Macquarie Group’s expansion in Sydney led to the need to accommodate 3,000 people in a new building. Clive Wilkinson Architects were attracted by the challenge of working with a forward-thinking bank. The design approach was to open up the 10-story, 330,000 SF building vertically and activate the Atrium to showcase a transparent workplace.
Working in synchronicity with Woods Bagot, as executive architect, and Fitzpatrick + Partners, as architect for the base building, Clive Wilkinson Architects were able to create a kind of vertical Greek village of the future. Each floor was divided into 5 neighborhoods of approximately 100 people. Within the office floors, the architects designed Plazas with themes based on ancient collaboration typologies: the dining table, the library, the garden, the tree house, the playroom, and the coffee house. The innovative steel diagrid structure of the exterior was extended internally to create a unified building identity.
The building exceeds the highest levels of Green Star or LEED efficiency, benefiting from radical technologies like harbor water cooling, chilled beams and zone controlled lighting. A large percentage of furniture was adapted and re-used from their previous space, but most significantly, the building allows a huge saving in resource efficiency, real estate and operating costs.
