Designed to super-charge co-working and collaboration, Auckland’s Innovation Precinct extends into building number three, a six-storey purpose-built environment.

What are students’ expectations of academic libraries? This is a question John Wardle Architects tackled when renovating and expanding Monash University’s Caulfield Library.

The same blue-sky thinking that underpins Woodside’s energy exploration, development delivery and supply business set the tone for its new global HQ in Perth, designed by Cox Architects and Unispace.

How to make a global tech giant with a transient workforce feel at home? Find out with Sydney’s new Microsoft Technology Centre.

Pavilions, hubs, neighbourhoods, precincts and the like are fast becoming a popular staple in the agile workplace diet – but why? In their latest project for Red Energy Melbourne, iconic studio Carr sees the significance of these spaces as allowing users to claw back some personal ownership of their working environment.

Chaulk Studio has broken down the walls of traditional closed-off classrooms by creating interconnected and adaptable learning and play spaces for interaction and exploration.

The National Australia Bank’s (NAB) Brisbane Headquarters, NAB Place, designed by global architecture firm, Woods Bagot, sets a new benchmark in collaborative workplace environments.

With renewed emphasis on collaboration and active participation, Cox Architecture was engaged to renovate St Aidan’s Anglican Girls School’s existing arts precinct – originally built in the 1960s – into the new Innovation and Design Hub.

Sometimes the most highly evolved designs are incomplete. When conceptualising the new Suncorp headquarters in Sydney, the interiors team at Geyer worked to the idea of ‘designing to 80%’. The result is a radical take on the oft-used idea of workplace flexibility. While the building caters to the needs of its residents in the present, it comprehensively avoids dictating what these needs will be in the future.

When builder/developer Mirvac decided half-way through the development process for the EY Centre at 200 George Street, Sydney to move their headquarters into six levels of the building, it was a vote of confidence in their own project.

Designers are working in an exciting health and aged-care climate where the very definitions of the sectors are being questioned, challenged and redefined. Cox Architecture’s (formerly CODA Studios) joyous and uplifting design of Karratha Central Healthcare is a strong example of a multi-dimensional health facility providing medical services and training opportunities that contribute to the improved health and wellbeing of the regional community.

How can a single space simultaneously serve the needs of healthcare, education and community at all levels? In their most recent project for Cockburn ARC, dwp create the ultimate cross-sector blueprint for a hybrid health, fitness, education, community and culture centre for professional, intermediate and beginner users.

Design that reflects its local environment is a huge focus for practising architects and designers, and Sydney’s Barangaroo development is a hotbed for this kind of thinking. Gilbert + Tobin’s new Barangaroo workplace, designed by Woods Bagot, draws inspiration from the rich history and landscape of the site, while nestling nicely into Sydney’s new commercial identity.

The legal sector has traditionally adhered to a strict workplace hierarchy, with senior staff allotted a private office and entry-level employees assigned to the ‘open-plan’. Designed by Warren and Mahoney, the new head office for New Zealand law firm Russell McVeagh, challenges the antiquated workplace approach with a daring, material-rich agile strategy.

The old-school ‘client showroom’ is in desperate need of a shake-up – but where to start? Designed by Futurespace, PwC’s new Melbourne headquaters is purpose-built to break down traditional barriers between staff and clients. The results are extraordinary.

What are the principles and strategies behind designing for incidental staff collisions and chance encounters? Siren Design maps out its creative thinking and approach for Powercor CitiPower’s BEON Energy Solutions, Melbourne: a purpose built workplace which encourages its staff to ‘interact’ and ‘collide’.

Integrated technology might be commonplace in the workplace, but in education spaces it’s still a fairly new phenomenon. At Western Sydney University, Woods Bagot’s vertical campus design raises the bar in more ways than one.

What happens when private business goes public – in a commercial design sense, that is? Brisbane’s most recent commercial addition, 480 Queen Street by BVN, is designed to create a sense of community inclusiveness. It’s a new-think approach to the traditional public-versus-private model.

Workplaces are no longer just singular production hubs, but company showrooms used by and with clients. Designed by Davenport Campbell, the new KPMG headquaters in Barangaroo transforms the brave new world of agile working into a workplace to call home.

What does it take to redesign a tried and tested model? For centuries, the iconic Australian pub has shaped our country’s communities, quenching the thirsts of millions of Aussies and offering social solace at the end of a long, hard day. This side of the new century, our shifting lifestyles, played out in the concrete jungles of our capital cities, has bred a new brand of beer o’clock. But just how ‘refreshing’ is it?