BVN
B:Hive – the largest co-working space in the Southern Hemisphere – at Smales Farm is the winner of the Offices category at the INSIDE World Festival of Interiors, which is the sister festival of the 2019 World Architecture Festival (WAF) held annually in Amsterdam.
Designed by BVN in association with Jasmax, the five storey, 11,000m² space is the largest purpose built co-working facility in the Southern Hemisphere and is a catalyst to the transformation of a 90’s office park to 24/7 urban hub within the Smales Farm campus in Auckland’s North Shore. B:Hive provides flexible office space and leasing options; along with retail and urban leisure facilities (via Goodside precinct designed by Izzard) designed to attract companies of all sizes ranging from larger companies renting an entire floor, to individuals, smaller companies and start-ups renting small areas or individual desks.
What makes the co-working space so successful is how it has seamlessly blended social spaces into its core. All workspaces look into an open, skylight topped atrium which connects to the adjacent Goodside hospitality precinct on the ground floor.
BVN Principal James Grose said, “B:Hive’s organic expression is really about bringing people together as human beings and creating a community inside the building.”
By inverting the layout of the highly flexible work areas around the irregular edges of the atrium, a visible community is created in the central shared spaces within the building, where the building management operate a vibrant calendar of social events that encourage tenants to mix and share ideas. Out of this have come several instances of businesses providing services to one another.
The spatial hero of B:Hive is the sculptural orange stair that rises from landscaped planters on the ground level; visually and psychologically linking the space and connecting it to the surrounding precinct of the Smales Farm campus.
“Spaces for people to come together enable a new work community to thrive. Opportunities to engage, meet, observe, participate and innovate are an essential part of the fabric of B:Hive,”
/Public Release.
