Key Dates
Image Credit : Alicia Taylor Photography
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Architectus, COX Architecture and Hecker Guthrie
Project Overview
Macquarie’s global headquarters in Sydney’s Martin Place is a dynamic, light-filled workplace designed for community, collaboration, and sustainability. Featuring advanced technology, wellbeing facilities, and amenities such as an art gallery and hospitality floor, it offers an adaptable, connected and collaborative environment that enhances the experience of both employees and guests.
Team
Architectus Lead Interior Design Cox Architecture Interior Design and Furniture Hecker Guthrie Interior Design Hospitality Level 10 Johnson Pilton Walker Base Building Architect Balarinji Indigenous Engagement Aspect Studios Landscape Design Yerrabingin Landscape Design Lendlease Builder Arup Structural Engineer SLR Acoustic Engineer WSP AV Engineer WSCE Hydraulics & Fire Services Engineer Steensen Varming Lighting Design Rider Levett Bucknall Quantity Surveyor The Mack Group Commercial Kitchen Designer Jensen Hughes Accessibility Consultant McKenzie Group Building Certifier Rapt Studio UX Strategy
Project Brief
The functional performance was carefully assessed against the brief, with input from stakeholders during several design sprints. The workplace includes dedicated spaces such as an art gallery, business lounge, multicamera broadcast studio, and a hospitality floor. Typical floors were designed to be flexible to adapt to business needs evolving over time.
The new building provides Macquarie with an innovative, purposeful, and inspiring environment, that supports their dynamic workforce. Advanced technology, including a fully integrated 5G network, facilitates a flexible work-from-anywhere model. The workplace design supports the future growth, evolution and globally connected culture of Macquarie’s businesses and clients.
Project Innovation/Need
All design decisions across the project were rigorously assessed to provide Macquarie with a purposeful environment that provides long term flexibility. A unique typical floor plan was developed to deliver work floors containing a 25% fixed zone – including meeting spaces that promote collaboration, built form and infrastructure, with the remaining 75% a flexible zone that was scenario tested to adapt across all business units, creating ultimate flexibility over time.
Materials strategies were equally robust, with a reductive palette of locally sourced new and recycled materials, the reuse of furniture from other offices, a design honouring the base building architecture, as well as minimal overcladding throughout. Designed to provide a sense that the ‘landscape was first, building second’, the aesthetic drivers were grounded in Designing with Country and sustainability principles.
The project is an example of a people-first, efficient and pared-back environment, designed to meet the diverse needs of Macquarie’s people and businesses.
Design Challenge
The fitout design commenced in early 2019, and was then delivered during Covid-19 lockdowns and unprecedented rainfalls.
With an aspiration of achieving a future-focused, world class headquarters for Macquarie Group, our project team were posed with the challenge of identifying the key strategies that would future-proof the fitout’s design and provide the client with the confidence that the infrastructure and amenity designed would support a flexible workforce.
The solution to this challenge was multifaceted. At a macro scale, the established building stack was analysed, establishing the requirement to collocate all major infrastructure, shared amenity and public spaces within the building’s podium. This would give Macquarie the flexibility to occupy as many of the mid-rise and high-rise floors it required. Plant rooms, conferencing facilities, a hospitality floor, guest relations spaces, a commercial kitchen and multicamera broadcast studio, were also located within the building.
When designing typical workfloors, the decision to accommodate all built architecture including social spaces, meeting rooms, storage, comms rooms and kitchens within 25% of the floorplate, allowed Macquarie the time and flexibility to engage with their businesses closer to project completion. This enabled the development of the 75% flexible zone of each floor, informed by each businesses’ workstyles, specific furniture requirements and critical planning adjacencies.
Sustainability
Sustainability was a core tenet of the project, which achieved a 6 Star Green Star Design rating and targets net-zero emissions in normal operations. Design decisions reflect a commitment to sustainability, focusing on energy and material efficiency with a limited materials palette. Sustainable procurement principles were adopted for furniture, including significant reuse from previous sites. The design approach also sought to minimise use of internal fit out materials, such as the absence of internal ceilings within the workplace. The use of locally sourced, recycled materials reduced embodied carbon within the fit out, while providing potential for disassembly and material reuse. Use of modular joinery for kitchen zones for all typical floors, as well as the use of demountable meeting pod systems, supports ongoing flexibility and sustainability. The building features a 100% electric design in normal operations, automated resource-efficient systems, and extensive biophilic elements, showcasing a comprehensive approach to environmental stewardship.
Interior Design - Corporate
This award celebrates innovative and creative building interiors, with consideration given to space creation and planning, furnishings, finishes, aesthetic presentation and functionality. Consideration also given to space allocation, traffic flow, building services, lighting, fixtures, flooring, colours, furnishings and surface finishes.
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