experienced.
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Lighting trends and products are changing radically as technology develops and awareness of light’s potential as a design tool grows
ood lighting is capable of transforming a space. If you have heard anyone say, “This place is cosy,” or “I get headaches when I’m in the office,” the chances are that lighting – good or bad – is the cause. Such comments provide evidence of a growing awareness that the quality of lighting shapes people’s responses to, and perceptions of, their environments. If this is so, we must ask if enough attention is being paid by designers to variables in the quality of light and its application. The lighting world is currently undergoing a period of rapid and considerable change. Some of this is connected to radical developments in technology, and with increasing awareness of a medium that, through its ubiquity, has historically been under-valued as a design tool. Given that around 80 per cent of all information processed by our brain arrives visually, it makes sense to consider closely the medium that allows this to occur – light.
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The purpose of this new lighting section in Indesign – is to explore all aspects of lighting and how it is used in the built environment. As the section develops in future issues of Indesign, we will look at a variety of topics and concerns relating to lighting. As a medium that remains invisible until it arrives at a physical surface, to some, lighting suggests a degree of unpredictability or risk. It opens up questions relating to the degree to which lighting – as opposed to light fittings – can be designed, and of the difficulties associated with lighting design. And, it forces us to ask whether lighting design is a technical subject laced with a dash of creativity or a creative subject based on the use of an increasingly technical palette. Designers find themselves faced with having to decide how much light is ‘enough’, and why; whether light is subject to the ‘less is more’ adage; and if lighting codes are correctly based. Looking around, there are numerous examples that highlight
FUSEindesign
words André Tammes
Previous The ‘LUNA
Parete 2 LED’ wall lamp by Catellani & Smith Left Beauty by Olafur Eliasson (1993) is an artificial rainbow created using light Below right The Städel Museum extension by Schneider+Schumacher
“ The use of light in buildings needs a wider and deeper understanding” André Tammes
the importance of light in our daily lives. A discerning shopper will take a coloured dress to a window to see it under daylight; Turner watercolour paintings are viewed under very low levels of light; aircraft cabins are being fitted with coloured lighting; and architectural photographers value the short period of dusk to capture shots of externally-lit buildings. But how many of us understand the principles behind these examples? Amid these and countless other questions, both conjectural and based on fact, there are some certainties. In Australia, lighting accounts for 30 to 40 per cent of energy used in commercial buildings and around 7 per cent of that used in dwellings. As a result, Australia and an increasing number of countries around the world have created legislation to limit lighting-related energy usage, presenting greater challenges for designers and architects. In response, there is a focus on developing lighting products that use less energy. Solidstate lighting (SSL), for example, is based on the use of the light-emitting diode (LED) as a realistic source of general white lighting. This relatively recent development has opened the design of lighting and fittings up to a hitherto unimaginable range of benefits and design potential. Another sign of worldwide concern about energy usage is the popularity of global events such as Earth Hour, that asks households and businesses to turn off non-essential lights for one hour on one day a year, and movements such as the International Dark-Sky Association, whose mission is to cut energy waste and stop light pollution. As a design discipline in its own right, lighting design is quickly gaining indesignlive.com
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Quadriled
powercast led
Tweeter on
Panos Infinity
A lamp designed by Marc Sadler that eliminates any prejudice concerning the presumed coldness of LED lights. The faceted transparent module combines Murano glass with the latest polymer-machining techniques. The 36 LED lights, with excellent luminous efficacy and consumption of 15 watt, offer top energy saving performance.
ERCO is now offering new and upgraded versions of its ‘Powercast’ product range powered by cuttingedge LED technology. The additional light distributions and wattages for LED versions make ‘Powercast’ a universal range of efficient lighting tools for the outdoor area. The versatile range is suitable for a variety of purposes, from illumination of objects to the floodlighting of façades. New features include a very narrowbeam narrow beam spot.
‘Tweeter On’ strikes a balance between lighting quality and energy efficiency with Delta Light’s unique Reo LED array technology. This offers the equivalent of 50-watt halogen lamps yet consumes less than 12 watt and delivers a powerful, warm light. Both the recessed and surface versions have an extended lifetime of 50,000 hours for the LED series.
Zumtobel has launched an addition to its ‘Panos Infinity’ LED downlight range. The new line consists of eight units. The ‘Panos Infinity’ range goes to show that premium LED technology has overtaken conventional compact fluorescent lamps in terms of efficiency and lighting quality.
Fabbian (61 2) 9699 7255 fabbian.com.au
ERCO (61 2) 9004 8801 erco.com indesignlive.com
Delta Light deltalight.com Inlite (61 2) 9699 3900 inlite.com.au
Zumtobel (61 2) 8913 5100 zumtobel.com
Boa. Spacious and round. It’s the curves that make Bao appealing on first sight. The swivelling armchair combines the materials: saddle leather on the back, fabric in the seat. Everything has its place. Bao – as familiar as a welcoming embrace. Design: EOOS.
