Town planning

In an urban environment, the hustle and bustle of the street provides an informal environment for people to meet and communities to interact.

This concept of the street as an informal meeting place informed Bligh Voller Nield's design of law firm Baker & McKenzie's offices. Project director Abbie Galvin says the street design with team and support facilities clustered down either side helps foster a sense of community.

"We treated the design of the floors like an urban city grid, and created a spine that acts like a main street through the central core of the building.

"The areas on either side, including cafes, meeting rooms and satellite libraries, allow the workplace community to develop, and facilitate informal discussion and interaction," she says.

Bligh Voller Nield was originally engaged to help find new premises for Baker & McKenzie. After looking at several new properties, they decided to stay in the same building in the Circular Quay precinct.

"It was a favourite for the views and for its proximity to the ferry," Galvin says.

They'd never had the opportunity to start afresh with the office design, so the work spaces were badly arranged and inefficient.

"The work spaces were no longer relevant there were smoked glass walls, solid timber doors into offices, storage archive boxes everywhere, and the light penetration into the centre was terrible," Galvin says.

Bligh Voller Nield held briefings and discussions with all sectors of the firm from first-year graduates to senior partners to establish what was important for the new design.

They decided the most important principles were to create a team-based and flexible environment, to ensure visibility across the workplace, to maximise daylight and to eliminate hierarchies.

A dynamic timber screen acts as a clear visual device to lead visitors from the lift lobby into the main reception area on the client floor. The transparency of the screen reflects the firm's aspirations to move from an enclosed office environment to one that is transparent and welcoming. The client floor provides a good mix of meeting spaces for client meetings.

The eight working floors all use the street concept, which incorporates the lift lobby and visually connects the two sides of the building. Staff cafes are located at the north end of each street, and open meeting areas at the south.

"The cafes all have views of the Opera House a prime spot that would quite often have been occupied by a senior partner's office," Galvin says.

Separate legal offices were still required by the firm, but extensive use of glass means lawyers can still see one another. This also allows light to penetrate through the perimeter offices into the central core offices.

All offices are the same size, and have modular workstations and storage components. This dissolves traditional hierarchies and allows movement between offices as project teams reconfigure.

Story by: Trendsideas