I’m temping at this office in the inner north this week, and I just want to express that I’m feeling pretty envious of the people who work here on the regular. It’s basically the most hectic workspace I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve seen a few commercial design gems in my time. Like, it’s hard to convey in words how rad it is, but I’ll have a crack.
It’s a big old former warehouse, converted to retain the industrial vibe while rendering it highly functional as an office in terms of climate, tech, division of space and the like. This is seriously innovative office design, Melbourne. In the centre of this massive, open space is what can best be described as a pyramid with a number of levels, each housing different kinds of weird, modular workstations that staff can move between.
In fact, they rotate stations on a time-based roster, which sounds annoying at first but actually makes sense from an ergonomic perspective, with there being a strong argument these days for regularly changing your sitting/standing position while doing sedentary work. The array of custom furnishing solutions seem sort of outrageous at a glance, but working on different kinds of office furniture throughout the day becomes second nature pretty quickly.
I’ll tell you what – my back definitely feels better at the end of the day than it does after exposure to a traditional, even high-end, office fitout. Melbourne office managers, take note if you’re looking to raise morale. Get your people moving up, down and around a playful structure in the centre of funky warehouse. Simple!
Yeah, I know. The design is kind of a one-off, and most businesses don’t have the space, financial resources or general wherewithal to put together something like this. And even if they did have those things, the outcome would probably take on a completely different form.
I guess the coolest thing about this piece of interior design is that it’s totally customised to the needs of the workspace and the people who use it, and that’s going to differ from business to business.