De a ler s in austr a lia: Designcraft: Canberra living edge: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth stylecraft: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Perth Bureau Office Furniture: Melbourne Designfarm: Perth Wa lter KnOll austr a lia: T +61(0)8 81 82 39 25 info@walterknoll.com.au www.walterknoll.de
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As the workplace becomes more open and flexible, acoustic privacy has become a key concern for designers and clients. Woven Image, a leader in acoustics finishes, has teamed up with Indesign to bring you the best in acoustic solutions for the workplace.
woven image + Indesign pHOTOGRAPHY tim robinson styling mandi keighran art direction one8one7
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sound theories
“ Design is intelligence made visible.� Alina Wheeler, brand consultant
woven imageindesign
CLOCKWISE from Left Vitra ‘Alcove’
chair in green from Unifor; Muuto ‘Iskos Berlin’ light in dark grey from Forest for the Trees; Benjamin Hubert for De Vorm ‘Pod’ chair in grey from Great Dane; Climate ‘Soft Boundary Nimbus’ from Schiavello; PROOFF ‘Ear’ chair, available from Living Edge; Bolon ‘Botanic’ in Tilia from The Andrews Group; Apple ‘iPOD’ in white; Fanny Wang headphones in white from Funkear
Woven Image ‘Mura Dune’ tile 542 (black), 908 (cream), 361 (green), 151 (orange), 542, 908, 444(grey); Woven Image EchoPanel ‘Mura Quattro’ 545 (black/white), 108 (yellow/white)
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JAMES CALDER Architect, workplace consultant and teacher, James Calder is changing the way we think about workplace design and strategy
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words JAN HOWLIN portrait Anthony Browell
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SHAPING THE FUTURE New ways of working AND CLOSE DESIGNERCLIENT RELATIONSHIPS are at the heart of each of these three projects by Futurespace
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words MANDI KEIGHRAN photography TYRONE BRANIGAN
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Interior Design FUTURESPACE location SYDNEY | AUS PROJECTs MICROSOFT AUSTRALIA, JONES LANG LASALLE, INTERPUBLIC group
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portfolioindesign 101 he way we work is changing. As technology rapidly advances, we are becoming more flexible and mobile, and new ways of working are developing around this. As the way we work changes, so does the workplace and, in turn, the way designers engage with clients. The physical work environment must, more than ever, respond to specific needs in the culture of an organisation and how that organisation desires to work not only today, but as they grow into the future. Activity Based Working (ABW) is just one response to the new workplace, but is certainly the one creating most interest amongst designers and clients right now. ABW – or any response to changing work practices – has three foci: human resources, technology, and the physical space. As Angela Ferguson, Director of aptly named design practice, Futurespace, says, “An organisation will have their vision, but on top of that there’s the IT strategy, and on top of that there’s the people, then on top of that there’s the fit-out. All of those layers have to go into what their vision is.” The physical space, rather than being a project’s starting point, needs to be its logical conclusion. And, it needs to be flexible enough to grow into the future. Key is the designer’s ability to understand and interpret a client’s culture. “I always feel you need a bit of a psychology degree to do this job,” says Ferguson. “A lot of what we do is understanding individuals and how that reflects on the rest of the business.” Futurespace has always focused on designing spaces that will remain relevant in the future. In particular, it is interested in workplace and new ways of working, so it was only a natural progression when it began to incorporate principles of ABW into its practice. This philosophy came to fruition with the Microsoft Australia project late last year, and was continued in their work for Jones Lang LaSalle. Both these projects show how a practice can approach two projects with the same philosophy (ABW), yet achieve very different outcomes – both entirely suited to the culture and vision of the client. A third fit-out for Interpublic Group, shows how clear understanding of the client’s organisation is essential to create future-proof fit-outs, even outside the framework of complete flexibility.
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MICROSOFT When Microsoft Australia’s Sydney offices, located in North Ryde on Sydney’s north shore for the past 10 years, were facing a lease renewal, it prompted thoughts about the direction the organisation was heading in the next 10 years. It was decided to keep the same space, and embrace the principles of ABW that had been successfully implemented in the Microsoft office in the Netherlands in 2008. Microsoft Australia engaged Futurespace for the design, and the resulting fit-out has reduced the overall space used by 22 per cent (they were able to consolidate two other Sydney sites and still give back one floor to the landlord). “Introducing ABW to Microsoft was a desire from the business’s senior leaders to create an environment where we would be able to collaborate better and create one team,” says Marrianne Rathje, Microsoft Australia’s real estate and facilities area portfolio manager. “We had our own program, so it was important to find a design company that would work with us on that.” Thus, the project began with Futurespace meeting with senior leaders from the company to begin to understand the Microsoft Australia culture. The physical environment was not the starting point, but rather a tool designed to enable people to work in ways that meet not only the existing culture but support the way Microsoft Australia wants to operate in the future. “A big challenge was not coming in with preconveived ideas of what an IT company should be,” says Gavin Harris, Senior Associate at Futurespace and project designer for Microsoft Australia, Jones Lang LaSalle and Interpublic Group. The program that Rathje refers to is Workplace Advantage, a Microsoft-branded version of ABW that was created based on data collected over eight years. Until Microsoft Australia adopted the model, it had only been implemented in the Netherlands. The model is completely mobile, with the offices open for use 24/7 and no assigned space for the company’s Sydney-based employees other than lockers – a very different environment to the previous fit-out designed 10 years ago, which embraced traditional offices and incorporated a lot of storage. “There is some fear
Previous Microsoft’s
‘welcome’ area showcases their new technologies Left Ground floor café, provides different settings, extending the café use to an informal meeting area Below Schematic planning of a typical floor
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In discussion
These three projects showcase the way designers need to work with clients to create flexible and tailored solutions for the workplace. Mandi Keighran talks to the key players.
