Sanders Place by NMBW Architecture Studio, Openwork and Finding Infinity

“When your industry is like a small community, there is less competition, more collaboration and the work is more enjoyable and productive.” These are the words of Jake Milgrom-Marabel, a director of “impact investment” company Tripple and the primary client for Sanders Place – a new co-working and event space in the thriving inner-Melbourne suburb of Richmond.

The project provides a compelling alternative template for prevailing consumptive development and construction practices. The latter produces a third of the world’s waste and is responsible for 39 percent of energy-related global carbon emissions.¹

Sanders Place was created for, and by, a community of future-focused social and environmental changemakers. Fittingly, it is centred on the retrofit of a common warehouse typology – two 1970s brick-and-concrete extrusions, both two-storeys high with pitched roofs and 100 percent site coverage.

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The project’s hybrid approach to building envelope performance required working with the imperfections of existing forms that abut the title boundary.

Image: Peter Bennetts

Milgrom-Marabel described retaining the existing 1,350-square-metre building as “an obvious choice” compared to demolition and a new build. The site is located at the edge of a commercial zone, with scope for eight storeys. It overlooks the locally significant Barkly Gardens heritage precinct.

Three architects were approached by Tripple in early 2020 to develop, in competition style, a concept for a “comfortable and green open place that was halfway between office and home.” The winning submission came from NMBW Architecture Studio, with landscape architects Openwork, environmental consultants Finding Infinity and Form Engineers. Never Stop Group builders and local furniture maker Raven Mahon completed the project team. Their design was guided by four tenets: be a good neighbour; keep as much as possible; adopt a perfectly imperfect approach to envelope performance; and design a shell that can be occupied in different ways.

Completed in 2023, the space is generous, light-filled and connected to its surrounds – gone are the deep floor plates and impermeable perimeter walls of the former chocolate factory and martial arts school that once inhabited the site. The glazing line has been set back, masonry corners eroded and on-site car parks and truck loading removed to create new open-air courtyards. These blur the distinction between industry and residential and leverage the borrowed scenery of surrounding gardens, rooftops, streetscapes and laneways.

Large holes have been punched into the ground and first-floor slabs to create a central atrium and garden. A retractable greenhouse shade cloth prevents undesirable heat gain and glare and contributes to the performative and atmospheric aspects of the space.

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Large holes were cut into the ground and first-floor slabs to create a central atrium and garden.

Image: Peter Bennetts

The moves are complemented by a new sawtooth roof that strategically introduces additional space and light to the interior and holds a 28-kilowatt solar photovoltaic array and heat exchange equipment. The array is projected to provide 106 percent of the site’s energy requirements.

A key innovation of the project is its hybrid approach to building envelope performance, working with the imperfections of existing forms that abut the title boundary. Informed by performance modelling, the team opted to insulate boundary walls from the inside and line them with recycled plywood, while courtyard walls were insulated from the outside and clad in galvanised steel.

The workplace is remarkable for the diversity of spaces it offers. A bank of 32 sit-stand desks co-locates various tenants without distinction. This is complemented by a variety of meeting rooms, table settings, lounges, privacy booths and garden areas. Re-homed furniture and furnishings, sustainably sourced from second-hand marketplaces, contribute diverse characters to each space and evoke the disarming eclecticism of a share house.

Aspect and connections to light, air and views are available in all orientations, even where it abuts the neighbouring party wall. Here, an open-air gantry provides an additional courtyard, breakout space and connections to the adjoining laneway and conditioned meeting rooms.

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To blur the distinction between industrial and residential zones, on-site parking and loading was removed to create new open-air courtyards.

Image: Peter Bennetts

Prioritising material disassembly and reuse has required an opportunistic and layered approach to design and construction – what the project team has described as “working it out as we go.”

According to Milgrom-Marabel, the project was far more cost-effective as a retrofit than a new build. While tough decisions had to be made based on financial implications, he suggested it is not financial barriers holding people back from retrofit.

