Hassell Talks

Finding it both necessary and convenient, patients and clinicians across Australia embraced the change brought about by COVID-19 and took to telehealth in huge numbers – jumping from one million service events in March 2020 to six million a month later in April . Healthcare is traditionally an area that can be slow to change, so this leap in uptake was a novel event in itself. Under pandemic restr...

At the heart of any co-working environment is the idea that it can do much more than provide a hotspot and a hot coffee. The best ones ask: Can we build a great like-minded community? In the COVID-19 context, the best co-working spaces then ask whether they can solve some of the challenges thrown up by the pandemic to design for safety and trust in a physical environment. And right now? They’re as...

We're back for Season Two of Hassell Talks - thanks for joining us! Once practically unthinkable, silent city centres were a feature of 2020. And to attract people back as the COVID-19 recovery picks up pace across the globe, the challenge lies in truly understanding how and why spaces work. The solution might be staring us – city shapers and designers – in the face. Big Data. What exactly can big...

We don’t know exactly what our lives, work and communities will look like post COVID-19. But one thing we’re sure of is that some of the trends we saw developing over the past few years have only accelerated since the global pandemic took hold. They’re trends that are changing how we reimagine or repurpose spaces, think about mobility, and connect with each other and our communities – not to menti...

Whether you’re a CEO, a property manager or a workplace designer, the office has been the headline conversation of 2020. How many will go back? What will it look like? How will workplace culture change? Whatever line of inquiry you follow, we know a mix of qualitative and quantitative insights will give us the greatest handle on what’s happening in a workplace. Evodia Alaterou, our design strategy...

How can corporate campuses lure us out of our homes (and pyjamas) and back to the office in a COVID-wary world? And how will they keep us coming back, with remote working more compelling or essential than ever?  Some designers say the ​‘hardware’ of a campus is what makes it magnetic. For them, it’s about the architecture, spaces and settings that give form to a company’s aspirations and reflect t...

Plants in our cities are important for many reasons, like supporting urban cooling and biodiversity as well as human wellbeing and health. But they also impact on the economies of our cities. Green cities are just as attractive to developers and investors as those who just want to stop and smell the roses. Parts 1 and 2 looked at why we value wild, natural planting in our cities as well as the imp...

The debate around native or exotic urban planting can sometimes be a thorny one, culturally, environmentally and emotionally and over the longer term, climate change brings the role of planting and landscape into sharp focus as we consider the future health of our cities. Wholly exotic landscapes bring with them issues of culture, context and invasive issues. Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the...

It might be hard to measure, but we know interacting with nature has an impact on our emotions – and that’s never been more apparent in cities during lockdown. But does the kind of planting we encounter in urban environments matter? Are planned and cultivated spaces what we need, or could we be craving ‘wilder’, less predictable landscapes that fully immerse us in nature? In Part 1 of a mini-serie...

Beyond the impeccable dress sense, designers working in fashion and city-making have a lot in common - both sectors can have indisputable impacts on the world - on a very large scale. Right now they also have an opportunity to think more deeply about the impact of their work on people, places and our collective future. While fashion is often fast and seasonal and architectural design is often a lo...

Can design firms be truly future-focused if they’re not appealing to the next generation? What will attract the best designers of the future? How do firms give talent the right platforms to make a positive difference? We are obsessed with how design can make a difference in the future. We asked Jan Owen AM, Co Chair / Convenor of Learning Creates Australia, and former CEO of Foundation for Young A...

Stepping carefully up to the crater’s edge, white boots kicking up swirls of red dust, the figure lowers themselves carefully down to sit on an ancient boulder - and pulls out an A3 sketchpad. The stranger surveys the Martian landscape, interrogates the form and flowing expanse in front of them and starts to sketch out a narrative created over millions of years. They fill their empty page with ill...

Events like COVID-19, wildfires and hurricanes teach us valuable lessons about the way people – and the public places built for them – respond and recover post disaster. If they’re not confined to their homes, communities are separated – scattering to places for medical attention, shelter or to the comfort of community. They could find themselves anywhere from a sports stadium to a community hall...

Universities want to show their students and academics a really good time - the better the experience, the more appealing it is to stay a while for study, work and play. The multi-million dollar marketing campaigns may draw in the curious crowds, but what makes them stick around? Researcher Michaela Sheahan hosted a panel conversation in our Brisbane studio with collaborators and clients to hear w...

From a powerful example of design’s crucial role of healing in post-genocide Rwanda to a city’s solution to homelessness, this episode of HassellTalks examines how deploying, measuring and demonstrating the value of design is critically important to addressing the most pressing humanitarian challenges of our time. Designers have “freaking superhero” skills, says architect Bryan Bell of the Public...

Fact: People are willing - happy even - to pay more for their scrambled eggs if they're eating them in a 'cool' cafe. The value of 'cool' to business is undisputed. But if we take it a step further, can large organisations really embody 'cool' - and attract talent - when it comes to designing their workplaces? Here's where the advertising industry really excels. They've had the jump on designers a...

Sydney today faces the same pressures as all modern cities – growth, resources, infrastructure and resilience. The interpersonal fabric of modern-day Sydney contrasts to its healthy past – the challenges of isolation and a vast mental health crisis in our communities, pervasive social media, our collective response to climate change and biodiversity emergencies, and the pressures on housing and eq...

It’s a brave dean that tests out a new way of working on academics and research staff - and yet that’s exactly what the School of Engineering at the University of Melbourne did. The future workspace at the Melbourne School of Engineering (MSE) will need to accommodate over 1800 users across three locations by 2025. To provide for its people and its industry collaborators – its workplace would need...

A glance at any Australian town or city shows one of the world’s oldest continuous cultures is largely absent. A side note, rarely the headline. And is it any wonder, with only around 20 Indigenous Australian architects practicing in 2019? It’s not just an Australian story. There’s a lot to be learned from other experiences too. In the first episode of our Hassell Talks podcast, we hear from Elisa...