Asia & The Gulf Commercial Design Trends Asia Commercial Design Vol. 30/9 | Page 12

Project
Charter Hall office

Location:
No 1 Martin Place, Sydney

Architect:
BVN Donovan Hill Architecture

SEA CHANGE
An open, transparent office with a floating glass box meeting room and elevated deck
reinforces the huge cultural change that has transformed this workplace

When you are in the commercial property
business, you are in a prime position to notice
major trends in the workplace. And so it was for
Charter Hall, an Australian company with an office,
retail and industrial property portfolio in excess of
$11 billion.
Joint managing director David Southon says
the company was well aware of the move towards
activity-based working and investigated the potential for its new Sydney office at No 1 Martin Place.
“Although our former building had an open-plan
workplace, we were operating over a number of
levels that were not well connected,” Southon says.

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“There was also no link between workstations and
the more public parts of the office. It didn’t help
that the building was old and tired and did not suit
our long-term aspirations.”
The company commissioned activity-based work
experts at Veldhoen + Company to consult on possibilities for the Charter Hall workplace, and chose
to implement such a model in its new premises,
designed