“Keeping existing buildings and materials in use is a mindset that we believe in,” he said. “It was far more environmentally conscious to keep the building, it was more cost-effective and […] incredibly important to keep the character of the building. The character of our cities and suburbs will be lost if retrofitting doesn’t become the status quo.”

Material reuse is evident all around. Kitchen benchtops, shelves and bench seats use former Oregon floor joists sourced from the martial arts studio. Wall panels use salvaged plywood flooring or exposed brick – complete with manufacturers’ marks and the exposed layers of past finishes. Timber lining boards for the central skylights were sourced from a demolition contractor in Ballarat contacted through Gumtree, while a reclaimed straw wall lining in the meeting rooms is 100 percent recyclable, 100 percent biodegradable, and offers thermal and acoustic insulation. Elsewhere, new materials were locally procured.

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Wall panels used salvaged plywood flooring or exposed brick – complete with manufacturers’ marks and the exposed layers of past finishes.

Image: Peter Bennetts

The brick parti wall that separated the two buildings has been ground back and remains a visible expression of what the project seeks to instil: that the reuse of resources can create spaces that are compelling to be in while meeting pressing economic, environmental and social objectives.

The development fits the old adage of “long life, loose fit.” There is flexibility to change the internal arrangements dramatically. The open-plan layout offers diversity and choice of workspaces, with no security divisions between tenants. Meeting areas can be reconfigured and reprogrammed. In response to tenant needs, a planned library is now an office space.

Humour and a touch of the personal are featured too. The boardroom table cameos as a surface for table tennis – a sport in which Milgrom-Marabel was national champion. The retractable shade cloth and use of “lollipop” ficus were inspired by a visit to his grandparents’ home.

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An internal retractable shade cloth contributes to the performative aspects of the space and prevents undesirable heat gain and glare.

Image: Peter Bennetts

Storage of reuseable materials was a major logistical challenge. The team relocated stockpiled materials around the site during design and construction, reminding the project team of available materials and prompting the question: what can we do with this?

Early users reportedly took time acclimatising from the norm of what Ross Harding of Finding Infinity describes as “buildings that are automated and offer no agency.” Now, more than a year on, tenants – who include social and environmental impact companies like climate career training organisation Terra.do, strategic litigators Grata Fund, and electrification experts Goodbye Gas – have reported the positive effects of the building on energy levels, productivity and comfort.

The Sanders Place project team maintains that the project is replicable. However, regulatory and market reform is required to shift the conversation from one of maximum yield to one of broader value-add across a building’s life cycle. Compliance with regulations requires a systemic approach to enable adaptive retrofits to more easily occur. The teams points to the policies of other global cities such as London and Copenhagen, where new developments are required to include a whole-life-cycle carbon assessment. Such policies are incentivising wider industry to understand and reduce embodied carbon in developments.

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A new sawtooth roof introduces additional internal volume and holds a solar photovoltaic array and heat exchange equipment.

Image: Peter Bennetts

These considerations are prescient in the context of soaring office vacancy rates in Melbourne (19.6 percent as of July 2024) and Sydney (15.6 percent)² and the broader context of a climate and biodiversity emergency. City of Melbourne has outlined that 80 buildings per year in its municipality alone will require retrofit to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040.³ Buildings contribute 66 percent of the city’s total carbon emissions.

At Sanders Place, Tripple has provided leverage for a growing community to affect new conscientious practices and new nurturing environments, aligned with its mandate of using capital “as a force for good.” A simple, well-used bench is symbolic of the project: two Oregon beams recovered from the site simply intersect and are held together by a complex internal joint. The design evolved from timber that was inspected by Form, stockpiled by Never Stop Group, envisioned by Mahon and prototyped with NMBW’s assistance.

The simple outcome belies a deeply iterative, collaborative and expert process of end-to-end problem-solving, prototyping and production.

— Jocelyn Chiew is a multi-award-winning architect, landscape architect and urban designer with expertise in inclusive, sustainable campus and city design. A former director of city design at the City of Melbourne, she advocates for gender equity and inclusion in the built environment, and contributes to key industry panels and groups.