Angela Ferguson, Director of Futurespace, talks about the future of the workplace and practice.
he name Futurespace was a very deliberate decision. We’ve always been interested in where the physical environment – in particular, the workplace – is going. We really try to engage with the client, to understand who they are, what their business needs are, what they’re trying to achieve and what their culture is like. What I love about what we do is we get to see inside a lot of businesses and design a space that works for them. Currently, financial services and property clients are leading the way with ABW. Property and financial services are always changing, so I think they are more responsive to new things. The client only knows what they already know – they don’t know what is out there and what the future holds. We do really try to push them further in terms of putting a workplace together that’s not just going to be suitable for when they move in, but that will be suitable for their future and their growth, whether it’s ABW or not. I always feel you need a bit of a psychology degree to do this kind of job. A lot of what we do is about understanding individuals and how
that reflects on the rest of the business. A cookie-cutter approach is never going to work. The thing I really like about ABW is that it makes a physical space malleable – it can expand and contract but physically stay the same. I think that’s really exciting. As technology becomes more wireless and our lives become more wrapped up in new technologies, these types of flexible spaces will become more relevant. The cost of doing a new fit-out is about 6-8 per cent of a business’s operational costs, while staff costs are 80 per cent. It doesn’t make sense to focus on something so small when you should be focusing on that 80 per cent. That’s what ABW does. Of course, the business is going to improve and have better functionality because you’ve focused on the majority of the business. ABW does rely on people being grown-ups. Personally, I don’t think people always do behave well in a working environment. But if you give them the right tools they will behave appropriately. That is what ABW does. The kids who are five or six now are naturals with technology. Once they hit the workforce, everything will change. That’s what ABW is heading towards – a workplace that is designed for them that is autonomous and intelligent. They have so much freedom and so little fear for authority. They’re going to demand these kinds of workplaces in 10 or 15 years’ time. I studied interior design because I wanted to design workplaces. I had seen so many awful work environments. It’s such a big area of our lives, and an area in which I feel I can make a difference.
in the built environment, which is the hardest to change. If you bring a grid of systems in – offices, break-out spaces, workstations – you can manoeuvre things within that system. You have to understand a business first, where they want to be in 10 years, and then pull that back to an understanding of what today’s requirements are and also address that. We do that with every project, regardless of whether they want a completely flexible environment or a more traditional workplace. The idea of the office as a workplace is currently being re-evaluated. People are asking whether it can become even smaller, like a hub with various satellites. Banks are a very good place to do this kind of thing, as every branch in the suburbs is a hub in a way, which you can just dive into for work and
business. That multiplies your use of that space, and the key to workplaces in the future is that overlaying of multiple functions on a single space. Technology, property and the physical space can always be resolved. The key to real success for new ways of working is always going to be people and mindset.
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Gavin Harris, Senior Associate at Futurespace, talks about how he works with clients to address their business needs.
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here has always been a desire from Stephen and Angela (the Directors of Futurespace) to create future spaces. So, it was a natural progression to start studying ABW. Of course, to bring that into reality was to find the right projects. Microsoft Australia was the ideal project to start letting us into that area, then Jones Lang Lasalle was another. Interpublic Group is a creative organisation with traditional desk settings but also flexible settings. Every project has to address how a business works.
What normally happens is that a company will have done some of its own research before it comes to us. JLL had done a pilot study in Singapore, where they developed the Work Smart program, and Microsoft had the Work Advantage program. Although they had their own programs, the types of settings and ratios changed when we started working with them. That’s the challenge the designer has – people have a fixed concept of what they want to do with ABW and through a journey that changes. People embrace ABW more and start to understand it. You think you might have it in a box, but it goes in a different direction. When we work with companies that may not want to embrace ABW, we still begin with their projected growth. Then, in the planning and design process, we try to bring in flexibility
portfolioindesign 113 Sean Nicholls, Managing Director at Octogon and Ian Rumsby, Managing Director at Weber Shandwick, talk about their new environment.
Rajiv Nagrath, Regional Director of Corporate Solutions at Jones Lang Lasalle, on change management.
