BP Auckland Head Office

BP worked with us to design their new head office in Auckland. The new space was to incorporate the functions and staff from the existing head office in Wellington, and from the existing Auckland office in Ellerslie. We were engaged for workplace strategy, design, project management and construction.
Our extensive strategic visioning sessions with the executive team at BP were held and we produced a detailed workplace strategy that was aligned with the BP Global standards.
Spread across two floors, the space is grounded in functionality and connectivity rather than hierarchies and traditional thinking. The executive decided that no one was to have an office, so the executive team sits out on the open plan floor, sharing non-bookable focus rooms nearby. The workstations are all sit-stand and have storage units between each to create a private work zone, but to also enable easy collaboration.
The open plan space uses the natural concentric circles of noise to create zones ranging from active, noisy circulation zones in the centre around the spiral, through quieter breakout zones to open plan workstations flanked with quiet/focus rooms at the perimeter.
The challenge was to connect the spaces, so there was good cross functional interaction between floors and for the space to feel energised and light. A key feature of the design is the stunning spiral staircase which was introduced to enable interaction between business units and create one collaborative team. This played on the idea of raw organic energy that is central to the concept. All of the elements directly off the spiral also shared this language and radial forms reference the central source.