Interior Spaces: Raising the bar
The ceiling system in Dentons’ reception area enabled the designers to accommodate a high level of bespoke detailing.
The design concept was inspired by its local context in terms of colour, craft and materiality.
Dentons new 1220m2 home is in the Green Star Bowen Street campus in Wellington’s Parliamentary precinct.
The new open-plan workplace is strengthening collaboration and connection between staff.
The spaces present as comfortable, functional and professional, with a humility that is refreshing in a legal practice.
When the world’s largest law firm appointed Unispace to design its new workplace in Wellington, it was looking for a radical new environment. Amanda Harkness investigates.
Global workplace design and construction specialist Unispace was engaged to transition Dentons’ Wellington office from its traditional law firm interiors model of individual offices and spaces to a full, open-plan work setting with offices ‘on demand’, explains project design lead Paul van Lent.
Achieving transformational change such as this is no mean feat. Before moving out of the firm’s existing premises on The Terrace into its new 1220m2 home in the Green Star Bowen Street campus – the heart of the capital’s Parliamentary precinct – a series of stakeholder engagement interviews and workshops was held to reveal the key objectives for the new space. “We had a clean slate: to move from a fairly established legacy to effectively create one ecosystem, accommodating a diverse team into one home,” says van Lent.
Amongst the considerations for the new space was a focus on the attraction and retention of top talent, an improved client experience, creating a space to support and empower high performance, and nurturing culture and community.
There was scope for regional influence within Dentons’ global brand identity and the resulting design concept was inspired by its local context in terms of craft, materiality, colour and sense of place. The spaces present as comfortable, functional and professional, with a humility that is refreshing in a legal practice.
A relatively long and narrow tenancy offered some challenge to the programme, adeptly mitigated by creating laneways to retain view shafts and offer sight lines, varying the landscape to break down the scale, creating short cuts off the primary circulation and small pockets of space to allow for privacy and discretion.
The use of a Rondo® ceiling system provided design flexibility in the reception area (pictured above and in the slideshow), enabling the designers to accommodate a high level of bespoke detailing.
“The new open-plan workplace represents a huge shift for Dentons,” says van Lent. “It’s strengthening collaboration and connection between staff, breaking down silos to enable the cross-pollination of ideas, and giving the team greater flexibility to accommodate growth, learning and development.”
The Interior Spaces series is brought to you by GIB® in partnership with ArchitectureNow. Learn more about GIB® Rondo® Metal Batten Systems in the video below:
ArchitectureNow works with a range of partners in the A&D supply sector to source appropriate content for the site. This article has been supported by GIB®.
