Image Credit : Lucas Allen Photography
Project Overview
When Medibank designed its new Melbourne office, it had the opportunity to create a purpose-built workspace to support its innovative program and goal of being the healthiest workplace in Australia. Medibank’s workplace brief was to accommodate a more flexible post-pandemic workforce to cater to the diversity of the team and their different ways of working, including quiet focus areas, collaboration spaces and everything in between.
Medibank engaged us to provide workplace wayfinding signage and environmental graphics across six levels at Melbourne Quarter Tower (MQT), an urban regeneration precinct. The offices were designed to reflect the brand’s purpose, “Better Health for Better Lives”, with health and wellbeing, connection to Country, and universal access for everyone being central to the design.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Dan Pike – Lead Designer
Danielle Churton – Account Director
Todd Dawson – Industrial Design Director
Mark Janetzki – Creative Director
Project Brief
Medibank’s workplace brief was to accommodate a more flexible post-pandemic workforce with varying levels of focus, from calm to active areas, and solo to collaborative project spaces.
Diadem responded with a holistic wayfinding strategy that would support all users in navigation and movement around the site, with a central theme of connection, utilising the architect’s bold central stairway as the project’s backbone. This would subtly characterise the workplace as an experience beyond working from home, creating a place of collaboration and offering varying levels of concentration to aid project tasks.
Project Innovation/Need
Accessibility is at the forefront of our approach, and designing for a neurodiverse workforce was a challenge we rose to. The architects responded to this need by providing a more subdued and calmer environment in the lower levels and increasing the activation and stimulation moving up to the higher levels.
Colour played a key role in this journey. With the goal of providing intuitive wayfinding to minimise the need for signs, we devised a colour palette that responded to these changing conditions, and used this consistently throughout, beginning in the lift lobbies and into the levels, supporting the central stair journey with large wayfinding totems to orient the user with a floor map and directory.
Collaboration across the project team was key to Medibank’s successful outcomes, working with the client, design team, and builder to ensure the signage integrated seamlessly into the right locations. One example was documenting precise locations of the six-wayfinding totems at a slightly different angle and location to avoid services in the floor and ceiling during installation.
While Medibank engaged with Indigenous consultants to determine the naming strategy for the meeting rooms, we developed the system for the neighbourhoods (work zones) on each level. Named after local Australian flora, we determined these sign types should be integrated into feature columns. In collaboration with the architect, we adapted the batten system to ensure neighbourhood identifiers nestled naturally into the timber battening. Open and clear communication enabled all of these integrated outcomes.
Design Challenge
How do we get people to the front door when we have little influence on the precinct wayfinding content and design?
By considering Medibank’s user journey within a complex commercial tower environment, Diadem was able to advocate for our client, who then negotiated additional branding with the landlord.
We focused on enhancing logical wayfinding and branding at the ground floor and Sky Park entries to promote the journey to Medibank’s front doors. We suggested solutions that prioritised clarity, accessibility, and brand presence for an intuitive experience for Medibank’s team and visitors alike.
Effectiveness
The success of the project was measured by the positive feedback from Medibank employees and the seamless integration of the wayfinding strategy with the interior design. The new workplace environment has fostered collaboration, supported health and connection, and enriched the culture for Medibank’s employees.
It is a special place to visit, let alone work from, and we were lucky to have played a part within the broader design and project team. It’s the dappling light over dwell areas, the surprising moments when you turn a corner or descend the stairs, as the landscape in all its colour and texture is unveiled before you. The way the interiors, wayfinding, and art all align harmoniously is a testament to the calibre of people who drove this project and the open, honest collaboration from start to finish. Everyone wanted this to go beyond expectations, and it did.
Graphic Design - Environmental
This award celebrates creativity and innovation in the intersection of communication design and the built environment, and is concerned with the visual aspects of wayfinding, communication identity and brands, information design and shaping the idea of place. Consideration given to clarity of communication and the matching of information style to audience.
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