The cost of an office does not end with construction; it is paid again every morning.
The cost of a badly planned office never appears all at once. It shows up in the ten minutes spent looking for a free meeting room, in the hours when people cannot work without headphones, and in the walls rebuilt when the team grows. Looking good does not mean an office works well.
Most of my work is in offices, and they form the largest part of my portfolio. That is partly because I enjoy the work, but there is another reason: offices bring more constraints together at once than any other type of interior. The order of decisions I have developed here is the same one I carry into clinics, public spaces, homes and masterplans.
The open-plan office did not deliver on its promise.
Open plan spread so that people would see one another and talk more. Two researchers from Harvard Business School measured this at two large companies, before and after the move. The result was the opposite of what was expected: face-to-face interaction fell by roughly three quarters, while email and messaging rose. When the walls came down people did not talk; they put on headphones.
Nor is this a new finding. Complaints about noise, distraction and privacy in open plan have been on record since surveys in the 1970s. In research carried out in the United States, only 28% of employees say they prefer open plan.
Calling everyone back to the office does not work on its own either. According to a study of roughly 14 million square metres of technology office space in Australia, moving from flexible arrangements to a three-day-a-week requirement raised occupancy on the busiest day by only 17 points.
The user of a house is known. The user of an office may not have been hired yet.
There is no single thing that makes an office difficult; several constraints overlap. All of the following have to be resolved in the same plan, at the same time.
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A changing team
Hiring, departures, moves between teams — the people using an office never remain the same. If the plan cannot absorb that change, every shift becomes a small refurbishment.
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Two modes of work at once
The same floor has to support talking and concentrating. The two interfere with each other; a layout that makes one easier usually makes the other harder.
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The limits of the building
On a leased floor, mechanical capacity, electrical supply, the column grid and the extent of alteration permitted by the landlord are fixed from the outset. Design cannot change them; it has to work with them.
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The business keeps running
A house can be emptied and renovated; a company usually cannot. Work carried out while the business continues has to be phased from the start.
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Decisions are shared
Decisions are made by a group: management, human resources, IT and finance. That is why the process has to be documented and staged.
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The result is visible
The success of a home can be subjective; the performance of an office becomes clear quickly. Are there enough meeting rooms? How many people work with headphones on? Where does a new starter sit?
Because all of them have to be resolved at once, the drawing in an office is the outcome of the work, not the work itself. Having learned that order here, I use the same approach in spaces with fewer constraints.
Problems do not arrive with a service name attached.
Nobody comes looking to buy “interior architecture”; they come with a problem. Below are the five I hear most often, and what each one calls for.
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“We are moving to a new office and cannot decide which floor to take.”
Two floors at the same rent can differ greatly in what they can accommodate. Column spacing divides the workspace, floor-to-ceiling height limits the services that can run above the ceiling, and the position of wet areas sets the spine of the plan from the outset. Equal rent does not make the two floors equal.
I assess the floor before you sign
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“Our office cannot keep up with our growth.”
Companies usually outgrow their offices not because they run out of space, but because the layout stops working. The floor was designed around the team structure at the time; when that structure changes, corridors become meeting areas and meeting rooms become storage. The real question is not how to fit in more desks, but which teams need to be near one another, which spaces sit empty during the day, and which elements can be made movable so they do not have to be rebuilt two years later.
Replanning the existing floor
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“The team cannot concentrate; everyone works in headphones.”
This is not a matter of habit; it is a planning problem. On a floor where spaces for conversation and focused work are not separated, neither works well. Acoustics is not a panel added afterwards; it is the result of the room layout, the ceiling and floor finishes, and the position of meeting areas.
Acoustic and spatial planning
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“We want to renovate without stopping work.”
It is possible — but only if phasing is planned from the outset. Work divided into phases afterwards often means paying twice, because service shafts and main connections are among the hardest decisions to reverse. Planned from the beginning, each phase can be completed and used in its own right, allowing the workplace to be refurbished without shutting down.
Phased construction planning
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“We want to be sure the work is built in accordance with the drawings.”
The quality of a space is not determined by drawings alone; it is shaped by hundreds of small decisions made on site. If no one checks how details are built, whether specified materials are replaced with equivalents, or how junctions are resolved, a gap opens between the design and the result. If the construction is with your own team, it is in your interest for that supervision to remain independent.
Architectural supervision and site monitoring
An office floor can change very little once the lease is signed.
Four of the five problems above surface after the work has started; the first arises before the contract is even signed. On office projects the most expensive mistakes are made not in the design but in the lease. A mistake made there cannot be undone by design; it can only be worked around, and that costs money every time.
A client leased a space to open a café. After the lease was signed it emerged that no alcohol licence could be obtained at that address. The space was attractive, the rent was reasonable and the design was feasible; but the business model did not work. This was not a problem design could solve — it was a question that should have been asked before signing.
The same applies in an office: which alterations the landlord permits, how many people the existing air conditioning can support, whether there is capacity in the electrical panel, how the fire escapes constrain your plan, whether the building allows work outside office hours. All of this can be established in a day before signing; after signing it takes months.
