Project Overview

Lendlease are a leading international property and infrastructure group. The project portfolio span key sectors including development, construction, communities and healthcare development.

In addition, Lendlease are proud industry leaders in the design and build of sustainable, innovative and vibrant city places which create positive environmental and social impacts.

Victoria Harbour is Lendlease’s largest, and oldest Urban Regeneration project. A 24ha masterplan inclusive of commercial, retail, civic and residential assets which commenced development in 2001 and due for completion in 2025.

Less than 15 years into development, Victoria Harbour holds the crown for the greenest precinct in the southern hemisphere, with more green-star rated buildings per square kilometre than any other community in Australia.

It has also become an economic hub and community in its own right: it’s home to ANZ’s global headquarters along with approximately 15,000 workers, 4,500 residents and more than 80 retail outlets.
Victoria Harbour is acknowledged as one of Lendlease’s best examples of large scale, sustainable urban development.

The final portion of the precinct, Collins Wharf – comprised of 1,500 dwellings over five apartment buildings - would see-out the delivery of Victoria Harbour.

The release of Collins Wharf was recognised as a pivotal moment in Victoria Harbours development and thus required an intelligent and innovative approach to the traditional sales platform.

Organisation

Lendlease

 

Team

• Lendlease – design, building, project management
• Techne – interior architect
• Lumicom – audio visual consultant
• Porter Models – scale models
• Arup – green star consultant
• Ryan McNaught aka ‘The Brick Man’ – Lego scale model & play area

Project Brief

Lendlease’s vision was to create a state-of-the-art physical sales space that would deliver the most superior apartments customer experience in Australia.

The specific requirements were to design and develop a space that catered to the full apartment customer journey (from prospect to post-settlement, community member to repeat purchaser) all while demonstrating Lendlease’s commitment to quality, sustainability, innovation and global capability.

The design needed to be responsive to the defined apartment customer segments and adequately communicate the Lendlease global vision, the local Victoria Harbour story, the latest apartment release.

It was envisaged that the sales space would include invisible zones to facilitate the customer journey and functional requirements of the business.

Functions:
- Welcoming reception area
- Apartment release information and marketing collateral
- Tangible display of Lendlease design and building quality
- Communicate Victoria Harbour history and vision
- Tell the Lendlease story including company history, brand vision, track record, capability
- Community and stakeholder engagement (eg. Ministerial events, pre-settlement customer events, first home buyer information events, third party agent engagement events)
- Agile working/meeting spaces to replace the traditional ‘closing room’ and allow for third party agents to work and meet prospects in the centre
- Adaptability to act as the Lendlease global sales floor
- Design to facilitate full customer lifecycle from making the first enquiry through to picking up keys for their new apartment
- Dedicated innovation lab space
- Children’s play area

Project Innovation/Need

“Lendlease delivers more than just apartment buildings – we create the best city living. Smart thinking about how we design and build apartments helps foster a sense of belonging and community. Through our expertise in developing the best urban places, combining apartment buildings, retail and workplaces, we help people to live better within thriving, authentic urban places – and with work and play nearby.” Lendlease apartments vision.

The task was to design and deliver a memorable customer experience built on the Lendlease apartments vision of creating the best spaces for modern urban living.

Lendlease wanted to empower its customers with a combination of overt and passive touchpoints housed in an approachable yet technology driven environment.

The design response needed to take this somewhat paradoxical brief and deliver a hyper-modern office space that combined intuitive, embedded technology, showcase Lendlease vision and capabilities through the lens of a physical space that caters, first and foremost, to the customer experience.

Design Challenge

The retail shell earmarked for the Victoria Harbour Sales & Leasing Centre posed equal amount of design challenges, as design advantages.
A triangular space with dual frontages to both Bourke Street and Collins Street and vacuous ceiling height.
This spaces posed a raft of functional challenges such as;
- The floor to (exaggerated) ceiling height glazing meant abundant natural day light but also created a space that felt hollow and was hard to maintain a consistent comfortable temperature.
- Dual street frontages provided ease of pedestrian access but created a challenge to ensuring a consistent customer journey irrespective of the entrance used.
- Triangular design, whilst spectacularly unconventional and memorable proved a challenge to design a seamless customer path.
This unconventional space was tasked to deliver upon the following requirements;
• Deliver space efficiency
• Set a new industry benchmark
• Design a space that showcases the Victoria Harbour project alongside the macro Lendlease vision
• Embrace embedded technology
• Provide flexibility
• Showcase innovation
• Cater to agile working methods
• Provision as a space to hold events
• Welcoming environment
• Display tangible examples of design and building quality standards
• Provide for necessities of apartment sales and marketing
• Suite the full apartment customer lifecycle

User Experience

Designed for the future, the centre is champions innovation with interactive and immersive features that challenge current notion of a sales centre.
- Welcome station with sunken work desk and can function as a bar or counter at events.
- 20 screen media wall showcases company and project history. At events the screens can mirror a monitor.
- Impressive Barrisol ceiling installation affects the impression of the ceiling height and provides element of interactivity through programmed light demonstrations.
- Interactive masterplan fuses a standard scale model design with responsive visual effects via a touch-monitor
- Two agile work and meeting spaces provide semi-privacy for sensitive discussions and functions as a work space with built in GPO and data points.
- Sales totems provide for the display of three different apartment projects and each include a ledge for an architectural model, pull-out draws for material boards, shelf for flip books and a monitor playing the marketing video.
- An interactive children’s zone includes a play area below a scale model of Collins Wharf master plan.
- Two full-scale prototype modules (a bathroom and a kitchen) provide a tangible example of Lendlease quality and provide for an interactive sales experience.
- A range of standing monitors collectively communicate the Lendlease story. Each monitor plays content informing customers of the company history, areas of expertise, global experience and more.
- A full scale Smart Apartment fills the innovation zone. this prototype model aims to showcase Lendlease design and innovation.