We are very excited to announce that we have just launched Büro North in Western Australia.
Operating from Fremantle and run by Shireen Abshar we are currently working on the New Perth Children’s Hospital and the Perth Airport T2 expansion along with several other smaller projects.
Shireen moved to Perth (her hometown) at Christmas having worked for the last couple of years on several significant wayfinding & signage projects including the Melbourne Airport, Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Centre, Melbourne Park Eastern Plaza and the most recent being a Design Manager on the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne.
We are very excited to be in a position to service our WA clients more personally with a studio and dedicated staff and look forward to growing Buro North’s profile in WA over the coming months. To contact Shireen call on 0410 986 390 or email ‘shireen(at)buronorth.com’
Well done to my lovely wife Kate, the amazingly talented Nick Lewis (turd circus) and our old pal Steve Phillips for creating this cracking little animation for Project otherwise. We designed the brand late last year and are wrapped to see it developing its own personality via this animation which is aimed at promoting the Otherwise blog in an effort to promote sustainable thinking across a broad platform. Well done to the guys for creating a witty and engaging little video…
The Buro North Christmas party is always a fairly serious affair. Last year fishing in Pt Lonsdale, before that a farm trip, before that was paintball, karting & bowling (I think).. This year we took to the kitchen in true masterchef style in an epic battle of Spain vs Morocco cook-off challenge. With the studio divided in two teams, dress up theme set, we went on to cook at the Melbourne Cooking School some incredible tagines, paellas, salads and incredible desserts. Best on ground went to Catherine’s tagine and the team from Spain led by Missy came away triumphant overall. Well done and thanks all for a cracking day. We are now shutting the shop until the 09th January – See you on the other side…
Our client & collaborator Chistmas gift this year was a freshly roasted bag of beans… Celebrating the festive season after a year’s hard work takes energy, so we thought we’d share with our exceptional clients and collaborators some of the beautiful bean that has kept us going throughout 2011.
We roasted these beans at Small Batch in North Melbourne (more info here) from an heirloom Ethiopian varietal called ‘Operation Cherry Red’. The beans are harvested from a sustainable source where farmers are paid premiums to produce exceptional coffees by sorting the best ripe red cherries and taking diligent care during drying. Once roasted by Small Batch these beans produce a coffee that is strong, full bodied and very creamy.
The info-diagram on the poster charts the number of coffee’s consumed by the studio in 2011 per project. It’s an interesting way to look at the impact of risk, stress, program and intensity of the projects we have undertaken in 2011.
Our highlights for 2011 have included the completion of the wayfinding signage and graphic design for the Royal Children’s Hospital after four long years, recognition on an international scale with a D&AD award and locally with two Melbourne Design Awards. We have grown by 20% in a period of economic instability and solidified our position in the market for producing evidence based design on projects ranging in scale from bespoke boutique identities through to wayfinding and signage for large and complex built environment projects.
We recently stopped for a little look-see at some of the signage and graphics we worked on for John Wardle Architects at the 77-85 Castlereagh St Sydney project. Only just completed and snapped on an iPhone the timber signage is absolutely stunning. Craftsmanship so good that some of the guys in the studio thought they were looking at renders.. More professional quality photos to come soon…
Room 10, Level 3
37 Swanston Street
(The Nicholas Building)
Its been a great project, and product for Buro North since 2008.. Winning a Premier’s Design Award, an international Green Dot award for Sustainable products and garnering Buro North much press and attention… We have produced hundreds of the trees in different sizes, shapes and timber varieties, but the time has come to hang up the tree so to speak. The tree has now been copied by several different companies, and whilst at first we were grumpy we have since decided to let it be…
We learnt a lot from you little tree, but you need to move on – pick up one of the final 30 Limited Edition (silver branch) Trees at The Quick & The Dead.
