Hayball has unveiled its new studio in Surry Hills, a prototype workplace co-created by the team through an intensive design process, undertaken in-house and with interior design collaborator, Bettina Steffens.
The aim of the design was to create an exemplar office environment that could also act as a prototype to test new workplace design strategies. According to Hayball, the new studio has been designed to accommodate future growth and the capacity to service a greater number of projects, including recent project wins such as a new joint-use library, and multiple education and residential sector projects.
Sydney studio director David Tordoff describes the space as warm and welcoming, with the principles of community and collaboration at the heart of its design.
The space has been constructed using natural materials of timber, plywood and glass to enhance warmth, light and comfort in the office. Bespoke volumetric joinery elements have been used throughout to define various specialist workplace settings.
According to Tordoff, it was important to make the office family-friendly.
“Hayball is home to a number of parents, so we wanted to ensure the space was suitable for people to bring their children in. Rooms are multipurpose, such as our whiteboard room (where every surface is writeable) serves as both a brainstorm room, a kid’s play space with toys and a boardroom that gets used as regularly for table tennis as for meetings,” he says.
To enable movement and choice across the office, the studio offers a variety of workplace settings, including automated standing desks; small group booths; library spaces; workshop and maker spaces.
“We were also keen to include spaces that are influenced by our work in the residential sector such as data enabled kitchen and dining areas that promote informal collaboration in a familiar, more domestic environment,” says Tordoff.
Each team member is also provided with a mobile toolkit: a laptop; a tray with all their analogue drawing equipment; a locker for end-of-trip facilities and a local storage locker in the office that becomes a home for their items, and a substitute for a traditional desk.
“We advocate for collaboration and group work in the education and commercial spaces we design, so we wanted to reflect this methodology into our own space and ensure the design would support diverse ways of working,” says Tordoff.