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y role on the project was to develop the WorkSmart strategy and manage change. We developed the model in Singapore in late 2010. We did the Sydney and Canberra offices based on the pilot. The previous office was chaotic and noisy – basically, a cube farm. WorkSmart is a non-assigned desking model based on having a lot of supporting settings so the work place is a better environment. We did timeutilisation studies and we found that our desks were 38 per cent vacant and meeting rooms were 50 per cent vacant. We ran a detailed communications program with our media and marketing, and HR people. We did immense organisation transformation. Our effort in building it was only about 25 per cent, while 75 per cent was on organisational change and technology and records management. People loved it because everyone was engaged in the discussion, and for me, the beauty of it was that everyone came on board. Initially the biggest change management was getting the project team to understand how it works because everyone had reservations. Once we got HR, IT, Marketing and the project management team across the concept, then everyone was on board and it took on a life of its own. We strongly believe there is no other corporate real estate model that can give you flexibility like ABW. The traditional wisdom of staff count equals desk count is completely flawed because you can never predict growth. I’ve not had one person complain. We have the ability to grow, and the space is clean and professional. People are more task-focused because they have to plan their day. It’s a pleasure coming in every morning and selecting a different place to work. There is mentoring and learning from osmosis. It’s a richer experience. It’s quite a buzz. At the flick of a switch, we have completely transformed and energised the culture.
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an Rumsby (IR): The management in each agency played a hands-on role in determining what worked for their respective businesses, people and clients. Each of us sought to define our needs, examined original concepts, and provided tangible and pragmatic insight into our ambitions for the space. Sean Nicholls (SN): I was part of an executive group that worked with the designers to ensure that their creative vision was compatible with our operational needs. We had regular meetings where we discussed both the group requirements for shared areas and our specific requirements on level 4.
IR: One challenge was delivering a space that facilitated collaboration between agencies whilst ensuring that confidentiality on client assignments could be maintained. With a diverse client portfolio that spans everything from government bureaucrats to fashion houses, we needed a space that captured the art of our creativity and the science of our thinking. SN: There were many challenges, not the least of which was the fact that the designers were working with six very different brands that each had very different needs for the space. IR: It is a space of which we can be proud, irrespective of our business interests. A contemporary space has been born of a heritage building, which underpins the dynamic, versatile and inquisitive nature of the environment. My favourite part of the new fit-out is the soaring 19th century atrium and the many different spaces that flow from it. SN: The new fit-out provides a far more efficient use of shared space
than our previous building on William Street. It also provides a great meeting area that has certainly created more allagency gathering opportunities. IR: Royal Naval House is a vibrant building in the midst of a vibrant city landscape. Because it is interesting, it provokes interest – from our clients, our people and those who want to become part of our agency. Business can only grow from such an environment. SN: We are far more accessible in the new space and this can only be a good thing, particularly when it comes to recruiting future employees. While the space ship feel inside the historic building may not be to everyone’s taste, it certainly creates talkability and says creativity.
Opposite The red stair
in the McCann fit-out
This Page Semi-private
work setting at JLL
Marianne Rathje, Real Estate and Facilities Area Portfolio Manager at Microsoft Australia, on creating a flexible environment to foster collaboration.
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icrosoft in the Netherlands was the first site that adopted the Workplace Advantage program. They were the first and only site until Australia. I’ve been doing quite a few of these projects in Europe and I arrived at Microsoft Australia in September 2009, and that’s when we started to pick up on ABW. We started this project in June 2010.
