EMBARQ; The (Design) Journey Starts Here

Re-energising the Piazza
How many office buildings can claim a front entrance overlooking a spacious, waterside piazza? Currently sparsely populated and largely neglected, with a few picnic benches and a sculptural obelisk, the space is underutilised. Our vision is to transform it into a vibrant area where people can relax, slow down, and take in the views across the water.

Working with our long term collaborators Landscape Architects Churchman Thornhill Finch, we developed a strategy to enhance the space that introduces a series of landscaped metal planters. These are positioned to help anchor the existing obelisk in the piazza, introducing some much needed greenery to the space in addition to creating seating from which to enjoy the view looking back towards Welsh Back. (diagrams courtesy of Churchman Thornhill Finch)

Demarcating the Entrance
Despite its scale, the building can often go unnoticed due to its elevated entrance and limited presence on Redcliff Street. Over time the building’s exterior of brick and stone has harmonised with the evolving materiality of Redcliff’s historic warehouses and new developments.

The current building entrance is hidden, set back behind a deep stone colonnade. Our proposal seeks to utilise this to project the entrance out onto the piazza space.

Carefully detailed steel plates line the existing stone colonnade, with the central portal frame projecting forward. Concealed lighting and new building signage reinforce the entrance, while high level planting helps soften the new elements and, alongside the external landscaping, provides a unified contemporary intervention.

Activate and Refresh the Building's Atrium
While the building's exterior integrates harmoniously with its surroundings, the interior has remained largely unchanged since the 1980s.

Spatially, however, it has bags of potential, a generous double height entrance hall leads into a canyon like atrium space, activated with scenic lift and open landing to provide access to workspace on the upper levels.

Yet, despite this, the space lacked a sense of purpose.

Modern workspaces have moved away from the need to have a reception desk that monitors all newcomers to the building, preferring instead a more dual function of reception and central hub for the building community. Recognising this, our key idea was to move the reception, currently located next to entrance, to the centre of the ground floor atrium.

The transformation and repositioning of the reception into the atrium serves as a focal point in enhancing the user experience. As the primary arrival space from the entrance courtyard, the atrium naturally guides visitors toward the reception and communal areas, creating a seamless journey through the building.

The interior fit out introduces a refined and sophisticated material palette incorporating natural timbers, metal work, feature tiles and custom lighting installation. We are also looking to peel back the layers of existing finishes to reveal and celebrate the original cast concrete structure.

Together this fosters an inviting warmth and an effortless transition from outside to in. The story of this retrofit is truly told on first impressions!

The central bridge link at Level 1 which separates the entrance hall and atrium has been reduced in scale to enhance the connection between the two spaces.

The reception desk is framed by two feature stairs and new entrances to the scenic lifts which echo the symmetry of the building and helps transition scale from the base of the atrium to the upper levels.