Reuse For Good

From drab, boring, and cramped… to light, beautiful, and spacious – all for free!

We received a request from our friends at the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation that read like this:

“Up the hill here at BCFNZ we’re looking to rearrange our office space more efficiently, refit some areas, and generally make room for more staff and better use of the space we have. I was wondering if we might be able to ask for the advice and help of your team to guide us a little? Obviously, we’re going to try to do this with practically no budget, which we know will cramp a lot of fantastic ideas, but we have to work with what we have mostly. Do you think it’s something that Crestline might be able to take on at all?” Amylouise Miller | Corporate Partnerships Manager. Breast Cancer Foundation NZ

Our resourceful team was eager to help and quick to respond to the need. Matisse from StudioMuse was more than happy to help the NZBCF with the space planning of this project, so she joined the project team, offering her fantastic ideas, interior design, and spatial planning skills.

We reached out to Foodstuffs NZ immediately, since we were working on a large-scale office refit with them at the time so we knew they had furniture ready for removal. They were eager to help the foundation and offered to donate pretty much everything that was on our ‘second-hand furniture wish list’. As a result, not only were we able to supply high-quality furniture that was in great useable condition – but heaps of it – enough to set up 28 workspaces! Early 2021 saw us meeting on-site with various stakeholders, builders, and planners to kickstart the NZBCF office refurb project. The Crestline install team was in at Foodstuffs NZ dismantling and repackaging furniture to deliver to the NZBCF offices. With desks, chairs, leaners, stools, tables, screens and soft-wiring we created some amazing spaces for task work, meeting rooms and quiet zones.

Within one week we had successfully transformed the drab offices of one NZ’s most loved charities to a first-class, professional work environment. This was because a combination of teams worked together to re-purpose and create an extremely positive outcome for the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation, while also diverting 132 furniture items from landfill. Our Reuse-for-Good programme in full swing!

Crestline was only too glad to give a hand and some office furniture when The Auckland City Mission reached out for help during a delicate stage of relocation to a temporary workspace.

Auckland City Mission is one of the most significant providers of charitable aid to homeless and continues to grow as the region’s most influential social service provider. Initially they were “winning souls for Christ” but overtime the Mission has changed from being seen as ‘the City Mission of the Anglican Church’ to ‘Auckland’s City Mission’. The services they offer have developed over time to reflect social changes, but their purpose remains to ‘help people in desperate need’.

Their offices were no longer fit for purpose, so construction of a new building designed by Stevens Lawson Architects, started on their existing site. They shifted out of their Hobson Street premises and into a larger, temporary space which urgently required a fully functional office fitout at minimal cost to the charity. One of our corporate clients very kindly donated an entire office-lot of furniture that was destined to landfill. Our team moved quickly to dismantle and re-install the furniture at the impermanent Auckland City Mission offices and facilities. Without causing any disruption to the day-to-day care and support that this wonderful charity offers to Auckland’s most needful people, within a few hours our team set up their team with efficient, user-friendly workspaces!

The good people at the mission were thrilled with the outcome, and for us, it was simply a pleasure to see this hardworking charity benefit from our ‘Reuse-for-good’ programme.