One Shelley Street Macquarie Group Sydney Building, Regent Street Design, Property
One Shelley Street: Macquarie Group Sydney Offices
One Shelley Street Sydney Building – design by Clive Wilkinson Architects / Woods Bagot
9 Aug 2010
One Shelley Street – Macquarie Group Sydney
Interiors : Fit Out – Offices
Architects: Clive Wilkinson Architects / Woods Bagot
Clive Wilkinson Architects, United States of America / Woods Bagot, Australia
Photographs : Shannon McGrath
The One Shelley Street vision was to reframe the requirements and performance of the 21st Century office. On behalf of the Macquarie Group, Clive Wilkinson Architects, as design architect and Woods Bagot as executive architect, implemented a radical, large-scale workplace design that leverages mobility, transparency, multiple tailor-made work settings, destination work plazas, follow-me technology, and carbon neutral systems. The result is part space station, part cathedral, and part vertical Greek village.
Arguably one of the most advanced workplaces of recent years, Macquarie Group, Woods Bagot and Clive Wilkinson Architects have together revolutionised workplace design typologies with 33,000 m2 of office space, housed in two low scale buildings: with a central atrium, public, retail and commercial space within the base floor to complement Macquarie Group’s adoption of a new collaborative style: Activity-Based Working (ABW), a flexible work platform developed by Dutch consultant Veldhoen & Co.
First the ten-story atrium was opened and animated with 26 ‘meeting pods’, as a kind of celebration of collaboration, allowing clear lines of sight through the financial business.
Numerous work zones surround the atrium, designed to house 100 employees each in adaptable neighbourhoods. An arterial staircase links the zones forming a ‘Meeting Tree’, emblematic of the interconnectedness of Macquarie’s client relationships. The Main Street on Level 1 offers communal spaces that are highly conducive to corporate and philanthropic events and includes a café and dining areas.
Within the office floors ‘Plazas’ were modelled after collaboration typologies—the Dining Room, Garden, Tree House, Playroom, and Coffee House, where cross-pollination among business groups is encouraged through spontaneous encounters.
One Shelley Street has been designed to the highest levels of Green Star or LEED efficiency, using revolutionary technologies like harbour water cooling, chilled beams and zone controlled lighting. Overall energy consumption has been reduced by 50%. The interior staircase, linking the various neighbourhoods, has reduced the use of the elevators by 50%.
There has been a 78% reduction in paper storage needs and a 53% reduction in printing paper. Mail is scanned and distributed electronically, decreasing the need for storage. Employees have lockers in which to store personal items, and are deterred from creating paper waste.
The business benefit of ABW is the elimination of ‘churn’—the cost of moving groups and redefining spaces. Investing now meant savings in the future and Macquarie is providing an unmatched quality of life for its employees—benefiting clients, investors, shareholders and the environment.
Although activity-based work environments are not yet the norm, the acceptance level among Macquarie’s 3,300 people in an activity based working environment has soared beyond initial anticipation. Nearly 55% change their workspaces each day, and 77% are in favour of the freedom to do so.
There has been an abandonment of stale business practices that are traditionally incubators of complacency. One Shelley Street is positioned to be a trailblazer for the new global sustainable office building.
One Shelley Street Sydney images / infroamtion from Woods Bagot
Woods Bagot Architects
Location: One Shelley Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
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