A Bright, Contemporary Space in Downtown Chinatown for Sparro & Jack Nimble

Where, when and who designed the office space?

Sparro moved into this space in Sydney’s Chinatown, Haymarket, in 2019. The agency had kept outgrowing offices across Kippax St, Redfern and Chippendale. The plan was to go big and pursue fast growth.

The Haymarket office was a blank canvas when Sparro moved in — all windows and polished concrete floors, with an empty courtyard at the year and views of Sydney’s light rail and George Street below. It was in a great location at a five-minute walk from Central Station, but pretty bare bones.

Before moving in, the agency built more meeting rooms, installed enough desks to allow for more than doubling in headcount, bought huge paintings by Aboriginal artists, and filled the space with enough plants to create a local weather system in the courtyard. It was a collaborative effort with the whole team involved in the move, headed up by the two brothers.

The meeting rooms were named after local landmarks, places people missed, ironic jokes, and pop-culture locations. Tramview for the boardroom overlooking the George Street light rail, Gotham for the boardroom with a long Wayne-Manor-esque table, and Greenhouse for the darkest meeting room that receives no natural light. A staff member handpainted signs for each room, and had a staff painting night to fill a room with portraits.

Around a year after Sparro moved into their new space, the first COVID lockdown hit and the space sat almost entirely vacant for months. Some staff members started remotely and didn’t step foot in the office until well past their 6-month probation.

Throughout multiple COVID lockdowns in Sydney, the agency’s headcount doubled from around 40 to over 80. In anticipation of returning to the office, Sparro expanded its footprint to occupy a second level in the same building in late 2020, initially moving upwards to the building’s top ‘penthouse’ suite on Level 5.

Level 5 came with a massive rooftop balcony, a huge boardroom, and a pool table — with a very competitive pool ranking competition. While the space came with cool perks, it also came with grey drop ceilings, carpet floors, and a swarm of flickering fluorescent lights. Not exactly a good match for the cool, airy and bright space on the main level, Level 2.

When Sparro acquired Jack Nimble in late 2021, it became clear that the office’s penthouse level wasn’t fit for purpose. So, in early 2023, Sparro relocated their second space to Level 3 — right above their primary space on Level 2. This space was fitted out in consultation with Jack Nimble’s co-founders and staff, complete with a dedicated studio space, space for 50+ more staff, private meeting booths, more dining tables, a kitchenette, lounge space and a mezzanine balcony overlooking the lower level’s massive courtyard.

What were the end goals for the office layout? What were the aesthetic and functional goals? 

The goal for the office fit-out was to build a space where Sparro could grow — meeting the agency’s current needs while allowing plenty of space to expand. It’s why we moved into a space that was more than twice the size we needed in the first place, then allowed us to double our footprint again in anticipation of even more growth.

Our aesthetic is contemporary, clean and polished. Our space is defined by the foundations we loved about the office in the first place: polished concrete floors, high ceilings, clean white walls, exposed black industrial fittings, and lots of glass to let in natural light.

The way we have laid out our space is designed to maximise exposure to natural light and let people freely flow through the space. The last thing we wanted was a cramped space or one where you couldn’t be social with your desk neighbours.

We operate in the digital space and spend a lot of our days staring at screens, so we emphasise filling our space with natural objects, textures, and materials to bring us back to the physical world. A few of our staff, including Morris, love plants and take great pleasure in watering, trimming, propagating and admiring our many, many plants.

Our style has developed slowly over time and, admittedly, without a lot of holistic creative vision. We chose furniture, art, textiles, plants, and accessories slowly. We have a mish-mash of styles that reflect the eclectic tastes of over 100 people — contemporary, art deco, modern, contemporary, restoration, Aboriginal, and ultra-contemporary. Our office is a very nice place to be, but we don’t want to be precious about it or treat it as a designer showroom.

Ultimately, we take a pragmatic approach to choosing things for the office. They should all ideally say yes to three questions:

1. Is it good quality?

2. Will it last being used by over 100 people every day for several years? 

3. Can we buy it from one of our clients?

We love having a space that’s big enough to host guests. It’s not uncommon for a few of our clients to work from our office once a week or so, and it’s something we intend to invite more clients to do in the future. We’re always looking for new ways to add value and we find it’s a simple way to build connection between our team and our clients. We’re also looking to host more client events in our space in the future.

