Workshop

A new kind of integrated workplace on Sydney’s city fringe

Workshop unites large office spaces for global creative companies, small spaces for startups and shopfronts, an indoor/outdoor sunken café, a double height gym, and a childcare centre.

Guy Lake

Director, Bates Smart

Workshop’s expression is of its place, and its integrated interior supports 21^st century whole wellbeing. Together, these design features stich Workshop into the neighbourhood and allow the building to give back, enhancing Pyrmont’s fabric.

The campus workplace is contained within two 4 and 6-storey linear volumes that are set back on the upper levels to preserve sunlight to the residential buildings to the south. They are located over a recessed two storey base that accommodates the childcare centre, gym, and small shopfronts. This mix helps create active street frontages. The commercial entry lobby is located between the volumes off Harris Street at upper ground level.

The façade’s 450mm deep terracotta frame recalls the robust materiality of Pyrmont’s brick warehouses. It has square proportions and splayed verticals with bronze reveals. Within the frames, large 3.5m x 3.5m frameless picture windows allow light to stream inside, maximise views and connect the activity inside to the activity outside on the street. At the top of the building the terracotta frame transitions to bronze aluminium to acknowledge its stepped form.

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Inside, Workshop is designed for wellbeing, flexibility, collaboration and social connectivity. Its anchor spatial feature is its 2,640sqm campus floorplates organised around a central, full height atrium. This space is timber lined, naturally lit from rooftop glazing, and features vertical gardens with audible flowing water, and an open black steel stair—elements that forge strong connections to nature. Wintergardens with large operable windows counterpoint the atrium at each end of the building, pulling the connection to nature through the entire floorplate.

On either side of the atrium and central core a concrete structure with a 15m span provides flexible column free workspace. Concrete beams and soffits are exposed and uplit to maximise the sense of space and avoid creating a vacuous tiled office floor. The interior throughout is left consciously raw, with exposed building services, concrete floors and columns complemented by an authentic and tactile palette of timber, steel and indoor planting.

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A large, landscaped rooftop terrace provides flexible outdoor space with city and water views.

At ground the building takes advantage of its island site and sloping topography to accommodate neighbourhood scale uses on all streets and over multiple levels. The large café occupies the corner of the site, off Harris Street, doubling as an informal building entry. It also has vertical bifold doors that open onto a double height sunlit terrace. The gym is entered off the other corner of the site on Harris Street and connects to extensive end-of-trip facilities. The small loft tenancies line Harvey Street and feature individual entries, double height entries and mezzanine floors. The childcare centre is entered on grade off Mount Street Walk with outdoor play space overlooking Bowman Street.

Together, these features stich Workshop into the neighbourhood and allow the building to give back, enhancing Pyrmont’s fabric.