Medibank, Gray Puksand and Zenith come together to create a highly customised workplace for the Medibank head office in Australian Design Review (ADR)’s latest video feature.

Medibank’s head office, a 17,500-square-metre space located inside Melbourne Quarter Tower in Docklands, came with a brief to achieve three C’s: concentration, collaboration and connection. 

Connection pertained both to Country and to technological integration. Set to house over 2500 Medibank employees, the new office also needed to facilitate connection between the private health insurance provider’s staff.

“We take a human-centric approach to our workplace design,” Medibank national design and construction manager Duncan Harper explains in ADR’s video feature.

“We have a real focus on our people and their wellbeing. Being a health and wellbeing business, it would be pretty remiss if we didn’t.”

A collaborative effort

Three teams put their minds together to achieve the three C’s and design an innovative, future-proof workplace. 

Australian architecture and design practice Gray Puksand joined Harper to design Medibank’s head office, under the guidance of lead partner Heidi Smith. Coming on board the supplier side was Zenith, an Australian leader in sustainable design, known for its track record in partnering on the design of workplaces of the future.

The needs and opinions of more than 300 Medibank staff, including a neurodiverse group, also heavily influenced the design process in workshops with Gray Puksand.

“They talked about the energy level that they bring to work but also the energy level that they like to work within,” Harper says. These insights informed the creation of different “energy zones” throughout the building for focused work, in-person meetings and hybrid online meetings.

Designing for customisation and tech integration

The Medibank head office project started with a pilot floor in 2022 as a ‘proof of concept’. This proofing process allowed the client and the designer to fine tune the design. They also worked with Zenith to test the custom furniture and technology solutions, developing and locally manufacturing products that responded to the project’s needs.

The sheer scale of Medibank’s head office and the complexity of custom product and technology integration meant Zenith collaborated more closely than is typical with the designer. According to Zenith client relationship manager Jessica Bell, Gray Puksand approached Zenith with 18 different workstation typologies that they tested throughout the pilot program.

“We really need to understand our workspace, our space utilisation and the user experience, especially to attract and retain staff,” Bell says.

“We can incorporate technology into our workplace solutions so we can really analyse that data. It means that our clients can understand the needs of their modern workspace. And in terms of real estate, they can utilise the floorplan to its full capacity.”

Overall, the project includes six floors that have been carefully designed and fitted out with a range of custom furniture solutions that effortlessly fuse form, function and technology. The end result serves different energy levels – from low-tech settings for gathering in person, to open collaboration areas with screens and chairs.

“Hybrid working was the key. We had to make sure the experience of being in the workspace or at home were equal and that you had that sense of connection to people no matter where they were,” Smith says.

“That true integration between beautiful furniture and well-resolved technology seamlessly integrated into it was essential and Zenith played a big part [in] that.”

Connecting to Country

The part of the design Harper says Medibank is “most proud of” is its connection to Country.

“We said at the start we don’t want to just put a plaque on the wall [or] do a smoking ceremony; we wanted something embedded in our design,” he says. 

“We took our whole team to Coranderrk, which is a sacred land, with [Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elder] Uncle Dave Wandin.”

Smith says the design team had “amazing experiences” working with Uncle Dave to establish the design narrative – ‘the life force of water’. Moments in the design represent the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, from Mount Baw Baw to Port Phillip Bay, and also reflect Melbourne’s life force: the Yarra River. 

The video shows a cascading staircase that connects all the levels of Medibank’s head office, each with ‘Yarning Circles’ at their landing points, “providing that real connection back to storytelling and the Custodians of our land”, according to Smith.

“The materials, the artwork and the furniture all speak to that journey and to those different levels of energy,” she says.

A journey with client, designer and supplier

“Layer upon layer upon layer” of human-centric design decisions have been integrated into the finished design of Medibank’s head office, according to Harper, making it just the right fit for its present and future workforce.

“The journey of our building takes you through the Country and all of our suppliers and design team have come on that journey with us to hopefully bring that to life for everybody,” he says.

For more information on how to future-proof your workplace project, visit the Zenith website.

Photography by Tatjana Plitt.