Turning a disused print shop into a contemporary office space provided a unique opportunity to design from the ground up.
May 26th, 2011
Three conjoined derelict buildings in Sydney’s inner east suburb of Surry Hills were the framework for a new office space for creative agency Host.
The project team, consisting of designers who|design (now merged with Group GSA), builders MPA Projects and engineers Medland Metropolis designed services from scratch for the abandoned structure.
“Basically, it housed pigeons,” said Nick Crace, Director and Senior Project Engineer at Medland Metropolis, of the original state of the building.
“The services were done from the ground up, from the power reticulation to the lighting. [The building] had never been airconditioned before. We were starting from scratch.”
The creative re-use of the space offered a unique opportunity for the way services were provided, particularly from an engineering perspective.
“We had the opportunity to think outside the square and be a bit more innovative in how we reticulated everything,” says Crace.
A sustainable outcome was one of the main drivers of the project, and it was made possible by the fully integrated design.
Lighting, for example, was designed based on its end of use. A mini substation – one of 2 of its kind in Australia – was built into the building for maximum efficiency and to save floorspace.
“By having services designed from the ground up, one of the advantages is that you can start with a clean sheet. And when it comes to sustainability, that’s the way to approach it,” says Crace.
“If you can design the building with [sustainability] in mind from the beginning, you can get a better result.
“For a successful commercial project, sustainability doesn’t have to cost you more money.”
Read more about Host in Issue 45 of Indesign magazine, available now.
INDESIGN is on instagram
Follow @indesignlive
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
XTRA celebrates the distinctive and unexpected work of Magis in their Singapore showroom.
Schneider Electric’s new range are making bulky outlets a thing of the past with the new UNICA X collection.
To honour Chef James Won’s appointment as Gaggenau’s first Malaysian Culinary Partner, we asked the gastronomic luminaire about parallels between Gaggenau’s ethos and his own practice, his multidimensional vision of Modern Malaysian – and how his early experiences of KFC’s accessible, bold flavours influenced his concept of fine dining.
Hong Kong has a new shopping experience that will tempt and tantalise. House of Madison has launched and it’s a destination like no other.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
The fourth edition of the First Nations Writers Festival took place in May 2025, and we spoke to Baka Barakove Bina about the importance of place and home in his writing, as well as the things that make the Pacific region so distinctive.
The Finding Infinity Principal comments here on the question of balance in city life, with architecture and design highlighted as the key levers for making change.
Gaggenau’s understated appliance fuses a carefully calibrated aesthetic of deliberate subtraction with an intuitive dynamism of culinary fluidity, unveiling a delightfully unrestricted spectrum of high-performing creativity.