Set within an existing industrial building, the project establishes a first dedicated workplace for a major tech company in Australia and New Zealand. The design begins with the idea of arrival as an act of hosting. Spaces unfold with a sense of ease and familiarity, drawing on the rituals of gathering, conversation, and shared experience.

The planning is organised across three levels, each calibrated to a different mode of occupation. The ground floor operates as a social threshold, where lounge settings, meeting spaces, and a screening room sit within the existing fabric. The screening environment is conceived as a precise insertion, acoustically resolved and contained within the larger volume.

Above, the primary work floor is arranged as a series of interconnected rooms rather than a singular open plan. Workstations sit alongside quieter spaces and informal areas, allowing movement between focus and exchange. “We wanted it to feel more like a living room than a traditional workplace,” Crawford explains. The upper level brings people together through a café and terrace, extending the workplace into a shared, communal setting.

The existing building remains present throughout. Structure, joinery, glazing, and flooring are retained and adapted, with new elements introduced as a secondary layer. Insertions are defined by their lightness and reversibility, allowing the original shell to remain legible.

“There was a real focus on minimal intervention, working with the building as it is,” says Crawford. This approach is supported by a considered material strategy, where reuse is embedded in both large and small decisions, from retained architectural elements to sourced furniture and objects.

Hunter Mason Managing Director Matthew Callender says, “With a building like 1/7 Wellington Street, you’re never starting from zero. We’d already spent years working within it, so we understood how it was put together and where the opportunities and constraints sat. That makes a big difference when you’re reconfiguring it for something as specific as a headquarters and studio environment.”

“Adaptive reuse in this context is really about being selective, holding onto elements that still perform, reworking others, and carefully stitching in new services and systems so everything operates as a cohesive whole,” Callender continues. “Because we were involved from the building’s earlier transformation, we could carry that knowledge forward into the next phase and unlock efficiencies that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. It’s a good example of how working within existing fabric, when approached properly with the right team, can deliver outcomes that are both highly resolved and inherently more sustainable.”

A close collaboration between architecture, branding, and construction shapes the project’s identity. Brand is not applied as a singular gesture but is distributed across surfaces, objects, and moments of alignment. “It’s about discovery,” Crawford notes.

“You don’t walk in and see everything at once. There are these smaller moments that reveal themselves over time.” Visual references are layered and reinterpreted, often combining multiple narratives within a single element. Graphics align with architectural features, while imagery is embedded within textures and finishes, creating a continuous field of association.

THERE Studio’s Partner Charlie Bromley says, “The branding of the space draws directly from the visual language of the surrounding streetscape. Borrowing cues from fly-posting, paste-ups and street art, the graphics were conceived as an intentional overlay to the interior architecture. Low-fi print applications create micro-moments that gradually reveal themselves as you move through the space.”

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Adrien Moffatt
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