AFG REDUX
The building’s construction is based on the ubiquitous industrial office building, architecturally augmented by material, skills and assets that are intrinsically of the client group; creating a headquarters building with the client’s unique signature. The major elements of the design directly reflect core business areas; expressed recycled/salvaged elements, rubble garden, and asphalt surfaces. Screens and rubble landscaping talk to site operation, the courtyard at the heart of the scheme provides a story about demolition, salvaging and project.
Manipulations of space are utilized throughout the building so as not to reveal the scale. On approach the building appears twice its size through two moves – ‘elevating’ and ‘burying’ the building. The building shares the characteristic with the crushing plant, where its buried nature blurs its true size. Once inside the incorporation of a courtyard extends the internal spaces, further a single mirrored elevation ‘doubles’ the size of the courtyard appears and the grove of trees it contains. The plan is organized around a central courtyard, a cluster of specific space internally and a flexible band of workspace around the perimeter. The central courtyard provides a unique outdoor space sheltered from the wind and dust that typifies this area of Melbourne. The nature of the space encourages staff interaction through a degree of spaces from formal meeting rooms to informal moments at benches tables, courtyard and breakout spaces. Throughout the office area, screens, light wells, enclosed spaces, and ‘curtains’ give a sense of enclosure and allow for clusters of teams, ownership of the space, and acoustic treatment.
The building’s compact form aide’s passive energy design. Site works allow the building to be submerged into banks of mixed rubble and native grasses providing passive thermal benefits.
