Hassell Talks

Whether you’re a CEO, a property manager or a workplace designer, the office has been the headline conversation of 2020. How many will go back? What will it look like? How will workplace culture change?

Whatever line of inquiry you follow, we know a mix of qualitative and quantitative insights will give us the greatest handle on what’s happening in a workplace.

Evodia Alaterou, our design strategy lead joins Alex Birch, co-founder and CEO of tech start-up XY Sense to discuss what they’ve learned gathering data from four workplace and employee experience leaders in Australia.

And we get to hear directly from people inside those businesses too: Cameron McIntosh from Arup, Madeline Mios from Culture Amp, Mark Comer from Cbus and Adam Fitzhenry from Sunsuper all talk about the challenges their organisations faced – and how those made them re-think the tools they use to understand and measure their workplace performance and their culture.

It’s a topic we’ve been examining closely, in everything from our Workplace Beyond 2020 survey to one of our latest podcasts – a ‘Creative Conversation’ on the future of corporate campuses.

Hassell Talks is brought to you by international design firm Hassell. 

Some designers say the ​‘hardware’ of a campus is what makes it magnetic. For them, it’s about the architecture, spaces and settings that give form to a company’s aspirations and reflect the best of its people and location. Others would argue the secret’s in the ​‘software’ - the less visible elements like programming and technology that make a campus dynamic, inspiring and often surprising. But the magic could come down to the mix. An irresistible environment with unmissable experiences.

These are the questions that fire up two of our design minds and frequent campus collaborators - Rob Backhouse, Head of Design here at Hassell, and Adam Scott, Executive Creative Director of experience master planners FreeState, part of our design family.

In this podcast - a rollicking ​‘Creative Conversation’ like the ones we have around the table (and sometimes late into the night) - Rob and Adam share their insights on what’s next for large-scale workplaces. In the process, they also tell us what ​‘Field of Dreams’, theatre productions and a shaman in a cave might teach us about a campus people can’t resist - post-COVID and beyond.

Plants in our cities are important for many reasons, like supporting urban cooling and biodiversity as well as human wellbeing and health.

But they also impact on the economies of our cities. Green cities are just as attractive to developers and investors as those who just want to stop and smell the roses.

Parts 1 and 2 looked at why we value wild, natural planting in our cities as well as the importance of scale, ecology and sustainability when creating landscapes that appear natural and organic. 

In part 3, Jon Hazelwood joins writer, garden designer and TV presenter Michael McCoy as well as Professor Nigel Dunnett, responsible for some of the UK’s most spectacular planted environments to explore the significance of our emotional connections to nature in cities. 

Hassell Talks is produced by international design studio, Hassell. 

The debate around native or exotic urban planting can sometimes be a thorny one, culturally, environmentally and emotionally and over the longer term, climate change brings the role of planting and landscape into sharp focus as we consider the future health of our cities.

Wholly exotic landscapes bring with them issues of culture, context and invasive issues. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Carefully controlled “wild” environments like small pocket parks or larger spaces like New York's famous High Line in are vastly different, but non-native plants play a crucial role alongside native species. In this way designers are ensuring biodiversity, eco-systems and cultural aspects are all catered and cared for.

Jon Hazelwood joins Professor James Hitchmough and internationally acclaimed garden designer Piet Oudolf to propose a different, less binary way of thinking about natives and non-natives. Together they look at why carefully considered planting needs to be seen at scale, and for people, ecology and wildlife.

It might be hard to measure, but we know interacting with nature has an impact on our emotions – and that’s never been more apparent in cities during lockdown. But does the kind of planting we encounter in urban environments matter? Are planned and cultivated spaces what we need, or could we be craving ‘wilder’, less predictable landscapes that fully immerse us in nature?

In Part 1 of a mini-series investigating naturalistic planting in our urban environments, Jon Hazelwood joins Claudia West – director of Phyto studio and co-author of Planting in a Post-Wild World – and Robert Hammond, co-founder and CEO of The High Line, about planting the seeds for a deeper, more fulfilling relationship with nature, whatever the space, scale or budget.

Hassell Talks is brought to you by international design studio, Hassell.

Beyond the impeccable dress sense, designers working in fashion and city-making have a lot in common - both sectors can have indisputable impacts on the world - on a very large scale.

Right now they also have an opportunity to think more deeply about the impact of their work on people, places and our collective future.

While fashion is often fast and seasonal and architectural design is often a longer process, both are responsible for dictating trends and aspirations – and both can generate significant amounts of waste.

Interplanetary architect Xavier de Kestelier, got together with Christopher Raeburn, Creative Director at Timberland and sustainable fashion brand RÆBURN, to talk about whether the similarities in supply chain and more collaboration between the industries could lead to greater sustainability overall. 

Can design firms be truly future-focused if they’re not appealing to the next generation? What will attract the best designers of the future? How do firms give talent the right platforms to make a positive difference?

We are obsessed with how design can make a difference in the future. We asked Jan Owen AM, Co Chair / Convenor of Learning Creates Australia, and former CEO of Foundation for Young Australians, and Hassell's Steve Coster to uncover what makes tomorrow’s design leaders tick, what they’re looking for – and how to unleash their world-changing potential.

Hassell Talks is produced by international design practice, Hassell. 

Stepping carefully up to the crater’s edge, white boots kicking up swirls of red dust, the figure lowers themselves carefully down to sit on an ancient boulder - and pulls out an A3 sketchpad.

The stranger surveys the Martian landscape, interrogates the form and flowing expanse in front of them and starts to sketch out a narrative created over millions of years. They fill their empty page with illustrations telling the story of the planet and its potential for life.

What is this space-traveller, are….what, exactly? A scientist? An artist? Or both?

Sanjeev Gupta, professor of Earth Science at Imperial College London and part of the Mars Curiosity rover mission currently exploring Gale Crater for NASA joins interplanetary architect Xavier de Kestelier to examine the necessity of blurred boundaries between science and architecture, if humans are to successfully live on the Red Planet.

Hassell Talks is produced and brought to you by international design practice, Hassell.

Events like COVID-19, wildfires and hurricanes teach us valuable lessons about the way people – and the public places built for them – respond and recover post disaster.

If they’re not confined to their homes, communities are separated – scattering to places for medical attention, shelter or to the comfort of community. They could find themselves anywhere from a sports stadium to a community hall - to a beach.

Greg Kochanowski, Studio Director at Rios Clementi Hale, and climate & science reporter Molly Peterson join Hassell's Richard Mullane in this podcast to discuss how resilience – the ability for an environment to recover – isn’t developed in the aftermath of a disaster.

The foundations are built way before, so that when emergencies do come, people are strong enough to get through them. It’s less about what’s built and more about what’s designed for – a different kind of design thinking that should be part of the ‘new normal’.

Universities want to show their students and academics a really good time - the better the experience, the more appealing it is to stay a while for study, work and play.

The multi-million dollar marketing campaigns may draw in the curious crowds, but what makes them stick around? Researcher Michaela Sheahan hosted a panel conversation in our Brisbane studio with collaborators and clients to hear what clients and Universities see happening, and what they believe is necessary in the experience of students on campus.

Acknowledgement:

This episode of Hassell Talks was recorded in both Wurundjeri and Turrbal Country. We pay our respects to elders past and present. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.

Credit:

Edited & Produced by Prue Vincent