Media: Verosol and the making of a dynamic, enviro-friendly workspace
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.
This article was originally published in Indesignlive.com by Matthew McDonald.
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.
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.
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.
