This is the last of my four blogs about the Corenet Auckland Symposium – Location, Location, Location that I attended in June.
Managing Director of Gensler in Sydney, Simon Trude, spoke about a project where there aim was to create a high quality collaborative destination space in the lobby of a Sydney high-rise building.
The space, named ‘The Porter’, includes the latest collaborative settings and technology tools to support all types of individual and interactive work. The Porter was developed collaboratively between Haworth and the building owner, Lend Lease.
Simon talked about the evolution of the modern office from a landlord’s perspective as being:
- Office 1.0 – building value based on efficiency
- Office 2.0 – building value based on flexibility
- Office 3.0 – building value based on tenant retention
Lend Lease wanted to rejuvenate a poorly performing retail space on the ground floor of one of their premium buildings at 1 O’Connell Street. They decided to use it to provide additional value to the tenants. Haworth wanted to use the space to test how their furniture could support new ways of working in a ‘live lab’.
For Lend Lease, their ‘PLACE’ was a poorly performing area in a 35-storey building. Converting this place into The Porter re-purposed the area and aims to serve as a tool to retain tenants. Having only recently opened in June 2014, it will be interesting to watch how it performs for both Haworth and Lend Lease.
If you are interested, you can read more about The Porter Corenet Auckland Symposium 4.
