AFL
Football is a dynamic game that captures the hearts, minds and passions of much of the sporting public in Australia. Our client, AFL NSW/ACT, needed an office fit out that was equal to the task of reflecting the brand’s core values whilst encouraging teamwork, movement, variety and flexibility within the Moore Park offices. Whilst the conventional components would need to be in place (meeting rooms, reception, self-catering facilities), we were able to free the teams from formidable and familiar foes to interactivity, silos and closed areas, by opening things up.
Location: Moore Park, NSW | Size: 600m2
Build completion: February 2019
workplace
Where activity is key
and change is a constant
The reception area, sporting the backlit logo, feeds through to a breakout area that invites informal meetings, social gatherings in front of the big screen and provides some distance from the main work area. This is where activity-based working seems to flourish as team members can freely interact, collaborate or take advantage of quiet areas when required.
Complementing the airiness afforded by the wall length windows, indoor plants bring an added freshness to each of the main areas as the company embraces activity, adaptability and wellbeing. A wonderful collaboration allowing the whole team to work hard and play hard. Play on!
“Somewhere and something for the whole team”
Solution
behind the design
Australian Rules Football or ‘Footy’ is a team game that requires teammates with specific role to work in an integrated way, covering lots of ground across, sometime across a number of areas of responsibility. They maybe asked to work within a system or be given opportunities to simply “work out” the best way forward by themselves. Finally, in all cases, the better the playing conditions and facilities available to them, generally, the better the quality of output, level of satisfaction and overall wellbeing. We determined that this, in many ways, summed up the requirements of the brief in terms of theme and concept. Other factors also included:
- Areas in which to socialise and share
- Access to the outdoors, fresh air and natural light
- Flexibility in terms of utilisation of space
Other challenges included creating a space that would smooth the transition from a somewhat “silo-ised” situation to the open plan opportunities that would allow team members to benefit from an environment designed for collaboration.
Outcome
our approach to their workplace
As always, the idea is to understand how people work, what they need to achieve, what they’d like to achieve and how they’d like to pursue those objectives. Oftentimes, companies approach needs from a purely numeric point of view: this many people into a space this large. We do not favour this approach as it denies opportunities, right from the start, to take on the challenge of helping people work better in an environment that improves outputs.
Realising that we were also dealing with an iconic brand meant that the environment needed to suit the character of the organisation and by extension, to a point, the game itself. Even visitors to the space needed to feel that they had arrived at a, if not the, home of football so clean lines, and air of professionalism yet a community feel needed to be considered and thoughtfully put in place.
We found that understanding the game and the main players was key to designing success and putting it altogether, on the field and in the office.