1MQ Workplace
One Melbourne Quarter, located in the heart of Melbourne’s Southern Cross Precinct, is a new center for business, and home to a new workplace HQ spanning five levels that occupy over 9,500sqm.
The Challenge
As part of the overall office design, the design team’s scope was to provide signage, wayfinding and environmental graphics for the new space.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Super-scale graphic artworks were applied to banks of lockers to animate the new workplace.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Artworks become the backdrop to 5 floors of workplace, centred around a central connecting stair.
Project Vision
The interior design strategy was to rework the traditional office to allow more permeability between spaces, providing a freedom of movement between public and private areas.
The main architectural feature that would drive this idea of movement was an internal stair that connected five floors of office through a central atrium.
As a backdrop to the area, banks of lockers lined the core of the building, and the design team’s brief was to activate these with graphics that would help anchor the staircase. The design team’s approach to the design of these graphics was rooted in the local area.
Melbourne is famed for its laneways, which have become culturally important to the city’s residents and are known worldwide for their acclaimed street art, unique boutiques and hidden bars. These graffiti-laden lanes inspired us to use art—instead of graphics—to help activate the lockers, bringing a sense of Melbourne’s unique urban culture into the new workplace.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Core brand colour palettes were used in client-facing spaces.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
A collegiate workplace culture was encouraged through the artwork motifs.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Key cultural messages were integrated into the artworks and distributed across floors.
Design & Execution
Working with artist Meg Minkley, THERE curated a series of artworks that would work their way across five floors, drawing on the core values and brand attributes of the company to inform motifs and colors.
The artworks told abstract brand stories, communicated cultural norms and encouraged a collegiate spirit between colleagues, while bringing a sense of life and vibrancy to the busy central atrium.
The artworks were hand-painted by a team of artists on the doors before being shipped to the site and installed in place. The scale was designed for impact when viewed from a distance across the floor, but by being hand-crafted each door has a tactile, textural quality that can equally be enjoyed up-close. In an agile workplace, the lockers provide employees with a daily touchpoint as they start the day, and the hand-made artworks helped to humanize the space and provide a warm and welcoming work environment.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
The artworks were hand-painted on to the locker doors, creating texture and vibrancy.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
The lockers line circulation paths, with artworks helping to add a sense of activity & dynamism.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Signage forms play a supporting role, referencing the café-culture of the local neighbourhood.
Alongside the locker artworks, THERE also designed a suite of signage and wayfinding that again drew inspiration from the high-end retail stores found nearby. Signage took on a monochrome palette, maintaining a level of sophistication whilst allowing the artworks to be the real hero of the scheme.
The result is an activated and enlivened space, with bold, spirited and immersive artworks. The installations were heavily inspired by the local context, making the new space immediately feel at home in its urban surrounds.
Steve Brown and Mansur Amiri
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Super-scale graphic artworks were applied to banks of lockers to animate the new workplace.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Artworks become the backdrop to 5 floors of workplace, centred around a central connecting stair.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Core brand colour palettes were used in client-facing spaces.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
A collegiate workplace culture was encouraged through the artwork motifs.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Key cultural messages were integrated into the artworks and distributed across floors.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
The artworks were hand-painted on to the locker doors, creating texture and vibrancy.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
The lockers line circulation paths, with artworks helping to add a sense of activity & dynamism.
Photo Credit: Steve Brown
Signage forms play a supporting role, referencing the café-culture of the local neighbourhood.