Dymocks, George Street Sydney

The tenancy sits in a heritage George Street building. The corridor outside the front door still has its original terrazzo floor, timber shopfronts and leadlight, and the new work does not compete with any of it. Inside the tenancy the plan was opened up, the enclosed offices came out, and what is left is one floor with a workstation run along the window line and everything else arranged around a single piece of curved joinery.

That joinery sets the geometry. Its radius is picked up by the furniture rather than argued with: a modular lounge curved to the same sweep, a bench seat that turns the corner with the wall, and a utility bench with radiused ends. There is no reception desk in the usual sense. A counter in green joinery holds the arrival point and then steps back into the floor.

The workstations are height adjustable benches set in one long run parallel to the glazing, with low beige screens and mesh backed task chairs. Power and data come down from the ceiling in vertical cable spines rather than from the floor, which keeps the runs free of floor boxes and lets the desk positions be set by the window mullions instead of the slab.

Because the floor is open, the quieter settings had to be close by rather than shut away. A high backed swivel lounge chair and a low bench sit within a few paces of the desks and give people somewhere to turn away from a screen without booking a room. Glazed meeting rooms take the enclosed conversations, and a dark veneer table on a shaped base holds the largest of them.

The breakout is a working kitchen rather than a showpiece. A long timber bench with bar stools runs against the joinery wall, sized for people to eat at, meet at and work at through the day.