Carrying the history of an institution into a contemporary workplace calls for a careful balance between recognition and renewal. At RAA’s Grenfell Street headquarters, Walter Brooke finds that balance in the relationship between material, memory and everyday use.

Beyond the more expressive public ground floor, the interior takes on a quieter character. RAA yellow shifts in saturation and intensity, appearing within joinery, deep-set reveals and thresholds. Dark timber lends depth to these moments of colour, while precise geometries and framed openings give the spaces definition. Cork, glass block, planting and acoustic surfaces soften the composition, supporting the practice’s intention for a more domestic, approachable workplace.

A cork-clad central stair gives that ambition a spatial focus. Linking floors with breakout areas, meeting rooms and varied work settings, it makes movement part of the working day. Shared spaces support the project’s guiding idea of ‘One RAA’, creating opportunities for interaction between teams brought together at a single address.

Institutional history is treated with similar openness. Objects and memorabilia from RAA’s extensive archive are distributed throughout the workplace, placing traces of its past within contemporary settings. Encountered during daily routines, they give a personal dimension to an identity more commonly recognised through colour and graphics.

The headquarters holds these different expressions together without asking each space to speak at the same volume. Its public areas are confident and immediately recognisable; its working interiors are more measured. Across both, Walter Brooke gives RAA’s established identity a tangible presence, grounded in how people move, meet and spend time together.