Microsoft Australia has been at this site for 10 years. When the lease started to come up for renewal, that triggered thoughts about what was next. We still have four years in the lease and an opportunity to stay longer if we want. Introducing ABW at Microsoft Australia came from a desire of senior leaders to create an environment so the business would be able to collaborate better. The way we designed the space is very atypical. The whole space is designed to meet the culture that we want to have and the way the business wants to operate in the future. Until we got the fourth floor open, there were some challenges for us to help staff understand what the environment would look like and how they would work in it. We came from a 10-year-old fit-out, where people had offices and lots of storage, to a flexible space with lockers. Some people need a bit more
help to come to terms with new ways of working. HR mainly drove the changemanagement process, and we also had external consultants helping us so we could help anyone who needed help. You will see different types of transparency. Some rooms are very transparent – something we tried to achieve not only with space, but in how we work with our customers and partners. The ground floor is now completely open to our customers. It’s a change that our people needed to become familiar with and mindful of. For example, when talking about confidential information – it’s a part of the change process when you start to open up the space. One of the main challenges was getting the ratio right between different settings because the worst thing in a flexible environment is that someone cannot find the right space to work in. We had to work with the senior leaders and all our people to validate with them our understanding of how Microsoft Australia works today and how we want to work in the future. indesignlive.com
Macquarie Group’s new London headquarters is built
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words Giovanna Dunmall photography Riddle Stag Photogrpahers ARCHITECTs Clive Wilkinson location London | UK PROJECT Macquarie Group at Ropemaker Place
around connectivity to encourage staff interaction
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Previous The atrium Left The central atrium
creates visual connection
opposite Left Staff café opposite Right Break-
out space near the lobby Right Diagram of how space is organised
acquarie Group’s new 217,400 square feet (20,197 square metre) London headquarters occupies six floors of Ropemaker Place, a 20-storey building on the edge of the city, but it doesn’t feel partial or incomplete in any way. From the airy and elegant entrance and reception to the statement staircase that runs through the heart of the bank’s offices, it uses its six floors in a productive, meaningful and innovative manner. The centrepiece and beating heart of the project is undoubtedly the atrium and dramatic, red sculptural staircase (each tread is illuminated by red LED point lights, the undersides are also painted red) that cuts through the six floors and acts as a highly visible and inviting vertical connection between Macquarie Group’s different divisions and floors. It performs several physical, social and psychological functions and does away with the so-called ‘silo effect’ of conventional stacked floors. “The atrium was seen as a major hub where people would meet and collaborate while moving through the building,” says Clive Wilkinson, Director at Clive Wilkinson Architects and design architect the fit-out at Ropemaker Place as well as on Macquarie Group’s Sydney headquarters, One Shelley Street (Indesign
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#41). “It introduces a physical aspect to the workplace, reduces elevator dependency, and makes people feel they are part of a larger Macquarie Group London community that is a vibrant big ‘family’.” The significance of the atrium and staircase cannot be understated. Not only do staff bump into each other on the way to meetings or the many self-service coffee and snack stations dotted around each floor, they also clearly enjoy using the staircase and informal breakout and meeting spaces around it, creating reasons to visit colleagues and other divisions, and frequently opting to use the stairs instead of lifts. Kylie Nelson, Head of Business Services EMEA at Macquarie Group, says lift usage has been reduced by up to 50 per cent, without counting the extra volume of traffic the stair encourages. “I find myself visiting my internal clients on a far more regular basis versus email or phone contact, as it seems easier to walk down a couple of flights of stairs than wait for a lift,” she says. “It’s interesting that such a forward-thinking design can inspire us to revert back to face-to-face conversation versus reliance on technology communications.” It helps that the lift banks were cleverly designed to be hidden away, whereas the staircase is centre-stage and easy to use.
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WELLNESS AT WORK As the importance of human capital IS REALISED, wellness AND THE TOOLS THAT ENABLE IT ARE OF increasing interest in workplace design
Clockwise from bottom right: Vitra ‘maharam polder’ from Unifor; BD ‘lounger’; Casamania ‘Chariot’; Foscarini ‘Birdie’ from Space Furniture; BD ‘Mettsass’; Wilkhahn ‘stitz’; Moroso ‘Paper Planes’ from Hub Furniture; Allsteel ‘relate’ from UCI; MUUTO ‘Around’ from Forest For The Trees; Moroso ‘take a soft line for a walk’ from HUB Furniture; MUUTO ‘E27’ from Forest for the trees; Established & sons ‘Stack’ from Living Edge; Moroso ‘Paper Planes’ from HUB Furniture; Emu ‘Mia’ from Ke-Zu; Arco ‘Sit down’; Flos ‘Piani’ from Euroluce; Wästberg ‘W103’ from Euroluce
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he workplace is hardly business as usual. As words AMANDA STANAWAY the landscape of work and the demographics of our workforces change, businesses are placing increased emphasis on their largest expense: human capital. And, employee wellness and productivity are the primary focus. Wellness in the workplace can be defined in many terms and the most successful businesses address wellness as relative to the individual employee, as well as to the organisation. Organisational wellness, is defined by a collective well-being, which is driven from cultural traits – such as engagement, collaboration, diversity, and fairness – whilst individual wellness relates to an employee’s personal psychological and physical wellbeing. But how has the changing nature of how we work influenced ‘wellness at work’? For most, work was traditionally a place defined by a physical boundary. Now work is an activity, done anywhere at any time. As the boundary of work has become less defined, the physical, mental, economic and social well-being of workers has become more difficult to control. Increased flexibility and a move away from ‘presentism’ and command control office cultures have afforded employees more freedom. Yet despite this, most employees work over 45 hours per week. These new work practices, along with technological advances, international working models, organisational demands and less job security, have resulted in increased psychological pressures and an impact on employee wellness as they attempt to reconcile conflicts between work and family – the elusive work life balance. As