Project Overview

Birdon are a long-standing, Australian Shipbuilding and repair, engineering and project management, dredging and shipping, disposals and marine construction company. Birdon is proudly wholly Australian owned with its headquarters based in Port Macquarie NSW. Founded in 1977, the Birdon group of companies currently employs approximately 400 personnel internationally, with operations throughout Australia, America, Europe and Asia.

Project Brief

Still operating out of the same warehouse and office building since its inception, the Birdon office was very tired, no longer practical and overdue for a workspace renovation. So Birdon engaged Evoke to help get their workplace not only back on track, but in creating an inviting and employee-focused space, aligned to their evolving teams and services, but still being based in a challenging, existing, older building and location.

Project Innovation/Need

As Birdon’s industry is primarily in manufacturing and marine, we kept the overall look and feel industrial, raw and edgy as we to striped out the existing ground floor store rooms and workshop converting them into much needed office space, client hot desking, new amenities, and meeting spaces. We also had to ensure we kept ceiling heights as high as possible as they were very low to begin with, so services were in many cases exposed.

The first floor this is the main office space and the aim was to make this as open plan as possible, we removed numerous walls and rooms that made if feel like a rabbit warren. The colours selected were to carry on the industrial approach and also their branding colour scheme, monochrome with accents of Birdon Red with hints of marine ply look to provide warmth.

The staff now have view to the river which was previously only seen when in a few offices. Creating an open plan layout helped bring much need natural light into the workspace and significantly increased workpoint capacity and staff productivity and interaction.

Design Challenge

Unfortunately, being a flood prone area and being affected by high flood waters in recent years. A lot of the design was focused on alleviating flooding issues so hard, cleanable and durable finishes were employed for health and safety and future proofing. However, in using such materials and solid finishes as brick, ceramic tiles and powdercoated metal, acoustics can be tricker to maintain and achieve. As to try and take away the reverberation of the hard surfaces we used feature acoustic wall cladding and ceiling panels to help with acoustic, soften and add interest to the spaces.