With Bells On

Wingate & Farquhar’s long, lin­ear form for a New Zea­l­and com­pany steeped in tra­di­tion.
Words: Anthony Coates. Images: Simon Devitt. (From ProDesign 104, with addi­tional images).

Unex­pec­tedly, but quite appro­pri­ately, rows of tea plants line the fore­ground of the Bell Tea & Cof­fee Com­pany head office in East Tamaki, Auckland.

The day the tea ran out, Reporoa, Octo­ber, 1993 – I’d decided to spend the day read­ing a novel on a sun-drenched couch while drink­ing cups of milky, sug­ary tea. From memory, the nov­el­ist was Iain Banks and the tea was Bell Ori­ginal (this was, after all, the provinces, and it was well before any of these Jhoti-come-lately Sri Lankan teas gained any trac­tion in the mar­ket). I don’t recall much, if any­thing, about the couch. The kettle was doing that thing where the pitch of the bub­bling deep­ens for about three seconds before it flicks off. I swung open the fridge door and spied not a sker­rick of milk. Des­per­ately I checked the pantry for some UHT but my fears were con­firmed – we were abso­lutely Mother Hub­bard.
I stared at the tea bag steep­ing in the cup, the harsh tan­nins insinu­at­ing them­selves into the brew. Would I be able to handle their astrin­gency without the help of the mask­ing milk pro­teins? I sighed, dumped in a tea­spoon of sugar and adjourned to the couch.

In ret­ro­spect, I can’t think of another time when such a minor incid­ent has had such a pos­it­ive effect on my life. Six milk­less cups of tea later I was changed forever. My appre­ci­ation for the sub­tleties of tea began that day 16 years ago and has been evolving ever since. Where once I ordered “milk and two,” now it’s “just black, thanks.” Where once I was embar­rassed by my lack of soph­ist­ic­a­tion, now I feel qual­i­fied to hold court on the ori­gin of my tea, the struc­ture, the tan­nins – unspoiled as it is by the bour­geois affect­a­tions of milk and sugar. It remains unclear whether ProDesign’s editor knew of my fond­ness for tea when he assigned me the story about Wingate & Farquhar’s design of the Bell Tea & Cof­fee facil­it­ies out at Highg­ate, near East Tamaki.

Office exter­ior; ware­house at right.

'Kink' in street­side façade and metal clad­ding of office exterior.

The morn­ing I arranged to meet archi­tect David Wingate at Bell, there was such a fero­cious deluge that I half expect to see anim­als fil­ing two by two down the road. It’s grey and gusty, so it’s not the best day to appre­ci­ate a semi-industrial area – but it sure is a great day for drink­ing tea. Once we’re inside, David Wingate explains that the building’s one-level design arose for both philo­soph­ical and prac­tical reas­ons.
“The com­pany philo­sophy is a flat man­age­ment struc­ture where every­one is treated equally. Hav­ing every­one work­ing on one, open-plan level helps to rein­force that and encour­age work­ers to inter­act. We also saved money and space by not need­ing a stair­well or an elev­ator,” he says.

Bell Tea & Cof­fee: lay­out plan.

Tea– and coffee-referencing hues are found through­out the build­ing. The yel­low front desk is a ges­ture to the company’s cor­por­ate colours.

Recep­tion detail.

Wingate & Far­quhar delivered an office design strategy that shows an uncanny know­ledge of how so-called ‘flat man­age­ment struc­tures’ work. Often the upper man­age­ment will adopt a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ atti­tude and exempt them­selves from the open plan. Wingate’s design ensured any who might be of that per­sua­sion would think twice about that.

“We delib­er­ately made sure the open-plan work­ers had the best views and those who were in offices didn’t. If you wanted to work undis­turbed, that’s fine, but you wouldn’t get the bene­fit of the views and nat­ural sun­light. But then if you’re work­ing so hard, you shouldn’t be star­ing out the win­dow in the first place should you?” he says with a smile.

As a res­ult, only those who really need an office have one. The old ‘corner office with a view,’ the very emblem of hier­archy and elit­ism, is nowhere to be seen.
The detail­ing on the work­sta­tions uses mater­i­als from the adja­cent ware­house, which rep­res­ent Bell’s core busi­ness, tea and cof­fee. The notice­boards are made from cof­fee sacks, as are many of the com­munal light shades. I mean it as a def­in­ite com­pli­ment when I say that it’s the type of office that work­ers feel they can leave the news­pa­per on the table. It feels lived in – which is a great qual­ity for a build­ing that’s only been occu­pied for 9 months.