the psychological demands of work have changed, most work lives have become less physically active, making employees more prone to illnesses. Most office-based workers, spend 77% of their working day sitting and, despite advances in ergonomic chair design, this has effects on occupant health. A recent University of Sydney and Australian National University research paper outlined that prolonged sitting and inactivity is linked to increased risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer. The change in work demographics has also seen a rise in white collar diseases related to workplace stress and inactivity, such as alcoholism and obesity. While many changes in recent workplace design have been generated out of a push to reduce costs and increase productivity, there are also some organisational and individual well-being benefits. Activity Based Working (ABW) environments – such as Macquarie Group’s One Shelley Street – have alternate settings to respond to variant tasks, increasing occupant movement and addressing some of the issues of inactivity in allocated work environments. They focus on creating spaces fit for purpose, in physical and technological terms and provide adjustable furniture that allows personnel to work in multiple positions: either seated or standing. Although not yet proven, by allowing choice of space and management of one’s own time, agile and flexible working environments have the potential to provide benefits to both the physical and mental health of employees. Wellness, in terms of structured programs and amenity, is largely confined to multi-nationals with appropriate resource and budget. These kinds of organisations build amenity that supports the wellness of their staff and family, including gyms, childcare centres, bike parking, showers and wellness rooms. They also provide programs of preventative health management and subsidy of gym memberships, alternative medicines and food, in an effort to ‘manage’ employee wellness and impact on the culture of absenteeism, which is estimated to cost Australian businesses $26 billion dollars per year. Google is a great exemplar and is consistently named in global best employers lists. The company addresses all aspects of organisational and individual wellness and by doing so impacts significantly on employee engagement, happiness and absentism. They create stimulating and diverse work environments and also provide staff with three meals a day and an array of snacks, coupled with subsidised gym memberships, alternate health programs, weekly massages, organisational-based team sports and, most importantly, allocate an amount of free ‘work’ time per week developing ideas of interest to the individual. Despite facing the same issues, the implementation of wellness programs like these in smaller organisations and or in the design industry are much less rigorous. As we continue on a period of rapid change in the world of ‘work’ and our work practices, design professionals will need to better understand how to measure the impact of workplace design on occupant wellbeing and how workplace design and company culture can be used to assist and then optimise employees’ physical, psychological and social health.
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Amanda Stanaway is a Senior Associate at Woods Bagot.
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pathways to recovery Having addressed the needs of patients, hospitals are now looking at how they perform as workplaces
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words PAUL MCGILLICK
ospitals are extraordinary ecologies – complex networks of interdependent parts. This remains largely invisible to the outsider, summed up by the image of the disappearing trolley through automatically closing double doors on its way to some other world far beyond the purview of everyday life. Hospitals are really complex communications systems, and many of the pressures experienced in them result from breakdowns in the communication network, epitomised by the alarmingly high levels of in-hospital medical errors, which can lead to avoidable deaths. Invariably, these are due to a failure to communicate effectively between caregivers. As in other workplaces, there is always the tendency to form silos, with clinicians focused only on their own function within the system rather than seeing themselves as part of an integrated, teambased ecology. This is now beginning to change as hospitals are increasingly seen as systems with defined clinical pathways involving the interaction of multi-disciplinary teams. This change follows an earlier preoccupation with patient areas in order to promote patient wellbeing – getting away from the common perception that hospitals are grim places where people go to die rather than to get well. Hence, the new emphasis on natural light in hospital buildings, on views to the outside world and nature in particular, more colour, and pleasant, contemplative recreational areas, even artwork. In general terms, this has meant a shift in focus from the work of the doctors and nurses in the hospital, to the patients and their recovery process. But, of course, patients and caregivers are part of the same ecology. For the caregivers, the hospital is a workplace, and it is just as debilitating for them as it is for patients to spend their day in a dark, enclosed space with no connection to the outside world, with unforgiving surfaces, a depressing palette and no place to go for respite. This is not just a threat to morale and well-being, but almost certainly a contributing factor to medical errors and poor performance by staff. In a paper entitled Workplace Re-Engineering in Hospitals, former BVN Principal and now a private consultant specialising in hospital design, Sarita Chand comments that not enough thought has been given to the hospital as a workplace. She points
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Furniture for life.
Living Edge is pleased to introduce PROOFF. For detailed information on the unique PROOFF offering please visit our website at livingedge.com.au or talk to one of our consultants on 1300 132 154.
FROM LEFT: EARCHAIR / PHONEBOX / SITTABLE / NICHE / WORKSOFA
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profiling the life and work of creators around the globe 185 Leo Schouten 190 Luc Kamperman 193 Michael Trudgeon
Founder of PROOFF, Leo Schouten, is providing the tools for new ways of working. indesignlive.com
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n 1996, the Interpolis headquarters in Holland changed the way the workplace is designed and inhabited. Still today, nearly 15 years after it was completed, workplace designers, consultants, and companies seeking cultural change within their organisation, flock to visit and study the pioneering project. It is the birthplace of the Activity Based Working (ABW) style developed by Veldhoen + Company, in which an organisation’s culture, technology and physical space are integrated to support a flexible way of working. Interpolis was also the birthplace of the ‘Ear’ chair by Jurgen Bey for PROOFF, a company founded by Dutch-born Leo Schouten in 2006. With the simple form of its exaggerated sides, or ‘ears’, that offer acoustic and visual privacy for casual meetings, the PROOFF ‘EarChair’ has become an icon of ABW and workplace flexibility.
