14b. LYONS OFFICE

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We were presented with the remarkable space of an old department store in the centre of the city.

It had a very deep plan, four-metre high ceilings, and a series of large civic-scale windows along Swanston and Bourke St frontages. The brief was to establish a new workspace for eighty people.

We started with thinking about how to arrange the worktables in the space. Rows of desks are each aligned with one of the large windows, which also orients each desk in relation to the structure above.

This made a field of workstations, with desks slightly further apart than normal; providing many possible circulation routes rather than a single strong hierarchy.

FIELD STRUCTURE 14.21

Project teams can grow and shrink as required around small offices and meeting rooms, which gently subdivide the field of desks.

These small rooms and the larger conference rooms work together with the existing structure; delineating and articulating it in different ways, so that new and old form a kind of composite whole.

The perimeter of the floor is given over to communal uses: kitchen/ lunch room, library and shared casual work-space.

Conference room and small meeting rooms work as a suite, with the foyer as a breakout space. Meetings and work can happen here as well. Reception is located under the large diagonal beams of the previous escalator bay.

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INTERRUPTION / EVENTS 14.23

In the long section there are a series of desks lining up with large windows beyond, and in the cross-section the main workspace is set in from the glare, leaving the perimeter as a shared, casual space

Even though the plan is deep, there is always a sense of connection to light, looking from enclosed spaces, through the field of workstations, to the large windows beyond.

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DEPTH / ACTIVITY 14.25

Small rooms are set within the space, looking over the open plan areas. The desks in the enclosed office spaces are oriented to be continuous with the desks outside.

Highlight windows were inserted where services were not present, allowing light to pass through these small enclosures.

A wall system was devised made from 70mm timber studs and 1200mm plywood sheets. The walls were made as thin as possible to slot into the existing niches of concrete columns, and slide up over beams.

The walls were made very quickly, by only one trade. There is no finish on the plywood. At half-height there is a timber stiffening-beam rail, which joins the top and bottom plates of the two equal stud wall sections, and allows the thin wall to span the full four metres.

Because of their thinness, the walls have a taut, provisional quality in comparison to the solidity of the concrete.

From inside, the timber rail provides a place for sliding door tracks to be hung. In the window reveals you can see the timber stiffening rail, bolted to top and bottom plates, with glazing fixed to the front face of the studs.

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FRAME / CLADDING 14.27

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A series of tables for quiet work, small discussions or reading, where individuals or small groups are ‘outside’ the office and in direct contact with the city

Door panels are supported on an aluminium ledge, which also provides a place to clip a lamp and rest pens.

We studied the drawing tables in Antonin Raymond’s summer studio in Karuizawa. This is a city version of that idea, able to be shared and scaled to the building.

The tables are resting provisionally on the ledge, as if they could be removed at any time.

As the time-scale of the building is perhaps one hundred years, and the time-scale of a tenancy is something less than that.

SITTING / RESTING 14.29

Lyons OfficeNMBW Architecture Studio2008 - 2009

Project TeamNigel BertramLucinda McLeanMarika Neustupnywith:Ralf Rehak

First publishedArtichoke MagazineNo.31 July/ August 2010Contents/ Inside back cover/ pp.44-50review: Marcus Baumgart

The AgeWednesday May 19 2010, p.8 (Business section)review: Stephen Crafti

Architect VictoriaAwards 2010 issue, p.31

AwardsArchitecture AwardInterior ArchitectureAustralian Institute of Architects (Vic) Awards, 2010

PhotographyPeter Bennetts

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