Connection, Community and Flexibility
ANZ Sylvia Park is a new five-and-a-half level workplace for contact centre and regional banking staff based on three key principles: Connection, Community and Flexibility.
The concept for ANZ Sylvia Park formed around a question asked in the original brief, “What is the ideal workplace of 2025?”.
With the pace of change in technology and rapid adoption of mobile and flexible working, we know that it will be different. What is harder to define is what exactly this will be. Acknowledging this uncertainty, we reframed the question and asked instead, “What will attract people to come to work in 2025?”
To answer this, we looked to the past for inspiration and developed a concept around the formal ancient gardens, the heart of many towns and cities around the world. Gardens have attracted people to them for thousands of years. Whether it to be to find calm and rejuvenation, to be inspired by the beauty of nature, or to socially connect. In using this framework for the design of ANZ Raranga, we were able to create a workplace that would provide reprieve in a busy urban environment, instil pride and inspire people to do their best work, and help to cultivate community and collaboration among staff.
Looking at the workplace of the near future, 2025, the project proposes that employees need a reason to come into the office. Staff are technologically-agile, mobile and have a network of contacts of their own. The ANZ Sylvia Park workplace designs to their needs – to feel connected to the work they produce, to belong as a community with their colleagues, and to find freedom and flexibility in the spaces they work in. With a well-designed workplace, future ANZ employees will choose the office over remote locations for the agile, autonomous and empowering environment it offers.
A new internal auditorium-style stair has been introduced at entry level, completing the vertical circulation by connecting five floors of the building and provides event space for staff and external use. The building includes a purpose built training facility on the remaining floor providing a destination space for learning.
“This building is all about the detail – that’s what really makes it. It has a nice new fitout, yes, but when you look at the level of detail in every element, that has been the thing that really has made it for me. We spent months working with Warren and Mahoney to make the design speak the ANZ values, with every aspect of the design considered and resolved. And our people’s reaction has made all the work worth it. We had staff literally in tears at what we have created for them. That put the thousands of hours we have put into the space worthwhile.” - Matthew Clark, Head of Workplace Property NZ, ANZ.
