VISION 34 — DIRECT TRANSMISSION
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Situated on a high-visibility site on busy Wellington Road , Mulgrave , Mazda ’ s home is a grand , hard-working storefront as prism to a whole new workplace culture . Cox Architecture ’ s Melbourne principal Patrick Ness met with Vision ’ s Peter Hyatt to discuss the project as an automotive sentinel :
What does sitting on the edge of often fast-moving highway traffic demand of this design ? It ’ s partly about passing traffic and making sure people are aware of the Mazda brand . It ’ s also about making sure we represented Mazda in their building . There are two ambitions in this project . The basic one was to relocate out of sub-standard premises , of which they were on different floors and weren ’ t one organisation . They were many different groups . The second ambition was an idea of one Mazda being able to bring together their various departments into a complete environment .
And what about the iconography of architecture as a way to be viewed and recalled ? The question about being noticed in architecture is really about what you are being noticed for . Imagery and icons that don ’ t deliver cultural change and not the relevant apparatus for a new century are just image-making . The purpose of being noticed is about making sure that a new workplace culture , efficiencies , beauty , practicality , daring structure and materials are all linked . They ’ re the reasons architecture should be known for , it ’ s not false icons that are simply images .
It is so different as a workplace of technical excellence to everything else around . When you look at the suburban typology of a workplace , it ’ s essentially decorated with fairly unremarkable buildings really lost in the last century . I think what ’ s so pleasing about this is we ’ ve reinvented what it means to work in a location like this , with highly flexible buildings filled with delight and light . It changes the culture of an organisation . That ' s really for me the key thing that ’ s happened here . The architecture ’ s an enabler of that . It ' s not the end .
Permeable mesh screens signal the foot traffic ramps connecting first level work spaces hallmarked by soaring volumes .