Indesign - Issue 95 - The 'Workplace and City Building' Issue (PREVIEW)

Guest Editor

Domenic Alvaro

Zayed National Museum by Foster + Partners 1 Elizabeth Street by JPW + Architectus Hermès Taichung by RDAI

Golden Hour by Swee Design & Upstairs Yellow & Rob Ryan Projects Alibaba Campus XIXI Park C by ASPECT STUDIOS The Workplace and City Building Issue

Geometry of Life [Chapter 1]. A movie shot at Palazzo Molteni, Milan. moltenigroup.com

Hello!

Working with the Indesign team on this incredible issue has been a delight. Passion and clear thinking have ruled the discussions around city building and workplace. As such, we looked at large and small projects, but more o en than not we came back to projects and ways of thinking that were collaborative, multiuse, flexible, and designed to support a growing community.

Exploring the Issue theme of “Workplace and City Building”, we look at what it is that makes a city sing. Culture is a primary driver, with small cities punching above their weight, as we see with Orange Regional Gallery’s exhibition Purple Haze by Nike Savvas (p.76). Larger cities, such as Brisbane, are layering this cultural aplomb with an emphasis on great art (Olafur Eliasson, p.88) and great architecture, supported by phenomenal infrastructure and design (p.82). One of the very first multifunctional spaces, the Basilica di Massenzio (which speaks to my Italian heritage) in the Roman Forum, has been refreshed (p.144), while Younghusband in Naarm / Melbourne is emerging as a new model for multiuse development (p.154).

The projects are brilliant, with 1 Elizabeth Street an impressive example of meeting workplace needs (p.120). In China, the Alibaba Campus XIXI Park C will cater to 30,000 employees (p.136) with parklands and kitchen gardens, ponds and vistas. Conversely, Golden Hour is an appropriately intimate workplace with a daring aesthetic (p.112).

Culture of place is picked up again with the Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi, where a cultural precinct has turned a field into a major destination (p.96). Hermès continues to be a marker of a city’s success, with the latest iteration in Taichung proving that good design can and does perpetually evolve (p.128). As do great public spaces, with St Kilda Pier’s refresh improving the amenity for locals immensely while drawing in a new and leisure conscious crowd (p.104).

Each year, the INDE.Awards selects four outstanding practitioners, and we are thrilled to reveal the 2026 INDE.Awards luminaries: David Teh, Kerstin Thompson, Angelene Chan, and Sonali and Manit Rastogi – each profiled by the extraordinary Jan Henderson. What an amazing bunch of people (p.52).

Taking on the role of Guest Editor has been an insightful journey into creating a magazine. Working out what works together, for example, but also balancing size, cost, fame, etc, to provide an honest overview. It has been a curious experience in that it’s an opportunity to support the makers, architects, artists, suppliers, and producers that make the world of architecture possible. Some, but certainly not all, of my favourites are given the stage via In Short (p.15).

