Shrinking office: First look inside Aurecon’s new space where desk area drops from 70pc to 35pc

Matt Capon on those all-important stairs at Aurecon's new offices in Newmarket. Photo / Dean Purcell

It’s pretty telling when 70 per cent of your old office floorplan was taken up by desks but that’s only 35 per cent in the new offices.

Not all your staff will be in the office at once and when they do come in, it’s often to meet others.

That’s the situation for international engineering, design and advisory business Aurecon, which in April shifted to upmarket six-star green-rated building Te Tihi [the summit in a nod to nearby maunga (mountains)], 110 Carlton Gore Rd and which will in August welcome clients for a look-see.

Most of the floor space in the firm’s old Newmarket building had desks.

Bold in blue: the new Aurecon building Te Tihi [the summit] at 110 Carlton Gore Rd, Newmarket. Photo / Dean Purcell

But the layout of the firm’s new leased building shows a post-lockdown shift in office thinking and design: more breakout and meeting rooms, collaborative spaces, a whanau area, a semi-circular wood bench/cushion seating/meeting area called ‘camp fire’ [the ‘fire’ being an all-seeing central camera taking the place of the flames that zeros in on your face in an online meeting], quiet areas and a staff cafe with two kitchens and flexible walls so it can be enlarged.

A prayer room, sanctuary or mauri area where phones are banned and many different casual meeting areas versus more formal areas are also offered in the new floor layout.

The bosses and architects knew more people would work from home or from project offices and sometimes only specifically make their way into the office for set purposes like meeting colleagues or clients.

Internal stairs between levels two and three: designed to impress 400 structural engineers for Aurecon here and in Australia. Photo / Dean Purcell

Matt Capon, an Aurecon engineer and the firm’s NZ buildings leader, headed the moving process, Whakakāinga, and he took the Herald on a tour on Monday, telling how the Melbourne-headquartered business handled its Tāmaki Makaurau relocation.

Many staff have 45-minute to one-hour commutes so they’ve got to want to come into the office to undertake that, he explains.

The firm employs just under 500 staff in this city yet only offers only 250 “work points” at Te Tihi, so not everyone can be in the office at any one point in time.

Greenery and natural plants are a strong feature of the new Aurecon building at 110 Carlton Gore Rd, Newmarket. Photo / Dean Purcell

That’s the old pre-Covid times. We’ve moved on.

“We run on a 50 per cent ratio [of staff to desks] because we also have lots of project offices and our people work at those, Our policy is to work anywhere in New Zealand or the world, so we don’t expect all our staff to be in the office.”

Whakakāinga [to make or establish a home] was the kupu or ingoa given to the move.

That was governed by te ao Māori: what they did, how they went about it and how they are today on two levels of the new building.

Staff storage areas with a difference: at the new Aurecon building, 110 Carlton Gore Rd, Newmarket. Photo / Dean Purcell

“Through a series of engagements with iwi representatives from Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, the whakakāinga team developed an understanding of the cultural narrative including history of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, connection to whenua and nearby moana in Newmarket and how Aurecon’s culture integrates with that,” said the business in a book telling of the shift.

Aurecon and Warren & Mahoney worked with Figure Group’s chief relationship officer Te Aroha Grace on design features.

Light source - reception at Aurecon in Newmarket. Photo / Dean Purcell

But the move wasn’t all straightforward. First, staff relocated to the downtown Air NZ Building on Fanshawe St but Capon said that flooded, forcing a rethink.

So they then shifted to smaller premises within the Tower premises on the Queen/Customs Sts corner. It wasn’t till April that they could move to their new building developed by Mansons TCLM and sold to NZX-listed Stride Property.

Reception at Aurecon's new offices, 110 Carlton Gore Rd, Newmarket. Photo / Dean Purcell

Aurecon has taken a 12-year lease on 3200sq m: half of level two and all of level three in the premises with 2000sq m floor plates.

The interior fitout is thought to have cost $2m-plus but can’t be disclosed.

If they need to, they can lease more space lower down because a short-term leasing tenant took areas on the ground floor.

Aurecon’s fit-out has three activity zones with their own distinct colours and layout for what the staff call themselves - curious adventurers: darker ‘anchored spirit’ work points, brighter coloured ‘melting point’ innovation spaces and the more white-light ‘refined radiance’ hosting and event zones like reception.

Heart of new offices for Aurecon in Newmarket - moved in April, about to show off new premises to clients in August. Photo / Dean Purcell

An engineered timber internal staircase represents the curious adventurer’s waka and features carved aukaha and niho taniwha or guardian’s tooth patterns.

Capon says there was a lot riding on those stairs: “They had to be the best stairs in a company that has about 400 structural engineers here and in Australia. It needed to be an impressive staircase.”

If you’re an engineering business and you’re involved in your stair design, better give it the wow factor!

Matt Capon at the 'camp fire' meeting area in the new Aurecon building in Newmarket. Photo / Dean Purcell

The peaks and troughs in the design on the stairs refer to Auckland’s topography and is a powerful flexible pattern system that binds Aurecon and its connection to whakapa, whenua and the spiritual world,” the business says in its new handbook on the move.

That white tube light which is so dramatic throughout the office runs beneath those stairs too, carrying on the theme.

The ceiling-embedded Aurecon compass depicts prominent maunga including Maungawhau/Mt Eden, itself clearly visible from one side of the firm’s floor space.

In 2021, the Herald visited the site, calling it then a quarter-billion-dollar punt: a nine-level Auckland office block without any pre-commitment from tenants.

There were forecasts that Covid-19 would kill offices, but New Zealand’s wealthiest privately-owned commercial developer saw the opposite.

Mansons built the block covering almost 1.4ha without going to the market in advance to pre-lease space. The company’s Culum Manson said back two years ago that demand for new office buildings from his family-owned firm had risen sharply since last year’s lockdown, and instead of demand for new offices falling, it was rising sharply.

“It’s the opposite of what you’d expect,” said Manson, standing outside what is now Te Tihi but was then a building site.

All up, Capon says staff are pleased with the result: “What we’ve found with Covid is that teams got closer together with each other but more distance from other teams. What we’ve done here is we’ve created spaces people can’t get at home so they will come into the office.”

So Te Tihi unites staff, but in an entirely new way.

Haumi ē! Hui ē! Tāiki ē!

Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 23 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.