Law firms have historically expressed hierarchy in square metres: the corner office, the partners’ floor, the long walk to reception. Russell McVeagh’s Wellington practice, redesigned by Unispace in association with Emma Hofmann, across three levels of 157 Lambton Quay, is interesting precisely because it renegotiates that spatial contract without pretending it away.
The plan does the real work. Practice groups and shared services, previously dispersed, are gathered into an open-plan field of workstations, with partners moving to a day-office model: unassigned rooms for focused work, plus a designated lounge that preserves the privacy the profession still requires. It is a pragmatic settlement between egalitarian ambition and the realities of confidential practice, and it reads as honest rather than performative.
The dramatic helical stair that binds the floors, fabricated locally in timber, polished plaster, and rolled aged brass, makes the point physically: everyone moves through the same generous vertical gesture.
The material register is hospitality rather than corporate. Marmorino-rendered walls, chevron oak, honed stone and wool sit alongside commissioned work: Lucy McMillan ceramics, Henry Wilson sconces, salvaged wharf timbers standing as quiet totems against the harbour view. The palette is warm, low-contrast and unhurried, closer to a residential lobby than a legal office, which is rather the point.
If the vocabulary of soft curves and travertine tones is familiar from contemporary workplace design internationally, the execution here is unusually disciplined, and the craft is verifiably local. This is a workplace built on the assumption that people, and the firm, are staying.
Words Federico Monsalve
Photography Jono Parker
Interior of the Year is presented in partnership with
