CHANGING PLACES

All images in this book are the copyright of JTP unless otherwise stated.

A JTP Press Publication All Rights Reserved 2021 © JTP A catalogue record of this book is available in the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-9573093-7-1

Printed by Online Reprographics

JTP Unit 5, The Rum Warehouse Pennington Street London E1W 2AP www.jtp.co.uk The story of JTP’s move to Pennington Street Warehouse

Contents

CHANGING PLACES

A lesson in empathy

NEW BEGINNINGS

Why move at all?

UNDERSTANDING

What makes a place?

ENGAGING

Can a workplace be all things to all people?

CREATING

What inspired our design?

SNAPSHOTS

How does our new home feel?

REFLECTIONS

What have we achieved?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Who made it possible? 1

13

31

59

75

99

155

173

Changing Places

A LESSON IN EMPATHY

The places we live are constantly in flux, often so slow as to be imperceptible, small organic shifts happening on a day-by-day basis. But with new development comes more rapid change, not just to how the physical environment looks, but more importantly to how we live our lives – the shop that supplies our everyday needs, the space our children love to play in, and the bench in the sun where we hatch ideas.

As architects and masterplanners, changing places is, of course, what we do – inventing or reworking buildings and neighbourhoods, creating new places and breathing life into old ones. We’re painfully aware that our work could either enhance or detract from the quality of everyday life, and so we’ve developed a thoughtful process we like to call Collaborative Placemaking.

This is about putting people at the heart of the creative process, unearthing the real needs of existing neighbourhoods, inspiring community spirit and building consensus. There is nothing we like more than creating places with those who use them on a habitual basis, so they are vibrant, valued and sustainable right from the outset.

But this book is about an important change in place for ourselves, not others. It’s the story of the JTP London studio relocating from Clerkenwell to Wapping, leaving a wellestablished creative district for a rapidly transforming neighbourhood, and a simple industrial workspace for an extraordinary historic dock warehouse. So, what happens when you train your professional thinking, creative techniques and heartfelt beliefs on your own workplace?

This book charts a journey of organisational self-discovery. It shows what transpires when you embrace a neighbourhood, work with historic character, and take time to truly understand the personality, aspiration and everyday needs of your own business and talent. In short, it describes what happens when you practise what you preach.

Along the way are insights and setbacks, sudden realisations and home truths, on our quest to understand and shape our future workplace. How could we use this opportunity to enhance our creativity, cross-fertilise ideas and address an unfulfilled desire to collaborate more? What could we do to improve the physical and mental well-being of our teams, increase sociability, and be sustainable? And how was this all possible within a limited budget, while respecting a listed building and connecting into the spirit of a longoverlooked place?

This is our odyssey, our learning journey, the story of JTP changing places.

Marcus Adams Managing Partner JTP December 2020

EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

At the time of finalising this book, the world and almost every facet of our lives have been altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. As we transition to a world where we must live with the possibility of a viral resurgence on a more frequent basis, we can begin to see which parts of the old ‘normal’ world will return and which parts of this new world will shape our path forward. The impact of this moment will be significant.

Amid a lot of speculation around the future of the workplace, we were deeply honoured that Pennington Street Warehouse (PSW) was named winner in the Corporate Workplace category at the 2020 British Council for Offices (BCO) London Awards. This accolade really acknowledges the importance of workplaces, not just as places to do work, but for the role they play as the hub of a community, often providing an economic boost to their localities. We really believe that Pennington Street Warehouse challenges the preconceptions of what constitutes a workplace. The judges testified that this is somewhere that ‘put a smile on everyone’s face’. But this goes beyond the remarkable adaptation of the building or its commitment to sustainability. The studio symbolises something much more intangible.

It is a place where we make and nurture friendships. A place where we have face-to-face interactions. A place where we feel a sense of belonging. A place where we gather around the temperamental hot-water dispenser to share tea-making strategies and other creative happenings. A place for accidental interactions. A place where we can mentor and be mentored. A place for informal development and networking that is so crucial, particularly early on in a career.

