When the lift doors open on floor 17 of ARN’s new Sydney office space, the first thing you notice are two glowing pink screens adorned by Kyle and Jackie O‘s faces. After entering the offices, the second thing you notice is the expansive view over Sydney Harbour.
Welcome to floor 17
Sydney putting on a show for ARN employees
The broadcaster is in the process of moving all of its operations over to the new North Sydney home after 38 years in Macquarie Park, in what ARN’s chief content officer Duncan Campbell tells Mediaweek is, “the end of an era, but the beginning of quite an exciting new era.”
The new Sydney offices are very sleek, with everyone working from identical curved monitors that match the neutral colours of the overall office design – not that you’d need to add much when you have floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city.
There is also an outdoor area with a BBQ, and hotdesks making the most of the view.
The balcony space
Hotdesks along the window for those who would like to soak up more of the view
Each meeting room and general working area is named after an iconic part of Sydney, with small signs hanging from the ceiling to tell you when you’ve moved from Manly, to Bondi, to Newtown, to Circular Quay.
The jewel in the crown is Kyle & Jackie O’s studio, the biggest studio on site, which is hard to miss and comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect of the duo’s new home. As well as the harbour view, one wall is entirely lit up with the show’s imaging, as is the animated ring around the large overhead light.
The production area outside the K&J studio
Home of the pair themselves
Covering the windows overlooking the harbour is $300,000 worth of high-tech mesh that can pull up images and mimic other screens, turning the window space into whatever the pair feel like. Campbell said the installation of this tech is an Australian first.
The mesh that runs along the length of the window in the K&J studio
The mesh at work along the left wall
With the 17th floor housing KIIS, it’s a quick trip down the central staircase – that the ARN team installed to avoid having to take the lift every time they had to pop in between floors – to the floor housing WSFM, CADA, and the commercial team.
Downstairs, the layout is very similar, with the Jonesy & Amanda studio directly underneath Kyle & Jackie O. Similarly, the WSFM day studio sits underneath the KIIS 106.5 day studio. CADA can be found a short hop away, in a studio down the hall from WSFM. Despite these studios still having the finishing touches put on them, it’s obvious that they’re just as high-tech – although perhaps with fewer sparkles than their upstairs neighbours.
Back on the ground floor, the ARN reception space is on the cusp of opening and features a ceiling full of bubbles that catch the light from the colourful window tint.
ARN’s reception
Behind the reception, the space opens up into a wider room that Campbell says will be used for meetings with the entire team, as well as a communal kitchen space. The ground floor also includes meeting rooms, soundproof recording studios, and a studio that will be used for filming video content.
The communal space
And some of the very colourful meeting rooms
“Everyone who’s come here has said that they knew it would be good, but they didn’t realise it’d be quite as good as it is,” Campbell says.
“They’ve done a great job with the design, the colours are not going to date. Everyone has the same screens, which is fantastic.
“It all looks really good. People are impressed by how much better it is than they thought it was going to be – and of course, the view is the big selling point.”