Where archeology meets the cybersphere

Client: Edwardian Hotels London Architecture: Woods Bagot, Rob Steul Interior design: Yabu Pushelberg Construction Management: Blue Sky Building Contractors: EE Smith, GIG, Grants, Halsion, McGee Engineers: Arup Associates Furnishings & Lighting: Cassina, Henge, Lasvit, Molteni, Salvatori, Stellar Works, Tribu Kitchen Consultant: Humble Arnold Carpets: Tai Ping, Warp & Weft Handles: Valli&Valli Artist: Ian Monroe

Author: Francesca Gugliotta Photo credits: Henry Bourne, Adrian Houston

A real, physical space that is open to the public for an exclusively cryptocurrency bank: XAPO’s first headquarters was also the multidisciplinary firm Lagranja’s first conversion of a historic building

Cryptocurrencies are a complex world defined with difficulty. Virtual money encrypts information, which is stored in an encrypted form not on a single server, but on several thousand computers at the same time. It might, as such, seem unusual that a company operating entirely in the digital domain wanted a headquarters and a physical presence. Wences Casares, head of the company XAPO hired the Lagranja studio to design its first headquarters inside a military construction – barracks known as ‘casemates’ — built by the British army in 1817