Specified at Eleven Eastern, a state-of-the-art commercial development in Melbourne, Verosol blinds have helped create a work environment that is both energising and sustainable.
Photography Michael Gazzola
May 29th, 2023
Located in South Melbourne, overlooking Albert Park Lake and the inner-city suburb of Middle Park, the Eleven Eastern development is a 10-storey commercial building, boasting 16,000 square metres of lettable office space.
Presenting as an integrated vertical campus – with shared amenities, ground-floor hospitality offerings, and a generous amount of greenery – the building was conceived with a keen understanding of the needs of the modern-day workforce.
To put that another way, as Kim Lowman Principal at Rothelowman (the practice responsible for the finished design) explains, the development has “connectivity and collaboration at its heart”.
“As we evolve beyond process-based work, the need for dynamic spaces has never been more important … understanding and acting on the motivations and attitudes of modern office workers is essential to the longevity of office spaces,” he says.
“To ensure those who work at Eleven Eastern are inspired by the space they are in, Rothelowman has harnessed landscaped terraces, sculptural external building forms, and picture windows to create the ultimate work haven, where collaboration, productivity, and wellbeing is at the core.”
These windows, which are skewed towards key views including the above-mentioned lake, are fitted with roller blinds by Verosol. Indeed, as per the architects’ wishes, products from this leading window coverings supplier have been included throughout the building.
Most of the windows across Eleven Eastern’s nine levels of office space feature 1,016 Chain Operated Ambience Roller Blinds in 833 SilverScreen ClearView fabric using colour 0829 Black. A product from Verosol’s signature range of metallised fabrics, this fabric has earned Global GreenTag Certifications for GreenRate Level A, PHD achieving Platinum HealthRate, holds an Environmental Product Declaration and more.
As Lowman explains, the blinds are “integral to the building’s design, which calls for natural light and open space.” Including zero PVC and delivering an amazing 74 per cent solar reflectance capacity, they comfortably meet the brief in terms of glare protection, and importantly also in terms of sustainability objectives.
In addition, the large picture windows situated around the office space are fitted with Ambience Heavy Duty Motorised Rollers utilising Somfy HiPro motors (Atlas LT50). Featuring drops of a full seven metres and run on guide wires, these blinds are controlled by incidental solar radiation.
Together these performance blinds made it possible for the architects to meet one of their key design objectives – to achieve full height glazing, and in so doing, to ensure the development captures views in all directions. Beyond that, they help define the Eleven Eastern development as workplace in which flexibility and employee wellbeing are key considerations; and in which connectivity and effective communication are valued, in themselves, as measures of success.
We think you might also like this story on Verosol Ambience roller blinds at Macquarie University.
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!
How can design empower the individual in a workplace transforming from a place to an activity? Here, Design Director Joel Sampson reveals how prioritising human needs – including agency, privacy, pause and connection – and leveraging responsive spatial solutions like the Herman Miller Bay Work Pod is key to crafting engaging and radically inclusive hybrid environments.
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.
In creating the coastal holiday haven ‘le paix’, owner/developer Ben Flint, founder of Greystone Constructions, leaned into a sophisticated Mediterranean feel.
The 2024 Sustainability Awards Winners bestowed its honours on 18 winners, with 10 others receiving honourable mentions — a small gesture for contributions that loom large in our shared narrative of sustainability.
In the bustling coastal corridor between the Gold Coast and Brisbane, the new Distillery Road Markets precinct has become a major drawcard for tourists and locals alike. At the heart of this creative redevelopment of a former industrial precinct is The FED, which stands for Food, Entertainment and Dining.
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
From public buildings to private dwellings, the 2025 Victorian Architecture Awards celebrated excellence across the board – here, we take a look at the major winners.
CapitaMall Skyview is a new shopping centre in Chongqing, China designed by CLOU architects and offering a layered interior that mirrors the city’s distinctive urban landscape.