The build­ing reminds work­ers that Bell’s goal is to cre­ate the best tea and cof­fee they pos­sibly can, while always remem­ber­ing where the com­pany came from. The board­room is fairly simple by mod­ern stand­ards, while still con­tain­ing all the mul­ti­me­dia equip­ment neces­sary. What is not­able though is the sense of his­tory in the room. Next to the mul­ti­me­dia equip­ment sits ancient Bell tea tins, pho­tos of all the sig­ni­fic­ant Bell fig­ures since 1898 and old ledgers filled with immacu­late penmanship.

To fur­ther link the cor­por­ate and man­u­fac­tur­ing sides of the com­pany, the board­room also has a nar­row internal win­dow that looks into the tea and cof­fee tast­ing rooms. Wingate is right­fully proud of the tast­ing rooms and he tells me the tea tast­ing room is widely con­sidered to be the fore­most example in Aus­tralasia. This is largely due to a glass roof panel above the bench, which catches light from the reflect­ive clad­ding above. While it wasn’t evid­ent on the rainy day I vis­ited, tea taster Matt Green­wood says view­ing the col­our of the tea under good nat­ural light is vastly super­ior to artificial.

Tea and cof­fee tast­ing labor­at­or­ies are now major hubs of the office. The highly vis­ible spaces are adja­cent the café. Vis­ion strips in meet­ing rooms provide glimpses into these labs.

The ‘Centre of Grav­ity’ café, above. Grav­ity Cof­fee is one of Bell’s brands. The fur­niture pieces were custom-made to rep­res­ent a geo­met­ric map of New Zea­l­and (a built-in fish­bowl indic­ates Lake Taupo). The pendant lights are covered with coffee-sack cloth, and many other ref­er­ences to the cof­fee and tea trade abound throughout.

Wingate has designed the north-facing side of the build­ing dif­fer­ently than oth­ers in the area. Instead of installing louvres to block out the sun, he has gone for nar­rower win­dows in the work areas and a large floor-to-ceiling win­dow in the com­munal area, where some heat gain is accept­able. All this allows views out to the tea bushes that sep­ar­ate the build­ing from the road.

Beside the com­munal area, the café has two tables in the shape of the North and South Islands (even an internal fish bowl for Lake Taupo) and a much smal­ler one in the shape of Aus­tralia. It’s an informal space and work­ers can even write com­pany busi­ness on the chalk­board walls.

The internal ‘street’ that vis­it­ors arrive into sep­ar­ates the ware­house and the branded cor­por­ate area. The recep­tion area has art­fully arranged stacks of all Bell’s products behind it and a warm ‘hello’ writ­ten on the green counter. Iconic pho­tos of the Bell-sponsored Olympian Mark Todd sit just off to the side.

David Wingate sums up his design philo­sophy for the build­ing. “I want the com­pany to be able to grow into the build­ing. It’s a can­vas and as they change and cel­eb­rate more and more mile­stones it will come to reflect their devel­op­ing identity.”

The building's internal 'street'.

Credit inform­a­tion:

Cli­ent Bell Tea and Cof­fee Com­pany
Archi­tect Wingate+Farquhar
Main con­tractor Aspec Con­struc­tion
Paint Resene
Floor­ing Irvine Inter­na­tional (Car­pet Tile); Jac­ob­sens (Vinyl); James Hal­stead Floor­ing (Mar­mo­leum)
Light­ing Eunice Taylor (Table Lamps)
Work­sta­tion desks, chairs, cab­in­etry Work­sta­tions from Eclectic Fur­niture; task chairs from Cite; stor­age from Euro­plan
Board­room tables, chairs Board­room table from Cor­por­ate Cul­ture; board­room chairs from Kada; meet­ing chairs from Titan Fur­niture
Wait­ing fur­niture Otto­man from Fine­wood
Other fur­niture Sharp & Page; Mont­age Interi­ors
Cush­ions Ingrid Ander­son Tex­tiles; Win­dow Design Centre
Sig­nage Sign Crafts­men
Dis­play fit­tings Pizazz
Spe­cial­ist wall lin­ings Shears & Mac4
Fea­ture wall Piper Traders

Wait­ing area with cof­fee sack dec­or­at­ive panel.

Wait­ing area.

Detail from tast­ing labs.

View­ing panel in board­room through to tast­ing labs.

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