Melbourne’s Bright and Bold New Office Space

Melbourne, an independent server hosting provider in the UK, decided to move and upgrade offices last year. The company allowed employees to submit ideas and stay involved with the design dialogue during the entire process.

Project leader, Dennis Keighron-Foster added, “At Melbourne our most important asset is our team. That’s why we wanted to create a space that would reflect the ethos of the company – a family-run business that puts its staff at the heart of everything we do.”

Many aspects of the new office design mirror those of a home including lighting, casual seating areas, and furniture choices. Also included are “a kitchen housed in a potting shed, a grassed picnic area for lunches and informal meetings, an art deco dining room, a library and a retro quiet space.”

When asked if new space brought with it any new dynamics in office culture, it was described that the new space works to more easily enable employee recreation such as playing pool on the fluorescent table or enjoy a nice X-box session. While the social areas are quite popular, the study has often been used by employees for a little bit of quiet time.

Keighron-Foster added: “For us, creativity and productivity go hand in hand. If people are inspired by their working environments they are more likely to perform to the best of their ability. Grey and boring is not what we’re about and this new space completely reflects our personality.”

“There’s a general consensus that the new office space would really benefit from having music played quietly in the background; it’s something that we’re looking to implement very soon.  We’ve also found that as we’ve now got more space, we seem to be far less ‘on top of each other’.”