We had a little studio visit to Small Batch in North Melbourne last week to learn the art of good roasting.. The studio currently smells incredible as we sit amongst way more bags of beans than we could ever hope to consume – Some of our Christmas Tree’s might smell like Coffee this year.!.
We roasted these beans from an heirloom Ethiopian varietal called ‘Operation Cherry Red’. The beans are harvested from a sustainable source where farmers are paid premiums to produce exceptional coffees by sorting the best ripe red cherries and taking diligent care during drying. Once roasted by Small Batch these beans produce a coffee that is strong, full bodied and very creamy.
The new Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne officially opened late last month with the Queen’s visit, but the real opening was Wednesday this week when over 150 patients were transferred from the old facility to the remarkable new facility.
The building is a credit to the Children’s Health partnership (CHP) consortium which comprises Lend Lease (LL), Spotless Group and Architects Billard Leece with Bates Smart (BLBS). In partnership with the RCH, DHS, LL, BLBS and many other consultants, Buro North have contributed to creating an environment that is uniquely designed for children, spaces that are engaging, stimulating and take healing beyond the bedroom.
The design reflects growing evidence of the importance of nature and environment to the healing process, with a state-of-the-art building surrounded by native parkland, flooded with natural light and splashed with colour by the environment themed wayfinding graphics designed by Buro North.
A wayfinding strategy was developed to help patients, families, visitors and staff find their way around the hospital. Each level of the hospital has a theme inspired by Australian flora and fauna and reflecting the Victorian landscape. Patient and family areas feature colourful artwork, graphics and signage that relates to the different themes.
Based on its evidence based approach to wayfinding and design, Buro North collaborated with local illustrator Jane Reiseger on the development of illustrations for the wayfinding signage. Jane was selected from a field of international illustrators for her uniquely whimsical hand drawn style, and her willingness to work collaboratively with the project team.
Buro North developed the illustrations to create highly distinctive wayfinding graphics and over 5,000 signs, wall panels and essential landmarks for the large hospital site and introduced a playful and distinctive personality to the interior of the new Royal Children’s Hospital. The culmination of this work means that for many patients and visitors, their enduring memory of Royal Children’s Hospital will be its highly distinctive wayfinding illustrations.
As the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) nears completion, we undertook the exciting task of testing the wayfinding system on site last week. We believe that testing our completed design solutions is an integral part of the design process, and it provides us with valuable insight into how and why our wayfinding systems work. It also gives our clients the confidence to take ownership of their wayfinding system, and provides them with the tools to manage it.
We worked closely with both Lend Lease and the RCH to develop a unique testing methodology, for the as yet unopened hospital. A broad range of test subjects were selected by the client to reflect typical user profiles, and several key journeys were identified based on complexity and level of usage they will receive once the site becomes operational.
It was an incredibly rewarding experience for the Büro North, Lend Lease and RCH staff involved in the process; confirming that after four years work the system performed extremely well. Initial results indicate that the new wayfinding design solution provides a 45% reduction in average journey times when compared to the system used in the old hospital. More telling still, was that the average number of users needing to ask for assistance to find their way was reduced from 78% in the old facility to only 14% in the new RCH.
One of the principle objectives of the testing was to evaluate the performance of different formats of pre-visit information and verbal instruction. The results were compelling and will inform the development of pre-visit information for the hospital as well as staff training, which will create further efficiencies once the site opens.
Along with the client and our project partners, we are delighted with the results and believe that the wayfinding design will contribute to making the Royal Children’s Hospital an example of worlds best practice.
Buro North was recently the subject of a feature article in ‘The Weekly Review’. Following an interview with Design Director Soren Luckins, the article discussed Buro North’s contribution to Melbourne via our wayfinding & signage design work at The Royal Children’s Hospital, MYER Docklands, ACMI at Federation Square, and our work at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre.
I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Semi-Permanent Design Conference in Melbourne.. Which was exciting as it’s something Id always wanted to do but never had the call up so I was quite chuffed… But what a daunting experience it was.!. Not sure how many people attended but that auditorium holds a few thousand and once you stand up on stage it really hits home that a lot of folk have spent real money to come and listen.
