Home base
The choice to work at home is more enjoyable with a dedicated space for a home office. By Stephen Crafti
The Covid-19 pandemic changed a great many things, not least of which was working habits. Fewer staff now work full-time in the office, and choose to make the most of a more relaxed approach to where they can get their day’s work done.
With so many having one foot of their working life in the office and the other planted firmly at home, the home office has quickly become a space that’s every bit as important as the kitchen or living area.
There is not one, but two home offices in the large house in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill that was designed by SRH Architecture. The 1,000-square-metre house is spread over four levels, including basement parking, and was designed to accommodate an extended family.
“Our client was keen to spend more time working from home, seeing more of the family and enjoying the flexibility this arrangement offers,” says architect and SRH architecture director Simon Hanson.
The main home office accounts for approximately 50 square metres on the first floor — or roughly the size of a one-bedroom apartment. This office has large, angled picture windows, orientated to the north and framing established street trees. A second home office is located on the top level and used primarily for painting and crafts.
For visiting colleagues, the house makes a grand impression akin to entering a corporate lobby. Its atrium area has an approximately 11-metre-high ceiling, and large paintings are curated as if in an art gallery. En route to the home office, business associates are just as likely to be offered something to drink in one of the spacious living areas.
The main home office is well appointed. There are built-in walnut bookshelves matching a large walnut desk. The architects included a built-in window seat, finished in leather, to complement the leather-topped desk.
Technology is baked in, including internet boosters and a connections to the 1.6-metre-wide satellite dish on the roof that is capable of picking up just about every channel on the planet. However, there’s also the ability to brainstorm analogue-style, with a large whiteboard positioned adjacent to the desk.
“We’re finding that people are looking for a dedicated space in their homes, particularly those who have young children,” Hanson says.
The home office in a single-fronted Victorian terrace in Melbourne’s North Fitzroy is pint-sized by comparison. The brief to Sonelo Architects from the client, a landscape designer, was to create a home office that felt immersed in the lush garden setting. The two-bedroom terrace was restored and renovated, including a new kitchen and dining area orientated to the north. A small pocket-sized home office, loosely delineated from the back porch, features a built-in desk, a new window, and an Artemide wall light that can be orientated towards the desk or built-in shelves.
With the home office being relatively modest in scale, the owner also utilises the kitchen table to meet with her clients. Or, on warmer days, there’s the option of the rear terrace or the back garden.
“Our client has one staff member working here, so the two spaces are generally interchanged,” says Wilson Tang, director of Sonelo Architects. Given the nature of the owner’s business, there are plants on the deck, in the home office and in the kitchen, creating a verdant environment. A polycarbonate roof over the deck also offers a protective space during inclement weather. “The home office, as much as the house, mirrors the way our client both lives and works,” Tang says.
Architect Robert Simeoni included a home office in a large three-level house in Melbourne’s Armadale. Constructed in concrete, the house features a large office to one side of the entrance, or vestibule. “It was important the office had its own entrance so clients didn’t disturb the family and vice versa. It was conceived like a separate pavilion,” Simeoni says.
There is customised joinery in every room of the house and in the home office, a patinated bronze desk was designed for the space which is shared with a few armchairs. Featuring the same in-situ concrete ceiling and walls as the rest of the house, the home office is simply framed with a large picture window that takes in a front garden designed by landscape architect Myles Baldwin. American oak floors and bespoke oak joinery provide a simple and restrained material palette.
According to Simeoni, home offices “require a degree of privacy that separates the family from clients. But it should also have its own ‘sense of place’, and be large enough to be comfortable and functional.”
Simeoni also included technology to facilitate virtual meetings that give out the right message – professionalism. “You don’t want your clients looking at a washing line in the back garden,” Simeoni says.
While the pandemic has forever changed the way people work, it’s important to be able to still welcome colleagues or clients for in-person meetings, and to have an appropriate space for the purpose, says architect Simon Hanson. “Face-to-face meetings are part of the way we communicate and work,” he says, “but there’s the convenience of working from home, and importantly, enjoying every part of the house, be it for work or pleasure.”
This is an extract from an article that appears in print in our thirteenth edition, Page 112 of Winning Magazine with the headline: “Home base”. Subscribe to Winning Magazine today.
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