If you would like to talk while you are choosing a floor, you do not need to commission a project for that.
Specialisation is a starting point, not a boundary.
The questions asked before signing a lease are not unique to offices; offices simply bring all of them together at once. In a clinic or a home, the starting point is the same: what will happen here, who will use it, and how will the day unfold? These are the fields I have worked in so far.
Offices and corporate workplaces
Planning a leased floor, resolving acoustic and spatial relationships, refurbishing without stopping work, and managing a corporate decision process. Everything on this page up to this point describes that work.
See the projects-
Healthcare and clinics
Spaces where patient flow, privacy and the hygiene chain determine the plan. Here too, the question is use rather than square metres: how many treatment units will operate at once, and how should waiting and treatment be separated?
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Public and event spaces
Spaces where crowds move, and where acoustics and means of escape are fundamental to the design. The decisions made about sound and circulation in an office apply here too.
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Homes
Villas, flats and residential interiors. The opposite of an office: the users are known and the timescale is longer. I begin with the same questions; here, the answers become clear sooner.
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Urban scale
Masterplans and settlement studies. Where you place the entrance to a building is, at the larger scale, a decision about the route a pedestrian will take. Working at both scales helps reduce what is overlooked in either.
Six headings defined in the contract.
The sections above describe what the work involves; those below show how it is defined contractually. They are separate services; none is a prerequisite for another.
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Architectural Design
When the building itself is in question: massing, levels, where the light falls at different times of day, and where the structure constrains the plan. What the plot allows is the starting point.
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Interior Design
The shell exists; the spatial arrangement does not. Offices, clinics, homes and public spaces — materials, lighting and equipment are developed within this scope.
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Project Consultancy
For those who want professional input without commissioning a full project: assessing whether a space suits the intended use, developing the brief, reviewing an existing design and comparing tenders.
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Premium Visualisation
The images are produced from the same model I design in; when a decision changes in the model, it changes in the image too. What you see is the project itself.
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Construction Services
Where the drawing becomes built reality: details executed as resolved, and specified materials not quietly substituted with equivalents.
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Construction and Site Management
Managing and coordinating the site — or providing supervision only at key milestones. These are separate services; the contract states which one you have commissioned.
Design and construction can be organised in three ways.
“Turnkey” is not always best. Doing the work and checking that it is being carried out in accordance with the drawings are two separate jobs; when both sit with the same person, the client loses an independent means of control. All three arrangements are legitimate — what matters is knowing which one you are choosing.
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Design and construction both with me
One point of contact, and the arrangement that moves fastest. Questions that arise on site are not resolved without the designer because design and construction sit in the same place.
The trade-off is less independent supervision.
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Design with me, construction with your team
If you work with a team you trust, the drawings are prepared with enough clarity for that team to build from. Architectural supervision remains independent.
The trade-off is that coordination remains part of your workload.
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Design only
The project documentation is handed over to you and construction proceeds under your management. It is a natural choice for organisations that work with their own team.
The trade-off is that the question of who checks the gap between the design and the result remains open; I recommend at least limited supervision at critical stages.
To avoid surprises, it is more important to define the scope in writing than the price alone.
The fee is determined by the scope of the project and the service stages you commission. The main factors affecting it: the size and use of the floor, the difficulties of the existing building, the level of detail in the design and the extent of site monitoring. Two offices of the same floor area can differ markedly on these factors.
Two situations that give rise to additional fees are defined at the outset: an increase in scope, and a change to a decision that has already been approved.
Items that run as separate lines in the proposal
- Structural, mechanical and electrical design fees
- Charges tied to building management and landlord approvals
- Municipal fees, permit and building inspection charges
- Televisions, computers and similar electrical devices
- Supply of furniture and equipment (selection and layout are included in the design)
- IT infrastructure and security systems
The proposal states as clearly which services are not included as which are. Knowing these from the outset makes budget planning realistic.
Not every job needs this process.
The process I use moves in stages, with each stage closing on a decision. That has a cost; below a certain scale, the cost can exceed the benefit it brings. Renovating a single room or changing a handful of items is usually such a case.
If you call me about work like that, I will tell you so and, where I can, point you in the right direction. Turning down a job is better than selling you a process that will not serve you.
If you are unsure, asking costs nothing. The first conversation is free and creates no commitment.
Everything on this page comes down to one sentence: the quality of a space lies not in what is drawn, but in the decisions made. A good office works not because it was drawn correctly, but because it was thought through in the right order.
The detail behind the ideas on this page.
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How I Make Decisions
The principles behind decisions on scope, function, materials and long-term quality.
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Can another company carry out the construction?
Comparing tenders: the lowest is usually the one that covers the least.
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Questions Before You Start
27 questions on process, schedule, budget, revisions and site work.
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The working process
Five stages, and what is decided at each.
Let’s talk about your project.
When you are ready to talk, you can request a consultation and we will look at your project together.