Given I’d done the ‘about Buro North’ speech a couple of times recently, I took the opportunity to frame a question about why we design what we design. The general theme was that I love to design, and whilst I’d love to design stuff that just looks damn good, it doesn’t make me feel good at the end of the day..
So how is it at Buro North that we work on something for the betterment of society to nourish the soul, whilst providing the design outlet that nourishes our creative side, whilst also earning a crust to nourish our stomachs? The talk reviewed our hospital wayfinding signage design for the Royal Children’s Hospital, designs for Falls Creek & the City of Dandenong along with several smaller ‘not-for-profit’ projects that all contribute to a body of work that aims to create outstanding design, with a positive impact on society and in the end hopefully being ‘sometimes-for-profit’..
We were very pleased to receive two coveted Melbourne Design Awards last week… Its great to back up last years win with another two awards in 2011, and as MDA are a public and professionally voted awards we are very thankful to those that voted for the ‘Otherwise‘ brand identity and ‘Westfield Sydney‘ wayfinding signage project – thanks very much.!.
Great Article about the new Royal Children’s Hospital in The Age online that was just pointed out to us. The article reviews some of the many great features of this incredible facility including our wayfinding contribution. Getting close now to seeing it all completed.!.
We had a day out at Heide recently with the whole BN team to discuss upcoming projects, future directions and all things strategy.. Cracking day with some great guests to help with discussions and an amazing venue for clearing the mind… The Vue burgers were pretty good too!
With Stable Properties, we recently completed a very luscious brand and brochure package for the Triptych development in Southbank. Triptych is a high end residential tower located right next door to the Arts Centre in Melbourne’s cultural precinct. Midway through construction it became apparent to the developers that the brand position was not quite right and Buro North were called in to overhaul, reposition and reinvigorate the marketing.
With a new concept based around the incredible lifestyle offer and the bespoke and tailored quality of the residences we art directed a campaign shoot and worked on some highly crafted and unique type design. The refreshed brand has appeared in press across Melbourne and printed marketing packages have reached a selective local and international audience as the project continues to gather momentum and the project nears completion.
The limited edition ‘Penthouse Collection’ brochures feature full page silver foiled stock, overprinted and then laminated, with images shot by Peter Bennetts and retouched by Visual Thing. Over 60 pages of deep, rich and luscious photography, plans and information have resulted in an engaging, and successful sales tool for Stable in marketing their high end ‘Penthouse Collection’ apartments to a very particular and discerning audience.
We are very pleased, and very late… To welcome Sam Allan to Buro North. Sam joined us a couple of months ago (we’ve been busy)… and brings over 8 years of experience in project management and delivery with a background in Industrial and Interior design. He has a broad set of skills that allow him to understand and engage in the design, technical and management of a range of our projects.
Sam has experience in running retail fit-out programs, environmental graphics, and wayfinding projects which affords him a sound understanding of construction and manufacturing methods. Sam has also been involved in the development of business and practice processes and takes pride in his ability to identify and implement process based solutions to achieve the most efficient and effective outcomes.’ Sam brought macaroons on his first day of work which impressed us no end, and has continued to impress us with his calm demeanor and organizational capabilities. To contact Sam Allan +613 9654 3259 or sam(at)buronorth.com
We recently participated with Grimshaw Architects in the State of Design – Design for an active city competition for which we came home in 3rd place. The ‘point to point’ submission was based on a wayfinding / android-iPhone app based motivator to promote walking within the CBD – Docklands precinct. The winner was Edwards Moore with their Chroma installation which was pretty svelte – well done guys…
Our Falls Creek wayfinding signage system has just been published in the latest Landscape Architecture Australia magazine in an article written by Cassie Hanson reviewing the process and development of this iconic Buro North project. More info here, here and here…
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