Description

The 1985 merger between the MLC financial services group and Lend Lease marks the beginning of an internal process of corporate renewal. This is communicated to the public through the modernisation of its headquarters, built in 1957 and since put under a preservation order. The pyramidal internal hierarchy was dismantled; a team-oriented corporate structure was created with an entirely new mode of working which has played a decisive role in the company’s current success.

In the planning process as well, new avenues of approach were taken. Together with the design team, consisting of the architects Bligh Voller Nield, the management consultants and architects DEGW and the project management specialist Bovis Lend Lease, MLC initiated an accompanying series of workshops and meetings with the goal of integrating employees in the planning process. The result of this complex project is a colourful office landscape, very personal and deliberately home­like, in that there are no private offices and no cubicles, but instead extended common areas with varied spatial qualities. The new space on MLC’s campus now reflects the successful renewal of its corporate culture.

The most important architectonic intervention was cuting a new stairwell in the H-shaped building. The stairway functions as a connecting element and a vertical ‘street’ with meeting rooms adjoining it. The different floors were developed as a series of themes, each with its own name, from the “Zen-Den,” equipped with abstract sculptures, a walk-in conference table and a tropical aquarium, through “The Table” – an outsized kitchen table – to “Café Six,” a commercial café walled with white boards for writing on, and the “Hospital Curtain Room.” Informal meetings or chance encounters promote internal communication and the exchange of knowledge. Therefore the common zones and the stairways were developed as richly as possible, all work surfaces connected to the digital network in accordance with a “Plug-and-Work” principle, and the lifts programmed to stop only at every second floor. In contrast, for the personalised work areas, the demand for maximum flexibility was brought to the fore. These areas are equipped with efficient, highly flexible workstations that allow an entire floor to be completely restructured within three days. Printers and plotters disappear in amorphous cells and so-called quiet rooms are available for concentrated work or telephone conferencing.

The renovation of a 1950s tower block is not only a courageous undertaking, but also a way of sustainability. Campus MLC, the unconventional result of a joint planing process, promotes teamwork and with the variety of spaces it offers, corresponds to the lifestyle of the modern office worker. Conceived as a vertical village, it is more a meeting point than a place of work and thereby exemplifies a modern office building.

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Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.