[Greatest Hits] First Look! 👀 The Power of Storytelling in Workplace Design with Abigail Reynolds, Project Designer at Modus

0:00Study research papers, definitely. I think creative thinking, you can learn so much from someone else's research, new ideas, and you can absorb it how you want to. I think another thing is traveling. I don't think so much of just traveling to a random city in Europe. I think it needs to be very considered and with a goal. I think a great place to start is the Biennale, whether you go for the art year or the architecture year. just to be immersed in creativity. I don't think creativity, just because you work in design or architecture, is just looking at a building. It can be looking at light, art, concepts, and all the different creative fields, fashion, it can all feed into more ideas, textiles, materials, yeah, sustainability, things like that.

0:49Where do you get your inspiration from? I think you're right off the cheap thing, is that? where do I get I think I try as hard as I can it's really easy to get fixated on just get up go to work go home do a bit of exercise have dinner I purposely try to slow down and just look around like look for those things that it's so cliche like spark joy I love that yeah I'm totally into that person whatever her name is I Marie yes I literally I'm so obsessed yeah me too I think I binged watched that Netflix show in record timing but it's just appreciating life and yeah you can you can do inspiration from those things so I'd say day to day that's the biggest thing definitely yeah no that's cool so what are you working on now or just finished or just about to start that's really exciting working on so many and so many different ones how many are you working on the ones um i think i'm on about five at the moment they're all at different stages more of them are like pitch mid-tender stage i have two that are going to site very soon so i'll probably talk about one going to site quite soon it's an incredible building 40 lead and hole oh lovely yeah absolutely it's stunning and i got brought onto the project quite late it was all designed by bdg so quite often we'll take things from stage three stage four and that does mean that some design work or enhancements or development is required we have a separate part of the business that does the more technical construction stuff and brings it to life but when they needed design to help enhance i was lucky enough that i got put onto the project so I got to cut out all of the really hard bits and enhance key areas like the auditorium with the reception desk the pre-function bar area so that was a great one because I got to look at materiality and really take inspiration from the building that is already there so you can say what we've done in an auditorium what have I done what did you do in the auditorium so a lot of it was designed out so all the seating was designed out and the seating joinery is incredible the joiners doing it are really talented but that is what we wanted to be the main focus and it's very sleek and it's that the understated luxury so it was everything else needed to match the quality but not overshadow these benches okay yeah and then the challenge is the seating higher was standard 275i but for an auditorium that is very small um so it was all i focused on enhancing the walls to bring in some more texture lighting and things just to make it feel taller and more grand and that was a really fun process to go through yeah we're still developing it a little bit there but it's just the fine details now what are you gonna do to make it look taller um so it's timber panels wrapped around the whole auditorium and then they have breaks where it flutes so it flutes thick at the bottom and tapers really thin at the top and then the next one will be thick at the top taper at the bottom and then there's tactical lighting to highlight that just to create some more depth and interest and then no skirting board all of the timber is the same from the floors to the benches to the walls so it's a really calming space plates here yeah it's gonna lose it yeah it looks great fully lit and then in presentation mode when it's just the walls lit up that looks yeah and you've got the vertical lines yes yeah so that helps obviously make it feel longer and grand yeah sounds amazing yeah and what did you do in reception reception the actual form of the desk was decided in the shape um it was changing the materiality so at the back we had um like a concrete curtain almost and it was complementing that all of the timber panels in that area are black ash and it was really the despect was white stone with a curve white stone with a curve is an incredible amount of waste hard to manufacture and environmentally probably doesn't sit right with a lot of people and even the client as well so we just changed out the materiality we've brought through the black tin bar done just a black stone top but it's very sleek they're gonna just work off ipad so in terms of all the bits that people don't laugh with like power it's got minimal it's actually got no power to the reception desk there's just a credenza behind it's all hidden power so it's very sleek and it's almost like that whole project is you know when you open a product from apple it's like that it's really darker yeah but darker elevated easy very clean very sophisticated yeah that's a nice one