“Woods Bagot has created a space that allows us to better connect with the big ambitions of our clients, our people and the industry we are part of,” says Justin Graham, M&C Saatchi Group CEO for Australia and New Zealand.

“It allows us to inspire, create and collaborate in a cutting-edge environment. It is a critical step forward as the business evolves.”

M&C Saatchi Group is a long-term tenant of the building at 99 Macquarie St, and wanted to bring its staff together in the CBD, close to creative institutions such as the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney Opera House and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The company embraced hybrid work through COVID-19 and saw an opportunity to consolidate its office footprint across 3400sq m while ensuring its new workplace met dramatically recalibrated user demands and expectations.

Amanda Stanaway, Woods Bagot’s Global Leader of Workplace Interiors, said the project embodies two of the primary post-pandemic workplace trends.

“The flight to quality is also a flight to character,” Stanaway says.

“We’ve taken an early 20^th century building and brought it into the 21^st century through significant base building interventions, enabling us to achieve the primary goal of facilitating better flow and worker connectivity.”

Key work includes repositioning the building core, adding two new internal staircases linking teams across all three floors, creating a dedicated building entry, increasing collaboration space, incorporating a destination café, flexible work areas and quiet areas.

“It has been a wonderful experience to marry Sydney’s past with the city’s future,” says Stanaway.

Project Leader Jordan Schumacher said the redesign drew on the history of Transport House, completed in 1938.

“It’s a story of origins, modernity and a celebration of character,” Schumacher said. “The design outcome uses opposing ideas to create different spaces and experiences derived from stories of the past shaping stories of the future.”

Media enquiries

Martin Kelly
Content and Communications Leader (Australia & NZ)
Woods Bagot

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