This is the workplace turned inside out. Bourke and Bowden is located at the heart of a rapidly changing Alexandria – a new demographic and an evolving urban condition generated by the stimulus of nearby Green Square and the urban regeneration of the southern fringe of the Sydney CBD. Awarded as part of a City of Sydney Design Excellence Competition, Openwork and Christina Silk Office of Planting designed and documented a series of characterful landscape spaces that host the commercial activity and social life of the project and its wider precinct. The Bowden Street frontage is defined by a north facing veranda – a human scaled active edge and vegetated boundary to its neighbourhood. The courtyard is the centre of gravity around which the building is organised and provides an immersive green threshold between street and foyer. A sanctuary from the noise of traffic and a valuable addition to the broader public domain, the courtyard provides an open air biophilic setting for workplace above and the ground level retail. A series of landscape spaces on the roof create a calm and verdant outlook over the city and an uncanny setting for communal activities including meeting, dining and yoga. Read as a whole, the diversity of these experiences inverts the orthodox idea of commercial development as an introverted and hermetically sealed box.