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The story of PROOFF, however, began long before this – in 1978, when Schouten founded a company, SV Office Interiors, that sold office furniture. He was confronted with just how little interest companies had in creating integrated and innovative workplaces. “I became angry toward the industry,” he says. “It was so very conservative.” It was at this time that Schouten saw an opportunity to offer total advice for the workplace – not only to sell office furniture. The company’s philosophy was embraced by architects and quickly grew. And, in 1996, Schouten was brought in to work on Interpolis. “We understood the transition better [than big companies]. We didn’t offer furniture, we offered the concept translation,” he says. “We understood that if you are talking about ABW, we have to work as a team to see what the fit is, and perhaps develop some special furniture.”
During the project, several designers, including Bey, were selected by the lead architect to create solutions for the space that responded to new ways of working. Bey was asked to consider an alternative to inflexible, small, formal meeting rooms. The ‘EarChair’ was born, and Schouten approached Bey, proposing that it become the first product in a new company, which was PROOFF – an amalgamation of ‘project’ and ‘office’ or ‘progressive office’. “Jurgen is very special,” says Schouten. “He is an artist, a designer and a scientist.” As Veldhoen + Company and the ABW philosophy expanded overseas, PROOFF products began to appear in flexible workspaces worldwide. That is not to say, however, that Schouten hopes that all projects employing the principles of ABW will turn singularly to PROOFF for the solution. “There will never be five or 10
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WORDS MANDI KEIGHRAN
Previous Page Founder
of PROOFF, Leo Schouten, in the iconic ‘EarChair’ This Page PROOFF’s ‘#002 WorkSofa’ by Studio Makkink & Bey encourages flexibility in the workplace and public spaces
“ The new homo sapiens are... really in the global world” Leo Schouten, Prooff
PROOFF products in a project. There will be perhaps two,” he says. The aim is not to simply sell furniture to fill a space, but to offer flexible, multifunctional solutions to specific needs. Hence, the PROOFF range comprises just five products at present. Each product in the range is, however, carefully considered. PROOFF remains relevant because they keep developing carefully researched products for people who, shaped by new technologies and ways of working, inhabit the world in new ways. “The new homo sapiens are not any more in a village,” says Schouten. “They are really in the global world.” He goes on to talk about how the new employee wants to feel free and believes there will be equality in the new workplace. “Management are not in control of what is happening,” he says. “And, it’s fun.” Schouten believes that after 2025, the office will be an informal concept,
a grand café with some meeting rooms, but with the majority of the work being done in other communities or ‘third place’ workspaces – opening the workplace up to knowledge sharing amongst different industries and companies. Particularly in Australia, he feels there are opportunities for and an engagement with new ways of working, and he is soon to launch PROOFF in Australia through Living Edge. Investing in the research side of the company, Schouten has set up the PROOFF laboratory with Bey, a not-forprofit venture that will explore the new landscape of the workplace and produce a free digital library and prototypes – not necessarily for PROOFF collections, but simply to explore new concepts. By 2014, however, Schouten does aim to have another four to six pieces in production for PROOFF. Another project currently underway is ‘Tandem’ – an arranged collaboration
between an architect and a designer to come up with a product in response to a specific brief. “Because there is no client involved,” says Schouten, “they can think more out of the box.” With their focus on contributing to the discussion around new ways of working, rather than on just product, PROOFF is refreshingly unusual in the world of commercial furniture. As Schouten says, “It’s not only about the collection. It is everything behind it that makes it interesting.”
Mandi Keighran is Editor of Indesign magazine. To find out more about Leo Schouten’s ideas on the future of the workplace, visit indesignlive.com/leoschouten
Leo Schouten Lives Rotterdam, The Netherlands Founded SV Office Interiors in 1978 and
PROOFF in 2006
Collaborated with Studio Makkink &
Bey, Axia Design, UNStudio Best known for launching the PROOFF ‘EarChair’ with Jurgen Bey
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ISSUES AND IDEAS AROUND DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE 195 Social Habits in the Digital Age? 200 Leading the way in Australia? 202 The Importance of Boredom? Slow Design in Germany? 204
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sustainable practices indesign
Illustration: One8One7
209 The Sustainable Workplace 212 Setting the Standard 214 Process and Result
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This Page Greenhouse
by Joost in Melbourne (Photo: Tony Gorsevski) Right Vertical garden Opposite A glass made from a recycled beer bottle is part of a range of homewares by Bakker Below Joost Bakker at Greenhouse by Joost
PROCESS AND RESULT At the office of Dutch-born designer Joost Bakker, we discover a sustainable practice producing innovative solutions. arkfield Estate in Armadale, Melbourne, is the headquarters of sustainable architecture and design practice, By Joost. Built in the 1960s, the building is framed by parkland and established Eucalypts. A temporary photocopied notice plastered on one wall leads visitors to a side entrance and up a short flight of stairs to the floor occupied by Dutch-born Joost Bakker and his team, including business partner, Greg Hargraves. The large open-plan office is loosely divided into work areas, a conference area, as well as a lounge. But while there are subtle divisions in the space, including Bakker’s steel shelving systems, it is anything but corporate. Meetings are held in the lounge, or in what could be described as the boardroom. But there are no walls and the boardroom table consists of a plywood top perched on six metal drums. Instead of sleek light fittings, Bakker’s prototypes, which include chairs and rusty steel objects, dangle from the ceiling. By Joost, which started with Bakker installing pot plants in discarded steel shelves, is now a considerably larger enterprise. As well as continuing to supply floral installations to restaurants and cafés, Built by Joost provides sustainable houses and vertical gardens. A new house for chef, Shannon Bennett, is slowly taking shape at Lorne, on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.
