The emblem of the next big thing in global architecture is a flight of stairs. Rising from the lobby of Frasers Property's headquarters in Rhodes, cheek-to-suburban-cheek with Sydney's Olympic Park, this broad stairwell of palatial dimensions is softened by a suite of Mondrian-coloured couches – bold red, cream and yellow – cascading down its centre. Visitors and staff cross paths in this stepped atrium. They hang out on the groovy couches. There's really no choice, thanks to a slightly bossy design feature: the lifts are only for the disabled. For everyone else, the stairs are compulsory; the building, as a result, is one big step machine. The offices are designed on the principle that, as general manager Reini Otter explains, "the built environment can directly affect your health".
Frasers' $9.8 million fit-out by Australian architects BVN, replete with 30 per cent sit-to-stand desks, daily fruit and vegetable deliveries, indoor plants and three-metre-high trees, gym, noise dampening and "eco-certified" furniture, is a shrine to the emerging school of "livability design". Livable buildings are the pivot from "now to next", as Carolinn Kuebler, a green building-accredited associate at global architecture and design firm Gensler, puts it.