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Office design

This Month

Vacant in Sydney: Pedestrians in front of the 28-level 39 Martin Place tower, which opened last year, giving office stock in the CBD a boost.

Don’t say Trump, but return to office will pick up: property bosses

Heads of the country’s largest commercial landlords avoid commenting on the US president’s executive order. But they want workers back.

  • Michael Bleby
One Vanderbilt in New York’s Midtown Manhattan.

What the top 2024 US office deals reveal about the year ahead

Movement in the troubled office sector shows owners did what they had to do to strike a deal, pointing to more activity in 2025.

  • Natalie Wong and John Gittelsohn

December 2024

Australia Post HQ in Richmond, Melbourne.

Welcome to Australia Post’s HQ. Just don’t call it the HQ

The postal service has ditched its high-profile head office in a Melbourne skyscraper for a humble yet high-tech building in the suburbs. It’s all about the vibe.

  • Nick Lenaghan

October 2024

The Chanticleer podcast features James Thomson and Anthony Macdonald.

Billionaires behaving badly | Wall Street royalty | Why offices should be like hotels

This week, James and Anthony dive into the drama surrounding two billionaire founders, interview Wall Street royalty, and poke about in some of Sydney’s primo office real estate.

September 2024

Arup Queensland director Lloyd Twomey at the consultancy’s new office in Brisbane.

Table tennis, hot-desking are so 2019. Offices are changing again

Many offices are out of date with post-pandemic usage patterns, but there are signs of stabilisation for the first time since the disruption of the pandemic.

  • Michael Bleby
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Chris Lucas in front of his new project Batard at the top of Bourke Street in Melbourne.

Why Chris Lucas’ new top-end Melbourne venue won’t be a private club

The city’s restaurant king reveals his $45 million plan for a four-level venue known as Batard at the top end of Bourke Street.

  • Patrick Durkin
ISPT’s renovated 500 Bourke Street office tower in Melbourne.

How this office building is saving money – and carbon

This retrofit saved 57,000 tonnes of embodied carbon emissions, as companies rethink the design of office buildings.

  • Michael Bleby

July 2024

This is the new normal for working from home and commuting into the office.

This is the new normal of office life

Flexible working patterns in a decent place that makes it easy to do the job you’re paid for is a basic recipe for success in a post-pandemic world.

  • Updated
  • Pilita Clark

June 2024

The $10 million renovation by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer of Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Campbell House private office in Sydney’s Woollahra won the top NSW award for commercial architecture. 

Cannon-Brookes’ $10m office reno tops architecture awards

The focus on giving new life to old buildings is crucial at a time when preserving embodied carbon of existing buildings is an increasing priority.

  • Michael Bleby

May 2024

Allens to be king of the hill in Sydney’s new legal district

Allens and four other law firms are set to move into the revamped AMP building at Circular Quay as a new legal district in Sydney develops towards the harbour.

  • Maxim Shanahan and Campbell Kwan

April 2024

The entrance to the classified workspace area at a Nooks site in Crystal City, Virginia.

Welcome to WeWork for spies

In this co-working space, only the cappuccino isn’t classified. Servicing the spook sector is a rare bright spot in the market for office facilities,

  • Daniel Flatley

January 2024

Jolena Podolsky in her cubicle at Simon & Schuster offices in Manhattan.

As office workers make their return, so does the lowly cubicle

Cubicles, like scrunchies, are back, spurred by demand from employers and employees alike.

  • Ellen Rosen

NYC’s financial district gets luxury apartments in office tower

New York mayor Eric Adams has been pushing for residential overhauls to address city’s severe housing shortage, especially where office vacancies have soared.

  • Jennifer Epstein

December 2023

Open for business: Ray Lawler, right, US developer Hines’ CEO APAC and Hines’ senior managing director for Australia David Warneford at their completed T3 Collingwood building at 36 Wellington Street on the fringe of the Melbourne CBD.

High land prices stalling office developments: Hines

Land values have yet to adjust to rising cost and the price of debt, the developer and fund manager says.

  • Michael Bleby

October 2023

Increased focus on all-electric buildings   and powered by renewables will help us reach net zero with more certainty, says Davina Rooney, CEO of Green Building Council of Australia.

As timber buildings go up, emissions come down

The growing use of engineered wood products allows for less embodied carbon in buildings, but that alone won’t make construction clean.

  • Michael Bleby
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Rich Lister Stamoulis spies opportunity in $155m Charter Hall tower

The Melbourne deal comes in a market which has been starved of major trades for the past year as office values fall, under pressure from higher rates and softening demand.

  • Nick Lenaghan

September 2023

A worker at a desk in an underused office in London.

Whose responsibility is it for office productivity?

Office landlords want workers back in the office to make them more effective and collaborate, but the onus is on landlords to draw people back.

  • Campbell Kwan

August 2023

Recession fears not driving workers back to office: survey

More than three years after the start of the pandemic, the corporate world is still grappling with workplace productivity and management.

  • Michael Bleby
Dentons partner Paul O’Halloran is now working in his Melbourne CBD office four to five days a week.

Why remote working didn’t work for this lawyer

Individuals will always differ, but the main game is a power struggle playing out now between employers and employees.

  • Michael Bleby

July 2023

The Crown residences at Barangaroo.

UK architects WilkinsonEyre look to muscle up Down Under

Director Ed Daines is relocating to Sydney, as the elite firm looks for fresh Australian opportunities in high-rise, transport infrastructure and beyond.

  • Hans van Leeuwen

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/office-design-1mt0