Building our values

In my last post, I shared that whilst at working with Atlassian I witnessed firsthand the impact of both creating real values and an experience that is the physical manifestation of their values.

Recently at Kernel we have rebranded, developed our own values and continued to evolve our office in the Generator Room of 1 O’Connell Street (for those not in Sydney, this is a tower in the heart of the CBD).

One of our core values is to ‘Always look to recycle and reuse’. This isn’t a value that we simple switch on or off. Our commitment to sustainability is embedded in our culture and by the way we all work every day. It is top of mind for all of us through how we deliver our services to our clients, and also how we have created our workplace.

We believe that we have created a workplace that embodies the notion of sustainability. We have also demonstrated that sustainable design can be applied to the repurposing of space that may otherwise not be considered. Coupled with our core values, and a focus on sustainability, the design of our office has ben led by our continued vision to think creatively in everything we do and are reflected the design initiatives of our workplace that are outlined below:

• Recycle - Every piece of furniture has a story, a history, and our aim is (with all the furniture we find) to provide it a longer life.
• Repurpose - We have converted a plant room into an office space. We have transformed the once service balcony (it had no balustrade) into a usable terrace recycling the timber decking from Steve’s home.
• Fresh air – Having a terrace, means that are able to allow fresh air into the office, and turn off the air-conditioning.
• Reuse - We have turned the plumbing of an old hazmat shower (from an old battery room) into two unisex bathrooms (still using the shower). We have also reused glazing from a client’s former workplace to create our boardroom, and joinery from a former library to create our kitchen and some light fittings.
• Reduced footprint - We have created an agile space that allows the office to be turned in a function space without increasing our footprint using a simple winch to lift our cable trays and monitors to the ceiling.

Another core value of Kernel is to ‘Work together to learn, share knowledge and think creatively’. We love what we do, and we love our workplace. We love leading the way in sustainable design thinking and influencing our clients in how we deliver our core services, be it finding clever spaces, reusing furniture in new projects, or rescuing and repurposing items from our make good projects.

We want to create positive change, not only in our workplace, but also in our dealings and the advice we provide.

The outcome of all the above is a workplace that we are incredibly proud of and really is a physical manifestation of our core values.

Come and have a look.

Thanks for reading.

Kai