Does the building have an interesting history?

The building has a very interesting history. You can’t really recognise it beyond location since the entire site was extensively remodelled in the 90s, but it was once the site of photography studio, Eden Studios.

Eden Studios was owned by Ernest ‘Eden’ George in 1895. He was a man with an interesting, if controversial, life. He was born in rural New South Wales, had a failed political career running for New Zealand’s Parliament, took up photography as a profession, became the youngest ever Mayor of Christchurch, was ousted by his fellow Councillors after a single year in office, packed up and moved to Australia (twice), opened the first Eden Studios in Ballarat, had some bad run-ins with his business partners, and eventually opened Eden Studios on George Street, Sydney.

It’s fitting that Sparro and Jack Nimble — a digital media and creative production agency pair — now occupy a space built by a creative who knew the power of PR and advertising. There are online archives of late-19th- and early-20th-century advertisements and fluff pieces about the studio first published in the Sydney Morning Herald. It’s pretty incredible that Australian history is filled with photographs of politicians, soldiers, businessmen and families taken in this space. 

Not many photos exist of the building from before it was renovated, but we have had one printed that hangs above our bar. The print is an impressive reminder of the building’s long history — and always attracts remarks about how Sydney used to have an incredible tram network before cars were commonplace.

Today, the Sparro name sits proudly atop the building and lights up at night, a lot like the Eden Photo Studios name did 100 years ago.

How many employees do you have and is there a seat for everyone? How are the desks organised?

Starting on a single level and around 30 people, Sparro has now grown to fill two levels — with enough space to keep growing their team of 100+ people. As of publishing, Sparro and Jack Nimble have just over 100 full-time Sydney-based employees, with 109 desks, 9 meeting rooms, 1 photo studio, 3 meeting booths with room for 12, 7 dining tables with room for 60+, a courtyard with room for 50+ people, and three couch spaces with room for around 25. 

In short, there is more than enough room for everyone.

Desks are oversized and organised into pods of 6-8, with plenty of space between seats and other tables. We made it a priority to allow people to spread out, be comfortable, and (during COVID lockdowns) remain physically distanced from others.

Everyone can come into the office on the same day and fit in comfortably — it just never happens. Between working from home or anywhere, overseas trips, leave days, meetings, and shoot days, there has never been a day where the office has truly felt at capacity.

How does the change to work from home impact the layout of the office? What features do you have now to accommodate to the modern work schedule? 

• We have a work-from-anywhere policy and have employees who have moved interstate and back home overseas, as well as people who regularly work remotely while travelling.

• Meeting booths are a recent acquisition to increase our informal spaces for private meetings

• We encourage people to take 1:1 and internal meetings in breakout spaces (couches, dining tables, courtyard, standup tables), reserving formal meeting rooms for client meetings and large team meetings.

• We encourage people to come into the office for important meetings and are trying to invite clients to come to our office more often

• We have unassigned seating (i.e. hot desks) to discourage lonely dead zones in the office on quiet days, encourage people to mingle with different teams, allow people to mix teams, and allow people from Sparro and Jack Nimble to sit amongst each other.

• Every meeting room has a large TV or monitor, a mini-computer, high-quality video cameras and microphones, and ample lighting for video conferencing

• On the days when we ask people to come in if they can (for agency-wide learning or our fortnightly all-hands), we reward them with food, drinks, and entertainment.

• We do bloody love it when the office is full and buzzing, but we like to let this happen organically and don’t believe in forcing anyone to come in. It’s up to our people and their managers to work out how they can be at their best – whether that’s remote or in the office.

• Some people really do come in every day because they prefer it.

What is the favourite and the most unique aspect of the office?

We love having a space big enough to host others without worrying about having enough room. Our space is seriously enormous.

In this space, we’ve fit over a hundred people, put on industry events, thrown dozens of parties, had a petting zoo (just for the day), lent desks to clients and friends, hosted thousands of meetings, and never really worried about whether our space was up for the task.

It’s liberating and has given us room to grow, have fun, challenge ourselves and be ambitious.