Architectus Brisbane Studio

Connected to climate and context

Located in architect Harry Seidler’s landmark Riverside Centre at 123 Eagle Street, our new home is quintessentially Brisbane – a relaxed, light and open space where views of Story Bridge are framed by lush greenery.

Our design team took a careful, stripped-back approach to the interiors, honouring Seidler’s vision by letting the building’s great bones shine through.

Bright and airy with concrete floors, the space is warmed with natural materials along with a sprinkling of plants.

As a newly unified studio, we placed a high priority on collaborative settings, from shared tables and meeting rooms for small group work to spaces for studio and client events.

Showcasing sustainable materials

Our team wanted the new Brisbane studio to walk-the-talk of our practice’s sustainability values, seizing the opportunity to experiment with next-generation materials as our very own client.

One of the ways we did that: a collaboration with Assemble Studio, designers and manufacturers of Australia’s first bamboo demountable partition system for internal glazing.

Free from any glues, silicones or screws, their modular, circular solution can be disassembled and re-used, and all components are recyclable and biodegradable.

Bamboo serves as a much-needed additional resource or even alternative to timber. Sustainable and scalable, it grows quickly and regenerates on its own. It can also store up to four times more CO2 and produce 35% more oxygen than traditional timbers, according to Assemble Studio.

It’s a material and system we were excited to showcase in our studio space.

Promoting a circular economy

Ahead of our move to Riverside we also worked with Project Net Zero to responsibly de-fit our two previous studios in Brisbane.

Promoting a circular economy, the organisation diverts items from landfill by repurposing, reusing, and donating office and hotel furniture as well as non-fixed assets to community groups.

By working with Project Net Zero, we avoided more than 10,700 kg going to landfill, with over 1800+ assets and 11,400+ kg collected by the organisation – representing 94% savings.

How did they do it? Initiatives included:

-Disassembly of large workstations into components that could be recycled responsibly.
-Desktops and damaged melamine drawers sent for processing and transforming into high-quality recycled materials like road base and aggregates.
-Donation of nearly 150 items to community organisations, including those helping people impacted by domestic violence, poverty, incarceration, homelessness, and natural disasters.

Carbon emissions savings

Slattery measured and reported the upfront embodied carbon emissions of our Riverside studio and compared the outcome against the Business-As-Usual (BAU) fit out benchmark from their own database.

Our completed fit out ultimately saved more than 15,495 kgCO2-e (10kgCO2-e/m2) compared to the BAU project.

That’s a carbon emissions savings equal to 63,489 km driven by an average petrol-powered passenger vehicle, according to Slattery.

The workplace as ‘living lab’

Our Brisbane studio is not only a place where creativity can flourish.

It’s a living lab where clients and collaborators can experience circular, sustainable solutions to workplace design.