Jeremy Myerson discovers that Australia is leading the way in pioneering office design, buoyed up by the big players in the country’s financial-services sector

That famous quip about Australia attributed to Clive James – that it has gone from barbarism to hedonism without the intervening period of civilisation – clearly does not apply to its workplace design. Thanks to a booming financial-services industry that has made it highly competitive for companies looking to attract the right calibre of people, Australia has some of the most civilised offices around.

As the global workplace explores themes related to neighbourhood and community – what Franklin Becker has called the “eco-system of the office” – architects and designers Down Under can rightly claim to be at the forefront of the field. And the key driver is the banking sector.

Architect and academic Scott Drake, who runs a masters programme in workplace planning and design at the University of Melbourne, says: “Australia is heavily orientated towards banking. There are four banks in the top ten on the Australian stock market. It is a big, important industry, competing in a global marketplace, and there is a tremendous pressure to recruit premium staff.”

So forget about a boring box-shaped office that is deserted by Friday afternoon as the Aussies head for the beach, surfboard in hand. Think instead of colourful campuses, inspiring atria and smart workplace strategies to retain staff and use space effectively. Over the past couple of years, several enterprising schemes have sprung up in Sydney and Melbourne, funded by the financial-services sector, that stand comparison with the world’s best.

Aggressive, but not unfriendly, competition between a clutch of top Australian architectural practices has further served to drive up standards. The new National Australia Bank campus in Melbourne Docklands and Deutsche Bank offices in Sir Norman Foster’s new Sydney skyscraper, both designed by Bligh Voller Nield, and Westpac’s new workplace in Sydney, jointly developed by Hassell and Geyer, with strategic briefing by DEGW, all show distinct characteristics that reflect an emerging Australian language in office design, while belonging to the global family.

Insiders suggest, however, that the renaissance in workplace design in Australia’s financial-services sector wouldn’t have happened in the same way without a landmark project completed eight years ago. In the late-1990s, MLC Insurance, the financial-services arm of Lend Lease, remodelled its offices in north Sydney, where it had been based since 1957, in search of a more flexible work environment.

Out went stacked, old-styled scientific management, MLC Campus was born – a vertical community for 1,300 staff, with workplaces unified by a stairway cutting through 12 levels to encourage greater staff interaction. MLC’s boss Peter Scott described the project as “not so much a building renovation, as a renovation of a business”. Bligh Voller Nield worked on the 22,000 sq m project with DEGW, injecting colour, pace and variety into every floor, so that such features as a “Zen den”, “beach”, “studio” and “town square” would become recognisable landmarks in the building.

Critically, the project director was Rosemary Kirkby, a fearless, well-organised dynamo of a campaigner for better workplace design who would go on to direct National Australia Bank’s recent move to Melbourne Docklands after the bank acquired MLC. Bligh Voller Nield’s design team, led by James Grose, created the most amenable of corporate facilities in a rough-edged district of the city once considered out of bounds to corporate companies.

From the jaunty Mondrian-style coloured plates on the exterior to the two airy central atria with bridges, this exceptional scheme offers a variety of work settings and social spaces overlooking water. The building also reflects advances in sustainability, with mixed-mode ventilation, internal landscaping and low energy consumption.

Grose describes the project as reorganising “the primacy of the human over the primacy of the corporation”. Kirkby says it was a cultural, as well as a geographical, departure for traditional bank NAB, inspired by its acquisition of the more progressive MLC. Certainly, one can see the giant stairway strategy of MLC Campus repeated in Westpac Place, which has one linking 27 of the project’s 32 floors. Hassell chairman Ken Maher, who acted as design director on the Westpac project, says that at each point on the stairway, “you can see three floors up and three floors down”. This creates an agreeable sense of openness and community.

Westpac’s new office is a big scheme in anyone’s book – 5,000 people occupy 74,000sq m of space. But what is surprising is the intimacy and variety of many of the spaces, despite the overall scale. Maher says the emaphasis of the project is not on repeating floor-plates, but on “breaking up a continuous experience”.

The diversity is achieved by planning the floors as “quarters” – as in a city. Four urban plans are utilised: a New York-style grid; a radial plan reflecting the formal Parisian model; a “sinuous” plan, as seen in river cities; and an organic plan dating back to medieval towns. Despite there being one standard “steel-case” workstation for the project, there is freshness on every floor. Café destinations dotted throughout the building add to the atmosphere of the townscape, as do observations and chill-out zones.

Detailed research and planning created the model for Westpac’s new office. Culture, community, agility and diversity were identified early on as strategic objectives, and the design approach flowed from there. Hassell is better known for transportation projects – but the practice adapted its thinking to the challenge of workplace interior design at Westpac Place in admirable fashion.

One senses that the ante has been upped significantly over the past year in terms of the interior, whereas previously the building ruled the roost. The reason is not hard to detect. As Doug Hall, senior manager at Deutsche Bank, says: “There is no way you can hire premium people in dire surroundings.”

Deutsche Bank has taken nine column-free levels of Foster’s 38 storey tower in Sydney as anchor tenant. The 12,600sq m of space houses the bank’s global markets trading floors as well as IT, operational support, conference and meeting facilities. The average age of the 750 staff is 33 and this demographic is reflected in the language of the scheme, which is brisk, bright and polished.

Bligh Voller Nield principals Bill Dowzer and Abbie Galvin, who led the project, admit that Deutsche Bank has none of the relaxed bonhomie or sustainable community spirit of MLC Campus, NAB’s scheme in Melbourne Docklands or even Westpac Place. Instead, there is a tough-minded, tightly choreographed narrative based on colour, surface, light, transparency and photographic imagery.

Two glass floors incised into the floor-plates link the nine floors. Glass-clad meeting rooms are presented as coloured pavilions offering depth and reflections. This is no place for soft sofas. This is an office for hard, fast decision-making.

Hanging gardens proposed for the upper levels of the super-structure that defines Foster’s Deutsche Bank tower were axed by the developer on the grounds of cost. But little else has been stripped bare on the Australian workplace design scene, which now has a richness of office interiors to rival other work centres.

At the University of Melbourne, Drake plans to attract mid-career professionals to his masters programme in workplace planning and design. The influential Rosemary Kirkby, who started the ball rolling with MLC Campus, is lending her authority to the initiative as an associate professor. She is also putting the finishing touches to another financial-services project in Sydney for Challenger Financial.

As Australian architects and designers eagerly grasp the opportunities, we can expect more great things to come. Now what would Clive James have to say about that?