Domenic Alvaro Guest Editor

Chairman and Founder Raj Nandan raj@indesign.com.au

CEO Kavita Lala kavita@indesign.com.au

Guest Editor Domenic Alvaro Woods Bagot gillian@indesign.com.au

Editor Gillian Serisier gillian@indesign.com.au

Editor (Digital) Timothy Alouani-Roby timothy@indesign.com.au

INDE.Awards

Program Director Jan Henderson jan@indesign.com.au

Senior Brand Manager Brune a Stocco brune a@indesign.com.au

Partnerships and Media Manager Katie Staver katie@indesign.com.au

Account Director (Singapore) Karmen Lee karmen@indesign.com.sg

Senior Media Executive (Singapore) Shahila Juraimi shahila@indesign.com.sg

Group Operations Manager Sheree Bryant sheree@indesign.com.au

Head of Production Anna Carmody anna@indesign.com.au

Production Coordinator Paul Ayoub paul@indesign.com.au

Sub Editor Rachel Fieldhouse

Finance Manager

Vivia Felice vivia@indesign.com.au

Art Direction & Design Sylvia Weimer, Spacelab Design

Digital Design

Ekaterina Podloujnaya ekaterina@indesign.com.au

Online Manager Radu Enache radu@indesign.com.au

Marketing Executive Nicola Nolan Nicola@indesign.com.au

Event Manager Roisin Fagan roisin@indesign.com.au

Indesign Correspondents

Leanne Amodeo (Editor at Large) Sarah Hetherington (Indo Pacific) Stephen Cra i (Melbourne) Mandi Keighran (London) Andrea Stevens (New Zealand)

Contributors

Timothy Alouani-Roby, Domenic Alvaro, Dakota Benne , Donna Bre West, Allan Fraser-Rush, Jan Henderson, Sarah Hetherington, Gillian Serisier, Stephen Todd.

Photographers Peter Benne s, Patrick Bingham Hall, Bre Boardman, John Brash, Sco Burrows, C Callistemon, Peter Clarke, Nicole England, Robert Frith, Rory Gardiner, Gion, David Gray, Kenryou Gu, Rasmus Hjortshøj, Takeru Koroda, Jessica Lindsay, Hamish McIntosh, Trevor Mein, Giuseppe Mio o, Cieran Murphy, Jamie North, Papermill, Yasunori Shimomura, Leo Showell, Anson Smart, Juliana Tan, Alicia Taylor, N Umek, Jonny Valiant, Visual Verve, Wang Wengii, Steven Woodburn, Nigel Young, Kyle Yu.

Artists

Olafur Eliasson, Dale Frank, Callum Morton, Rose Nolan, Nike Savvas, Lucas Simões, Coen Young, Samson Young.

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Introducing the Voices of Indesign

The ‘Workplace and City Building’

Issue

Domenic Alvaro Director, Woods Bagot

One of the industry’s most original thinkers, the Woods Bagot Global Director consistently draws from the unique context of his projects to ensure one-of-a-kind outcomes that are true to their se ing. From concept to completion, Domenic ensures that a project’s narrative breathes life and personality throughout – resulting in outcomes that are surprising and delightful, down to the very last detail. Dedicated to agitating traditional typologies, Domenic is a designer who breaks from convention to unlock spatial potential. Having led projects in Australia, Europe, and Asia, Domenic’s work refuses to be defined by a single typology – ranging from mixed use developments that redefine the way nature can be woven into a city and experiential large-scale transportation links, to landmark commercial precincts, holistic masterplans, and residential that defines the way we will live tomorrow. Based in Sydney, Domenic’s notable projects include the upcoming 55 Pi Street tower, 25 Martin Place, the Ivy, Short Lane, and the WAF-award-winning Small House.

Old soul, new energy: Younghusband Woolstore Redevelopment, page 154.

Gillian Serisier Editor

Editor of both Indesign and Habitus magazines, Gillian brings a solid background in design journalism to her role. With twenty years in the design media industry, Gillian is a highly regarded arbiter and design champion. Working closely with the Architecture and Design community, Gillian has selected a series of exceptional Guest Editors to host Indesign over the coming issues. Spanning architecture, landscape, art, and all elements of design from textiles to furniture, tiles to lighting, there is a wealth of content to benefit from her collaborative editorship.

Zayed National Museum by Foster + Partners, page 96.

