Blog Four - Jasmax

Blog Four – Jasmax

1. Describe your first impressions of the Jasmax workspace and your subsequent impressions

My first impressions were that I was walking into a concrete bunker, then I noticed that the office was surprisingly quiet, tardis-like (it seems much bigger on the inside than it does on the outside), colourful and informal. It also seemed to have child-like qualities e.g. the small Eames chairs and red rug with punch out holes at reception. This child-like quality if also echoed in the Jasmax practice of naming spaces: the tool box, the sand pit.

My subsequent impression was to be impressed at how the ideas about the need for focus, collaboration and socialising among staff had been translated into the floor plan and into the design. Jasmax has realized that if it is to market itself effectively as a designer of other company’s offices; then its own office must show what it can do. I think has been very successful in achieving this

2. What are the most useful things that you take away from Tim Hooson’s talk in a few keywords?

Human Outcomes, Engagement, Sense of Purpose, Belonging and Place, The “Bump”, Break the Silo, Build the Team, Collaboration

3. Critically analyse one Jasmax project from their website.

I walk through Britomart often as I am an avid public transport user. My first impressions were that the design is eye catching and funky, however I don’t like the coloured lighting inside the station. Sometimes the staff announcer for the railway station makes announcements about the trains DJ style and this feels appropriate to me, as the space feels like a disco with the coloured lighting and the steel balls under the light wells.

My ideas about how a railway station should look have been influenced in a conservative way by what I had seen in the UK. Many of the London stations are like cathedrals, with large volumes, high ceilings and lattice like steel roof structures.

Britomart Station

Image Source: http://ufies.org/~aleith/transit/auckland/auckland.html

  

Liverpool Street Station London

Image Source http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?p=53141615

It was only after many weeks for walking through the Britomart complex that I started to notice the symbolism: the volcano references in the pools created above the light wells, the geyser references in the water jets, tree forms. I have come to appreciate the references to the Auckland landscape and the sense of place that this conveys.

The response to the Britomart complex has not been uniformly positive. For example Hamish Keith writes ”This entrance has a pleasing bridge approach across the atrium where one can stand and be truly appalled by one of the genuine weaknesses of the whole complex: its simple minded theme.” (Keith 36)

As a post script, I was interested to note that in a recent installation David Batchelor has made a London railway station look like Britomart! 

Gloucester Road Underground Station

Image Source: http://www.davidbatchelor.co.uk/about/

Works Cited

Batchelor, D. “Chromophobia” in Intimus - Interior Design Reader 

Edited by Taylor, M. and Preston, J. Wiley Academy Great Britain pp31-42 2006 Print

Jasmax www.jasmax.com/#/Portfolio/Britomart_\Transport_Centre 15^th September Web 25^th September 2011

Rudman, Brian; Keith, Hamish; Blunt, Gerald “A Cathedral awaits its Congregation” in Architecture New Zealand page 26-37 May June 2004 Print.

Wolfe, R. “Back to the Future” in Architecture New Zealand pg 49-56 March-April 2001 Print