Case study · Energy
Chevron Australia, Perth
Adaptive soundscaping inside Chevron’s national headquarters at Elizabeth Quay: 20 floors within a 29 storey tower, more than 1,500 people, soundscapes composed from the place itself, and a six month pilot before the building opened. One of the earliest deployments of adaptive soundscaping in an Australian corporate headquarters.
Project details
- Client
- Chevron Australia
- Location
- One The Esplanade, Elizabeth Quay, Perth, WA
- Sector
- Energy, corporate headquarters
- Scale
- 20 floors and 44,000 m² within a 29 storey tower, more than 1,500 employees
- Opened
- April 2023
- Pilot
- Six months, through 2022
- Valeo Technology role
- Sensory strategy, bespoke soundscape composition, audio infrastructure advice alongside the audiovisual consultant, a six month pilot with commissioning and testing, and design of the full deployment
- Design practice
- Gensler, with Whadjuk Noongar cultural architects
- Project partners
- UT Consulting, audiovisual design and delivery
- Building certifications
- WELL Platinum, 6 Star Green Star
The challenge
A headquarters at scale
A new national headquarters on Perth’s Elizabeth Quay, designed by Gensler and built over four years, bringing more than 1,500 people into 20 floors of a single tower.
At that scale the acoustic environment stops being a floor-by-floor question and becomes a standard: what a meeting room sounds like, what an open floor sounds like, and whether either holds up when the building is full.
The approach
Composed from the place, not selected from a library
The brief called for bespoke themes drawn from Perth and its surrounding environments. We composed bespoke themes drawn from the region: Rottnest Island, the Swan River, and the coastline around them.
A workplace in Perth sounds like Perth rather than like a generic forest.
Working alongside the audiovisual consultants, we also helped define which audio infrastructure the building should use. That decision sits upstream of the soundscaping and it determines what is possible later.
The pilot
A six month pilot before the building opened
The soundscaping ran as a six month pilot through 2022, before the headquarters opened and before it went to the whole building.
The pilot ran on the earlier generation of the Moodsonic platform. The full deployment moved to a networked audio platform, with a central core distributing soundscapes to zones across the building, from open floors to mother’s rooms, and was delivered inside the building’s wider audiovisual package rather than as a separate system.
Outcome
From pilot to headquarters deployment
The headquarters opened in April 2023, and adaptive soundscaping has been running in it since. It predates most of the work on this site, which is the reason we can say this has been operating in Australian headquarters buildings for years rather than months.
The workplace holds WELL Platinum and a 6 Star Green Star rating, and has been recognised with a 2024 Australian Good Design Award (winner, Built Environment, Interior Design), a 2023 IIDA Best of Asia Pacific Design Award and an honorary mention at the 2023 Singapore Interior Design Awards, all credited to Gensler and Chevron Australia. Valeo Technology’s soundscaping formed part of that workplace; the certifications and the awards are the building’s and the design team’s, and we make no claim on them.
The platform generation used here has since been superseded. We are describing what was delivered, not what we would specify today.
Coverage
Documented elsewhere
Chevron’s national headquarters
UT Consulting, who designed and delivered the audiovisual systems. Their account carries the tower, the headcount, the opening date and the Moodsonic soundscapes. Photography by Dion Robeson.
Chevron Perth
Gensler, the design practice. The floors, the floor area, the certifications and the design awards. It does not mention the sound layer.
Chevron Australia Headquarters, Perth
Good Design Awards, 2024. Winner, Built Environment, Interior Design, designer Gensler, client Chevron Australia. Records the collaboration with Whadjuk Noongar cultural architects on the design. It does not mention the sound layer.
Building facts, scale and opening date as published by UT Consulting and Gensler. The scope description above is Valeo Technology’s own account of the work. Photography of this project sits with others and is not reproduced here.