Leading architecture practice Cox Architecture, global interior design firm Unispace and Australian energy company Woodside have come together to present a new state-of-the-art office space in Perth that combines smart features with wellbeing to deliver a holistic environment.
The latest landmark on the Perth landscape, Mia Yellagonga (a Whadjuk Noongar Aboriginal name referencing the elder who welcomed Captain Stirling onto the building’s culturally significant site) features the 32-level main tower and the Woodside campus spanning 64,000sqm.
One of Australia’s first truly smart and well workplaces, the new campus aims to foster greater efficiencies, and increase employee attraction, motivation and retention, helping Woodside become a global employer of choice.
Featuring integrated access to artificial intelligence leveraged through the Woodside relationship with IBM, an intelligent and autonomous robotics lab designed to deliver and showcase Woodside’s partnership with NASA, and frictionless biometric access technology by Siemens/ Morpho/ Idemia, Australia’s most technologically advanced and socially connected commercial workplace has now been unveiled in Perth.
For the interiors, Unispace’s design challenges traditional notions of how a workplace should look, feel and function through considered interventions that promote healthy behaviours, social connection, collaboration and focus.
“The overall success of the campus is credit to a truly collaborative effort between Woodside and Unispace. Every decision taken was balanced across people, place and technology to create a transformative new workplace for Woodside, enabling its vision to become a global leader in energy,” said Unispace design principal Dean Rikanovic.
“Mia Yellagonga is the first campus in Australia to provide a more holistic approach to health by encouraging wellbeing and creating synergies between work and life."
“Wellbeing is now about providing a more meaningful experience that supports a pathway for healthier minds, bodies, places and cultures. Mia Yellagonga’s design recognises the importance of creating a healthy workplace culture, where business performance and human effectiveness are promoted and enabled as much as social and family connection,” he says.
More than 60 different work settings are provided across several floors while floors are themed according to the six cultural Whadjuk Noongar seasons. Here Woodside’s workplace philosophy Rightspace comes to life – a new way of working based on choice and designed to foster movement, connect people and break down traditional silos.
The employees’ wellbeing is further encouraged with the provision of 100 per cent sit-to-stand motorised desking, and ergonomic and agile light set-up, stand-tables. Collaborative spaces are provided along with an app-based program that allows people to find each other, wherever they may be working across the campus.
A priority throughout the design was leveraging the built environment to create a workplace culture where people are healthier and happier, and enjoy a better blend of their work and life.
A dedicated wellbeing floor on level 14 is expressly designed to encourage respite, rejuvenation, rest and relaxation, and includes a universal multi-faith prayer room, parenting suites, a mindfulness area, a massage chair, fireplace, chill-out area, viewing platform with telescope, and a library that also features artificial intelligence in the form of Woodside’s cognitive assistant ‘Willow’ to help staff find the information they need across the company’s vast archive.
Additionally, for a membership fee, staff can access the 25-metre heated lap pool, state-of-the-art gym, outdoor space for personal training, treatment rooms offering personal grooming, physiotherapist treatment and a dedicated Nurse Practitioner for medical support.
A 300-seat café designed by Mim Design and a 4,000sqm outdoor space cater to the needs of employees and their family members and guests.
The artificial intelligence lab developing and showcasing technology with partner NASA, includes a Robonaut, which is testing how robotic technology could be used to support Woodside’s existing workforce and improve safety, reliability and efficiency in the company’s oil and gas operations.
Woodside senior vice president Corporate & Legal Michael Abbott says Mia Yellagonga was a strategic asset to drive the company’s success over the long term.
“Mia Yellagonga has dramatically transformed the way we work, and showcases Woodside as a partner and employer of choice.
“We believe Mia Yellagonga provides a very strong proposition in the marketplace that will allow us to attract, motivate and retain the best talent in Australia and globally, further strengthening our company’s future,” he says.
