Warren and Mahoney appoints talented workplace designer to associate position

Wellington senior interior designer, Julia McPherson, has been appointed as an Associate of multidisciplinary architectural practice, Warren and Mahoney, which has 230 staff and operates in six locations across New Zealand and Australia.

A specialist in workplace design, McPherson joined Warren and Mahoney in 2014, and has  already worked on high-profile projects such as the heritage Public Trust Building, now occupied by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, the newly refurbished Ministry of Education building in Bowen Street, as well as on a complete fit out for lawyers, Kensington Swan.

Julia was brought up in Hutt Valley and graduated with a Bachelor of Design degree with honours in spatial design from the School of Creative Arts at Massey University in Wellington.

After graduation, she worked for four years in Wellington before moving to London where she consulted on a major refurbishment of the former BBC headquarters, Bush and Melbourne House in Aldwych. That, she says, was a fascinating project.

“When it was built in the 1920s, Bush House was declared the most expensive building in the world. We gutted the interior. The BBC didn’t seem to demolish anything so there was 1920s partitioning still in place and the ceilings were full of redundant cabling.” 

As a workplace design specialist, Julia says her main interest is in “predicting how people will work in the spaces we design.”

“When people are in a building for eight hours, they are spending most of their awake time at work. In the last couple of years there has been an increased emphasis on wellbeing in the workplace. Our role is to make the workplace more interesting and fun by bringing in elements of surprise, and also to be more functional and tailored to specific activities. That all helps to retain staff.”

McPherson says that with major refurbishments such as the Ministry of Education fit out, the aim is to make the space more flexible to cope with organisational changes and the changing rate of technology. The MOE fit out now accommodates  just over 1000 people in one building, whereas previously they had occupied four buildings around Wellington.

The building has two floors which are client facing, and ten floors of workspace, with new interconnecting stairs throughout the 12 floors with part of the building working in flexible mode with non-fixed workpoints.

“We put the hard fit out like kitchens, toilets and meeting rooms in the middle of the building and the soft fitout and work zones wrap around these central hubs. Within the design there are no offices and there is a mixture of flexible work points and work spaces.”

McPherson is a great believer in open workspaces and in interior staircases “for quick trips and visual connection across floors.”

The refurbishment for Kensington Swan provided an interesting challenge as the offices were originally over three floors, but the law firm challenged the current workplace layout with a solution over two floors providing more flexibility for workplace locations.

“The previous office space had been quite siloed but now it is more open. We designed interior meeting and function rooms, and now staff work around windows. To display their collection of artwork we created a glazed interior room with steel mesh sliders, and attached art to the sliding doors. This created a screening device between the work floor and meeting spaces. The gallery room is one of the most popular and well used rooms.”

McPherson says that what she most enjoys about workplace design is visiting office buildings after they are occupied.

“When you are on site it is very much about making sure the design is executed well and you are responsible for ensuring this happens. Once clients move in, seeing the spaces as you have envisioned is satisfaction for me.”

She says that her appointment as an associate “means I am recognised as a future leader. I am really excited to share my ideas within the practice.”

Ralph Roberts, principal in the Wellington office said that McPherson was a key member of the practice’s rapidly expanding workplace design team.

“We are delighted to make Julia an Associate at Warren and Mahoney. She is a very talented designer who has great empathy and understanding of clients’ needs.”