PODCAST: The highs and lows of designing JLL’s Sydney office

“It's kind of surreal because I get to see the office that we designed in action.”

Office designer Christina Khoo, from JLL’s Work Dynamics, delivered a career-defining brief in March in the shape of a new central Sydney office for the global real estate services firm, JLL – her employer.

The office, over three floors, in Sydney’s Circular Quay precinct is hospitality-driven in its design and meets the criteria for a six-star Green Star sustainability rating, as well as Platinum WELL wellbeing rating.

“The line-up for the complimentary barista coffee is often long, but colleagues are meeting in the queue and saying, ‘Oh, I’m working on this,’ or ‘Hey, you should chat to this person.’ It’s huge for collaboration.”

With “many cooks in the kitchen”, reaching consensus with colleagues on aspects of the office design was not always a smooth process.

“When you’re an external design firm on a project for a client, you often don't see the nitty gritty of trying to fight for certain things, and you’re not really part of the conversations about budget. But this project was all open book so there was a lot of managing people's expectations and going, ‘I really love your idea about a vape room. Thank you so much, we'll just park that for now and get back to you’.”

Listen to the podcast with Christina Khoo, and other Perspectives podcast episodes, here