CCDHB has an exciting new office fitout at Wellington Hospital. The existing building was designed a long while ago for clinical purposes, not an office. It has a large deep floor plan with high window sills which presented some design challenges for a modern, flexible, office fitout. 

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To answer the brief, Pelorus Architecture embraced several proven, space-planning and aesthetic principles:

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• Staff who are based predominantly on the floor are situated around the perimeter where they enjoy good natural light and external outlook. 

• Staff who work largely in other hospital clinical areas, but use this floor as a touch-down, home-base, are located centrally in a large, open shared, flexible working environment.

• Offices were constructed on an essential-needs-only basis. They are modest in size and flexible in their configuration so they can revert to quiet rooms or meeting rooms in future. 

• Double rooms are provisioned for easy subdivision should future needs dictate.

• The décor and colour reflect CCDHB's corporate brand values and while there are elements of strong colour as accents, the new office feels calm and restrained. The design itself was all about connections between staff. So, the accent carpet colours are arranged randomly across the floor so one area is not more defined than another. The angled accent flooring motif is reflected in the coloured strips of glass manifestation on the office frontages.

• Sustainability was an important consideration for this project. For example, the carpet tile used is carbon neutral and close-loop recyclable - the carbon saved by specifying this tile is 13 tonnes - the equivalent of 52,568km travel by a standard petrol-powered car - more than the circumference of the earth.

• To make the floor as airy and open-feeling as possible a brave decision was made to avoid a suspended ceiling. For most of the floor, the building services are visible and accessible overhead, which provides a higher, more lofty and slight industrial aesthetic. A cost-effective acoustic treatment was added above the services, on the underside of the slab.

• The base building structure is expressed and celebrated in a contemporary and edgy way, through grinding of wall surfaces. The history of the floor's previous life is now visible and is very much part of the aesthetic. 

• Built elements such as meeting rooms, parents room, toilets and other fixed infrastructure are treated as part of the building core, so are well-positioned to avoid rework should the use of the floor change in future. This also makes them accessible to other departments from other floors who are encouraged to come and use them.

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