When an historical telecoms exchange building gets converted into a workplace campus, one can expect interesting proportions and contextually meaningful details. The redevelopment of this 70's telecoms riser exchange gifted the design team a trove of modernist architecture elements that we readily molded our design concept around. Thus was conceived the narrative of '5G Modernism' where innovative digital teams work and collaborate in a vertical campus of agile work.

The project brief called for the design of a progressive workplace within a converted telecoms exchange building of 5 levels for a major national telco company. The site is within Singapore's CBD, and meant to house the telco's 5G network innovation and sales teams as well as their client engagement destinations. It was important that the workplace supported and presented the telco's innovation drives and industry partnerships throughout the campus.

From the start, we conceived the vertically volumetric building as a 'Digital Conduit of Energy'. We planned user journeys around the vertical circulation, locating key amenities across levels to encourage users to traverse between floors. The main work cafe is located on Level 4 where guests, visitors and employees step onto the floor under an expansive skylight atrium, and where it forms the central confluence of different journeys throughout the campus.

The intentional layout planning and attention to the sense of vertical volume were key factors in maximising the impact of user spatial experience. Guests coming to visit any one of the client centres (Centre of Digital Excellence (CODE), Cyber Security Institute (CSI) or FutureNOW Innovation Centre) are brought through the central stairwell that gives them a sense of the dynamic energy that drives the teams working here. The successful balance of open and private spaces is achieved through layering zones around the building's vertical core. Our architectural forms were sensitively planned to respect and enhance the building's features, such as in the lofty vaulted ceilings of the workfloors, the meeting room 'boxes' angled around the skylight atrium, the vertical green wall of the stairwell, or the uplit coffer waffle slab. The result is a robust work campus based on sparking innovation and elevating user experience within a unique modernist architectural context.