A strategy-first move that unlocked light, connection and trust.
It started as a simple request… and became a much bigger question
In June 2016, Boffa Miskell Tauranga came to us with a relatively straightforward brief. Their existing tenancy needed opening up - the reception, meeting rooms and staff kitchen were all internal, with very little natural light reaching even the workspaces behind. The ask was to improve connection between teams, bring in more light, and make it feel a bit less enclosed.
It was a reasonable place to start. But before we touched a plan, we paused.
On the surface, the existing tenancy was a quality fit-out. But when we ran a strategic briefing process - beginning with a staff survey and then a facilitated team workshop - something became clear quite quickly.
The Tauranga team described themselves as open, collaborative and non-hierarchical. But the layout told a very different story. Visitors arrived into a closed, inward-facing reception with little visual connection to the people working beyond it. Meeting rooms had no natural light - something that came up repeatedly in the survey as a real frustration. Separate zones and enclosed offices created physical barriers that the business itself didn't believe in.
The space was quietly communicating something the team didn't intend. And because you get so used to your own environment, no one had fully named it until we asked.
"Your team are the experts in how the space is working… because they're the ones trying to do the work inside it."
When we tested layouts, the tenancy itself failed the brief
With a clear brief in hand, we explored what was possible within the existing space - testing layout options for opening it up. But as we worked through the options, one thing kept surfacing: even stripped back and opened out, the building itself would always limit natural light and outlook. The perimeter glazing simply couldn't deliver what had become one of the team's strongest and clearest priorities.
So instead of spending heavily on a space that would always be a compromise, we stepped back. We compared similar-sized tenancy options across the Tauranga CBD, looking specifically for spaces that could actually meet the brief.
When we found Level 5 at 35 Grey Street, it was obvious. The light was abundant, the harbour views were extraordinary, and for the first time, the space could genuinely support the culture the team had described rather than quietly working against it.
The question shifted from "how do we fix this office?" to "is this even the right office for who we are?"
A workspace built for connection
The new tenancy gave us something the original couldn't: a floor that could be genuinely opened up, with natural light and water views accessible from almost every zone.
The entry and lounge became the first thing clients experienced - a calm, welcoming arrival with the harbour immediately visible and a clear sense of the team beyond. The old experience of being received behind a barrier, in an enclosed space with no daylight, was gone entirely.
Across the workspace, open pergola structures — a nod to Boffa Miskell's work as landscape designers and city planners, bringing the language of the outdoors in - defined the collaboration zones without closing the space off. They created a sense of place within the open floor while keeping sight lines clear all the way from reception to the workspace beyond. A library zone gave the team somewhere quieter for deep work. The kitchen and café, positioned toward the harbour with considered lighting and warm materiality, became a genuine gathering place rather than somewhere people passed through.
Throughout, the material palette was calm and grounded: natural timber, greenery, pale neutrals, and considered moments of colour.
What changed - and what it felt like
What changed wasn't just how the office looked. It was what the office communicated.
Clients could see the team the moment they arrived. Conversations happened in the open. People moved between settings as their work shifted through the day. The brief had been shaped with the whole team involved, which meant the move itself was easier - people had been part of defining what they needed, and there was buy-in and a shared sense of ownership from day one.
"When culture becomes visible, trust becomes easier."
A personal note
This project carried an unexpected layer of meaning for me. The building at 35 Grey Street wasn't unfamiliar — as a teenager, I'd visited that floor often when my mother worked there for KPMG. And as a final-year design student, I'd walked in and used the space as the setting for a hypothetical brief, imagining what an office like this could one day become.
Years later, after training at Jasmax in Auckland and eventually building my own practice in Tauranga, I came back to the same floor - this time as the designer, doing the actual project.
There's something quietly significant about that kind of full circle. And it's part of why I believe so strongly that local businesses deserve local expertise. The local lead at Boffa Miskell stood firm for a Tauranga designer when there was pressure to align with the Auckland firm handling their other offices. That decision mattered - and the outcome reflected it.