Description

Legal workplace offering a variety of flexible work settings to support concentrative work styles as well as teamwork and collaboration.

BVN was engaged in 2002 by Mallesons Stephen Jaques (Mallesons) to design a national strategy for its Sydney and Melbourne offices. The solution is founded on the client’s vision was to create a unique work environment that offers a variety of work settings to support the practice’s people and its core business values of excellence, teamwork, innovation, leadership and collaboration. The challenge for the legal workplace is being able to accommodate high level concentrative work styles whilst promoting teamwork and collaboration.

The Melbourne solution starts with the work setting, which is designed to offer the opportunity for individuals or teams to work in varying degrees of enclosure. ‘Pavilions’ replace individual offices; a demountable frame and wall system with an integrated timber ceiling and services. The pavilions, generally clustered into groups of four or six, form a series of neighbourhoods around the floor linked by the ‘boardwalk’, a combination of worktables, open meeting areas, lounge and garden spaces. Each of the typical floors focuses around the break-out space and a new open timber and precast concrete stair.

The library, reinforced as the cultural hub of Mallesons, is vertically linked with the client floor by a series of voids, allowing participation and views between internal and external cultures. Designed as a ‘business lounge,’ the client floor reflects the core values and aspirations of the firm, communicating a powerful corporate statement to existing and prospective clients, and staff.