Academic

Superstar of the art academic world, Donna is an Associate Professor and Chair of Art History at the University of Sydney, specialising in the history of photography, and modern and contemporary art. Her internationally recognised transhistorical and interdisciplinary research on photography interrogates the intersection of materiality and practice, visual culture and structures of power. Donna is the author of Photography and Place: Seeing and Not Seeing Germany Aer 1945 (Routledge, 2016); editor with Natalya Lusty of Photography and Ontology: Unseling Images (Routledge 2019), which was awarded AAANZ AWAPA Best Anthology 2020; and editor with Deborah Ascher Barnstone of Modernist Aesthetics in Transition: Visual Culture in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany (Bloomsbury, 2025). She is a recipient of the Academy of the Humanities’ Ernst & Rosemarie Keller Award in 2017 for her work on the East German Stasi Surveillance Archive, and a Sloan Fellow in Photography at Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford (Trinity College, 2024). In Hilary Term, 2026, she will be an Oliver Smithies Visiting Lecturer of Balliol at the University of Oxford.

Nike Savvas, page 76.

Adam Haddow Director, SJB

A director at SJB since 2002 and now a partner, Adam is a Churchill Fellow who investigated alternatives to conventional models of urban design. The sabbatical resulted in a research project entitled ‘Shall We Dense?’, an examination into the state of modern density living in Australia that led to successful collaborations within the professional and architectural realms. The National President of the Australian Institute of Architects, Adam leads the Institute in its mission to promote excellence in architecture and advocates for the role of architects in shaping the built environment. He works closely with the Institute’s members, stakeholders, and partners to ensure that the voices of architects are heard, and that the industry is equipped to meet the challenges of the future. Photo: Katie Kaars.

What is the nature of the workplace in today’s world? page 160.

Dakota Benne Writer

The latest to join the Indesign editorial team, Dakota is a digital content editor at Indesignlive and Habitusliving With a background in international security, her work covers design, culture, and everyday life. Driven by an interest in how spaces shape behaviour, belonging, and the idea of place, she writes across architecture, interiors, and the lived experience of design, with a particular focus on storytelling and the unique environments shaping the world of architecture.

Brisbane: A city in motion, page 82.

EVOKE

Dale Frank

Undoubtedly one of Australia’s foremost and most proli c contemporary artists, Dale Frank (b.1959), rarely disappoints. Since the 1970s, Frank has challenged notions of art, and in particular what constitutes painting, through an everevolving repertoire of materials. Best known for his alchemical poured paintings, Frank’s approach to his practice is conceptual and multidisciplinary, having created sculpture, performance, and sound art throughout his international career. His paintings act as swirling portals or vortices into his mind’s eye – intergalactic worlds, psychedelic fantasies, expansive universes and the uncanny. O en imbued with a touch of the absurd and at times the abject. Humour is ever-present in his titles, sex toys, taxidermy, and in the mirrored Plexiglass surfaces. One sees themselves and the abyss. At his best, he is a genius. Frank turned the anti-aesthetic into an aesthetic; this tension between surface spectacle and psychological depth solidi es his position as one of Australia’s most compelling and uncompromising contemporary voices.

Words, Sarah Hetherington, Art advisor.

Right: Dale Frank, Aer their rst night together she developed eczema over her thighs and legs but said it had nothing to do with him being indigenous, 2020. Powder pigments in resin, epoxyglass, on Perspex, 200 x 200 cm. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc. Le : Dale Frank, They meet in the Premier First Class Poker Machine Lounge of the South Tweed Sportmans Club but it was not till the next morning aer she paid for breakfast and the room that he realised she was the real Meg Ryan, someone famous and 15 years older than him, 2020. Pigments in easycast resin, epoxyglass on Perspex, 200 x 200 cm. Courtesy the artist and Neon Parc.

neonparc.com.au

Lightness and tension

Colendra brings together two visionary Brazilian creatives, Joaquim Tenreiro, the pioneer of modern Brazilian furniture, and Lucas Simões, a contemporary artist whose new furniture collection extends his sculptural practice into the realm of design. By placing their work in dialogue, the evolving language of Brazilian materiality, cra smanship, and form is explored. Tenreiro revolutionised mid-century furniture by rejecting the weighted colonial aesthetic in favour of elegant, airy structures that embody both modernist principles and the organic beauty of Brazilian woods. Conversely, Simões brings a distinctly contemporary sensibility, one that embraces architecture, materials, experimentation, and the interplay of solidarity, solidity, and void.

ulyssesdesanti.com

Protecting the night sky

BEGA pole-top luminaires with BugSaver® technology protect nocturnal fauna by reducing the color temperature from 3000 Kelvin to an amber color around 1800 Kelvin, which reduces the light attractive effect. The color temperature and output can be controlled dynamically. bega.com/bugsaver

Design is the defining element of any Laminex product, but so too is innovation, with new solutions answering architectural needs across all sectors.