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There is also Design by Joost, which entails various permanent and pop-up greenhouse cafés in cities around Australia, with plans for a permanent greenhouse in East London. Products, from sloganemblazoned T-shirts to household items, come under this umbrella. And then there is also Greenhouse Holdings, which encompasses hospitality venues. Whether a recycled beer bottle converted into a range of glass sizes, or an organic T-shirt, with the words ‘Take the Piss’ – referring to one of the features of Joost’s latest Greenhouse, where urine is collected and used for fuel – sustainability is at the root of every part of Bakker’s business. The weekender for Bennett is a case in point. Originally architect-designed, the renowned chef was after a more sustainable approach to his new house. And to Bakker’s surprise, the architects working on the project were keen to incorporate some of his ideas, including magnesium oxide cladding for fire protection. “Greg has been responsible for getting systems in place,” says Bakker of his business partner. “From creating a building arm to the business or speaking at sustainable events around the world.” While Hargraves looks after the management side, Bakker continually questions the way things are done and comes up with ideas to improve the planet. Things
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words STEPHEN CRAFTI
49 that are regularly thrown out by manufacturers are given a new life. Little Creatures, a brewing operation in Western Australia, was throwing out hundreds of empty bottles each day. Now these bottles are sent to glass artist Mark Douglas in Melbourne, and he melts them into cups. In another case, pottery collections are produced locally by Rob and Arlene Parsons from Bendigo clay. Bakker’s latest chairs, which featured in the Greenhouse at Melbourne’s Queensbridge Square for the Melbourne Wine and Food Festival, beautifully illustrate his process. Playfully referred to as ‘Squirt Chairs’, each chair is made from irrigation pipes with a leather seat and backrest. Marco Giusto, who repairs water pumps on Bakker’s property in Monbulk, helped the designer to realise the idea. Bakker also questions the popularity of timber, particularly amongst the younger crop of architects and designers. “With the development of plantation forests, you’re simply creating mono-cultures and eliminating wildlife,” he says. Instead, Bakker prefers to use materials such as Ecoply for his buildings. Plywood, often from disused containers, demonstrates Bakker’s commitment to ‘upcycling’. A crate, used to transport milk bottles to restaurants and cafés around Australia, is just waiting to be re-invented. “Do you know how many thousands of crates are left idle? Doesn’t it make more sense to transport milk in a sealed bucket and return the buckets to the farmers?,” Bakker asks. “And these crates can be re-used for something else, like furniture or storage racks.” Even the simple tape used to seal boxes is questioned by Bakker. Although one box he picks up in his office is made from re-cycled cardboard, it is covered with plastic tape, which is hardly sustainable. “Our products are all made locally and designed to lock together without tape,” says Bakker. “The only tape we use for the seal is made from paper.” It is clear he is concerned as much about the process behind each design, as the finished project.
“ Our products are all made locally” Joost Bakker
Stephen Crafti is Melbourne correspondent for Indesign magazine. By Joost (61 3) 9500 1510 byjoost.com
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One last thing indesign editorial team paul mcgillick, mandi keighran & alicia sciberRas photography tim robinson table and chair made in staron solid surface by Palette Solid Surface & Fabrications
So, we’ve reached the end of Indesign issue #50. Since this special issue was all about workplace – celebrating 50 issues of Indesign covering the evolution of workplace design – we thought we should take this opportunity to introduce you to the editorial team that work on the magazine – from right to left, Paul McGillick, our Editorial Director, Mandi Keighran, our Editor, and Alicia Sciberras, our Editorial Assistant. To help us celebrate, Staron made us a ‘50’ table and chair in the Indesign font – the font was designed by Marcus Piper and Christey Johansson, our talented art directors at one8one7 – from Staron Solid Surface. As you can see, from the first issue that I’m holding above to the 50th issue you’re
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holding in your hands, the design of the magazine has undergone several major revisions – the latest (starting with issue #37) by one8one7. What has remained constant over the years, however, is our focus on bringing you the very best projects and design talent from around the world, and we look forward to continuing that journey with you.
Mandi Keighran, Editor Meet more of the Indesign team and find out how we put this special issue together at indesignlive.com/indesign50
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