From day one, it was clear that the Vandals needed a home to call their own. A place to ideate, prototype and call customers. A place of whiteboards, 3D printers, soldering irons, gigabit internet (and landlines for the cold-call inclined).
From day one, it was clear that the Vandals needed a home to call their own. A place to ideate, prototype and call customers. A place of whiteboards, 3D printers, soldering irons, gigabit internet (and landlines for the cold-call inclined). In order to be a nexus for the Vandals community - location was also important, the Vandals HQ is 300 metres from Redfern station, the most accessible station in Sydney. Redfern is a place of character, and is the closest suburb to the Sydney CBD subversive enough for meaningful art and creativity to take place.
Intelligently, we are also 50 metres from the perimeter of Investment NSW's "Tech Central" initiative, ensuring that we do not benefit from government tax incentives. We are strategically placed between the nodes of this initiative, ensuring we can waylay deep tech founders as they head from the Haymarket to Eveleigh nodes, and only release them when they generate revenue.
What Tech Central aspires to be, the Vandals HQ is - a big room in an old glass factory, just off historic Eveleigh Street in Redfern, committed to generating more value than entire skyscrapers in the CBD.
At the outset, it was unclear what the Vandals HQ needed to be. It was easy to say what it wasn't - not a coworking space, neither a makerspace, nor a factory. But elements of all of these combined. The guiding analogy we've come to is that it is: "a space that facilitates, empowers and supports experienced people to undertake hackathons regularly, and professionally". The HQ is for the Vandals community, and this means it needs to be a diverse space that serves the diverse needs of a diverse group of people. It needs to work as well for the hardware prototyping specialist that is in 7 days a week, as it does for the senior back-end engineer that comes by once a month to get a project out of trouble (and boy are we glad that they do).
Spaces meeting the needs of their users is the core principle of user-centric design. Of course, alongside this is the adage that if you make something for everyone, you make something for no one. The approach we took was to design the space in sections, each more targeted to a different type of user and activity. All these spaces are proximal and visible, but there is a gradient increase in depth of work, noise of work and mess of work as you go deeper into the depths of the HQ.
As you enter the space, you are greeted by the break/out space - a lounge area with an abundance of whiteboard. This area is for relaxing conversations, larger discussions with up to 15 people at a type, or just a place to be that isn't a desk (or workbench). Proximal to this space is the small, stocked kitchenette, with food and drinks to facilitate thinking and talking.
As you proceed deeper - there is a mixed workspace. Eight desks total, four of which have access to prototyping stations, with electronics and mechanical equipment to enable development, testing and troubleshooting alongside a computer. The further four are setup for software, ultrawide monitors, set up for quick presentation of a large VS Code environment. These also serve as hot-desks for more brief flirtations with vandalism.
Deeper still there is a light prototyping space, workbenches and equipment. This is the home of the 3D printers, Vinyl cutter, laser cutter and a more hardcore electronics station. We call this pretty prototyping. The sound and mess are noticeable, but uplift the momentum to the environment as a whole. The product development equivalent of the light buzz of conversation at your favourite café. This marks the end of the HQ main hall - the back, black wall serving as closed storage for the portfolio of projects in which Vandals is involved.
Through a double set of doors you then enter the fabrication and production facility. There is equipment here that is not typically considered within the realms of start-up prototyping and product development. Equipment that is typically operated by suppliers overseas, requiring long lead times and capital investment to achieve output. This is in-house injection moulding, CNC Machining, and small run production. If you are bootstrapping a hardware product, as Vandals does, you need to obliterate the MOQ, decimate Lead Times, and most importantly, retain the design flexibility that crafting your own products allows you. This room is loud and messy, an homage to the original purpose of the factory building in which the HQ resides.
Spaceship-like windows installed by the previous resident, an AI start-up for the mining industry, offer a visibility of activity in this space. But most importantly, this room is soundproofed from the Main Hall.
