There are even colour-coded streets' running across the upper five levels of the head office's linking element. They provide speedy orientation in the vast building and also bring a feeling of localisation, even intimacy to the disparate areas.
The double height atrium, or town square, features a front wall of glazing, giving it a strong visual connection with the exterior piazza in front of it. The overall effect is a welcoming one, making light of the overall scale.
The entire building sits on columns, linked by glass, giving the structure a sense of floating and again softening its build forms. This all means that the building encourages approachability a cafe on the ground floor of the north wing, for example, is open to the public as well as staff to wander into.
Elsewhere in the atrium and throughout the head office, there are other shared facilities such as meeting, conferencing and breakout spaces.
The building is as forward-looking in its environmental emphasis as it is in the accommodationof its staff. To this end, government reports have cited it as a flagship for Energy Sustainable Development. Several individual architectural approaches were taken.
"Building on a south-to-north orientation reduced exposure to the sun's rays," says Rodgers. "The facades, broken down into window grids, use high-efficiency, solar-treated lowE glazing."