Architectural ease

It is this commitment to architects and designers that has seen Laminex ourish as a highly regarded product provider for more than 90 years. E ectively, it is a company that keeps pace with architectural needs, helps shape the aesthetics of each era, and is continually looking for ways to improve its products.

Mark Simpson, Joint Creative Director, DesignO ce, elaborates: “Laminex has been an important part of the Australian design landscape for over 90 years. Their extensive range and continued commitment to product innovation and local manufacturing makes them a valued go-to within our studio library.”

The latest innovation is an expansion of the Architectural Wall Panels range to include the new Classic Flat pro le. Designed and manufactured in Australia, Classic Flat Wall Panels introduce a sleek, at surface expression for walls, balancing re ned simplicity with streamlined installation. Simplifying labour and signi cantly reducing installation time for builders and installers, the exclusive Laminex InvisiLock system delivers a seamless, bow- and gap-free result.

Providing seamless integration across projects, the range has a very clever reversible design that provides two looks within a single panel: a subtle 1mm pencil line joint or the architecturally impressive 7mm express joint.

Compounding the design excellence is a range of eleven thoughtfully curated woodgrain décors from the Laminex Colour

Collection, including authentic Australian natives from the Next Generation Woodgrains series. With choices ranging from Spotted Gum and Blackbutt to Victorian Ash and Tasmanian Oak, there is a beautiful woodgrain to suit any project. Being as close to an authentic timber nish as possible, the Next Generation Woodgrains range brings the warmth, depth, and texture of natural timber to interior spaces. All Classic Flat décors are available in Laminex’s premium AbsoluteGrain nish, reinforcing the sense of material authenticity through a highly realistic, tactile surface.

Moreover, the introduction of the Classic Flat pro le increases the brand’s o ering in decorative surfaces to a choice of four wall panel pro les — Batten 40, Batten 60, VGroove 100 and now Classic Flat — and three ceiling pro les. As such, the range presents endless opportunities to create considered, design-led spaces.

“Classic Flat, part of Laminex’s Architectural Wall Panels range, is a direct response to what architects and installers have been seeking — a pro le that unites exibility, e ciency, and lasting strength with the quiet elegance of natural timber,” said Rachel Oakley, Head of Marketing at Laminex.

Laminex Architectural Wall Panels are backed by several certi cations including GECA, PEFC/Responsible Wood and EPD. Moreover, the wall panels are Fire Group 3-rated and made from moisture-resistant, decorated MDF that is designed to withstand scratches, stains, and impact.

Italian charm

Indesign Bowermans

When selecting furniture for hospitality, whether it’s the Italian heritage of Billiani or the playful charm of In niti (also Italian), Bowermans believes that hospitality is where memories are made. Creating spaces designed to bring people together through connection, Bowermans brings hospitality to life – balancing adaptability with elegance, performance with personality, and durability with design.

bowermans.com.au

New frontier

Indesign Autex Acoustics

Made from 100 per cent PET with a minimum 80 per cent recycled content, AUTEX FRONTIER is a brilliantly sustainable acoustic solution. Available in ns and ra s, Frontier provides the tools for designers to shape unique spaces and create subtle way nding cues or a cohesive visual language, all while delivering targeted sound-absorption across workplaces, education, hospitality, and large open spaces. Image, Frontier Tundra and Ripple in Opera.

autexacoustics.com.au