Interior designer Karen Garrett discusses the trials and tribulations of designing an office for one of the largest companies in the world.
The Google project was won in November 2007 by Futurespace (FS), with strategic briefing by DEGW.
The project is located in a building that has a Green Star As-Built rating of 6 stars, uses water saving initiatives and chilled beam technolo gy. There are areas to build wintergardens that provide natural ventilation, external shading devices to manage sunlight, sewer mining for recycled water and a gas- fired generator (co-genera tion system).
The project had to align with Google’s company cul ture, but at the same time be uniquely Australian and as sustainable as possible, tar geting the highest Green Star fitout rating possible — this is one of a handful of environmentally sound Google offices in the world and has become a bench mark for other Google fitouts around the globe.
Google’s drivers for ‘build ing green’ included:
• social responsibility
• alignment with the base building initiatives
• ensuring the ongoing health and wellbeing of Googlers
• remaining at the forefront of innovation/alignment with business objectives
• providing a benchmark for the other Google premises around the world to follow
The biggest design chal lenge for us was to marry a very ‘high tech’ organisation with a fitout that was sustain able and showed environ mental leadership. The Googlers were willing to ‘go green’, but at the same time were wary of what this meant and the impact sustainability would have on their ‘Googlyness’.
It has been recognised by the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) that the Google project is the first case where a 6 star Green Star rated base building is multi-tenanted (all others to date have been owner occu pied), which presented issues never encountered before with regards to integration of base building works with the tenant’s fitout works.
FS teamed up with the base building team, other tenancy design teams and the GBCA to address and resolve numerous ground breaking issues for this proj ect. As a result, the project became a ‘test case’ for the GBCA to further develop and improve the Green Star tools for the future and FS were instrumental in helping the GBCA to develop these future sustainable policies.
Our involvement with Green Star for this project was holistic. We worked closely with services engi neers, other project consult ants and contractors to ensure we all moved towards achieving the same goal — excellence in the Green Star office interiors rating system.
Throughout the process we worked with the services engineers to ensure the design of the built environ ment supported their service design to enable the fitout to be efficient with regards to water and energy usage and emissions. The fitout was modelled as per the NABERS Energy Validation protocol to result in an estimated high NABERS Energy star rating which contributes directly to achieving Green Star points.
To put the Googlers at ease we embarked on a Green Star education process before any design work was undertaken to prove that being involved in a sustainable fitout is an opportunity rather than a risk to the overall project.
Things that worked well on this project were:
• re-using large amounts of furniture — around 90 per cent of the furniture, including tables, task chairs, meeting room chairs and feature seating were all existing, and very little new furniture was purchased
• predominantly openplan office environment
• vertical garden walls (pro prietary Schiavello system)
• green wall in reception
• carpet, paint and materials all low VOC, formaldehyde minimised and eco preferred content
• GECA certified plasterboard
• management points were obtained by working with a builder with ISO 14001 certification
• client operational proce dures (recycling, waste management etc)
The fitout is in a unique light-filled building and the interior is designed to take into consideration the Australian climate, culture and conditions. The project is Australian, but also still ‘Googley’.
Karen Garrett, ESD leader at Futurespace, is a qualified interior designer with experi ence in corporate interiors, having worked on projects in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and New Zealand. In addition to her commercial experience, she has a passion for environmentally sus tainable design and is an accredited Green Star professional. She will be presenting Shooting for the stars: bringing green interiors to light at designEX, Friday, April 23.