What this award signifies is that the workplace is far from defunct. In fact, it is very likely to remain a fixture of future life. Working will inevitably change as we emerge from the pandemic, but we still believe the creative and collaborative studio remains as important as ever.

NEW BEGINNINGS

SOMETIMES THE GREATEST RISK IS TO DO NOTHING

Why move at all?

Move building? Everybody? Eyes rolled at the mere thought of it. All the disruption, all the cost, all the uncertainty. How would staff react? What would clients think? What were the chances of finding a suitable space in this jam-packed city? But in truth, both our neighbourhood and our studio were not quite the fit they had once been. Not only had Clerkenwell moved on since we arrived over 25 years ago, so had we.

In 1994, when JTP first opened its doors in Clerkenwell, it was a very different place. Quirky and affordable, it was perfect for a fledgling business. The two things were, of course, interrelated. A long-overlooked neighbourhood that was centrally located yet difficult to reach, Clerkenwell provided ideal conditions for a collage of urban life to develop and subsist, somewhat under the radar.

From the start, we loved the eclectic market stalls of Leather Lane with their knock-off goods, old magazines and broken biscuits, the nightly drama of bloody aproned butchers at Smithfield Market, the surfeit of horologists, the brutal charm and high culture of The Barbican, the Italian enclave around Terroni’s delicatessen and St Peter’s Catholic church, lunchtime picnicking on Clerkenwell Green, and squeals of laughter from kids on the Peabody Estate. It was everything we looked for in a neighbourhood and tried to instill in the projects we designed: layers of history, intriguing streets and alleyways, welcoming public spaces, independent businesses and a sense of community – all combined to form a unique place, brought alive by contrasting energies.

An Expensive Pint at The Slaughtered Lamb

Over the years, things gradually changed, slowly at first and then with increasing speed, as Clerkenwell’s bohemian respectability, abundance of property and central location attracted the attention of property developers and media agencies shunted sideways by West End rents.

Empty warehouses transformed into apartments and lofts. Vacant sites were filled with new workplaces. The huge volumes of Smithfield Market filled with sawdust and wooden butcher’s slabs were swept away, subdivided into tiny sanitised shop units and finished with a pastel-coloured paint job. In the beginning, the new influx of people helped local shops and cafés and gave rise to a thriving independent bar and restaurant scene – until, perhaps inevitably, along came Starbucks, Costa Coffee and Pizza Express. This tale of gentrification – neighbourhoods becoming ‘victims’ of their own success – is a familiar one in London, and indeed in major post-industrial cities the world over.

And we’re not blind to our own role in this process. Renowned urbanist Jane Jacobs once said ‘New ideas seem to need old places’, and it seems true that the first step in the transformation of underutilised urban areas seems to be creative souls looking for affordable accommodation and opportunities to grow and evolve both themselves and the spaces around them.

But it would be absurd to begrudge Clerkenwell’s new residents and tenants, or question, their right to locate there. As placemakers, we fully understand this process of evolution. Everywhere has its moment and this varies for different audiences, tenants and inhabitants. One person’s version of urban heaven – characterful, gritty and a bit unkempt around the edges – is another person’s idea of hell. To each, then, his own. That said, we sorely missed fried egg sandwiches in the defunct ‘Tasty Cafe’, the avuncular owner of the hardware store and his encyclopaedic knowledge of tools and fixings, and having someone mend your shoes while you waited at Farringdon Tube Station. Perhaps this loss of connection with what Clerkenwell had been would’ve mattered less if we felt totally at home in our studio.

But we didn’t.

The Tasty Cafe: gone but not forgotten

TIPPING POINT

Our twenty-year stay in Clerkenwell involved three different workplaces, moving on from one to the next as we grew in numbers, evolved as a business and honed our design philosophy. By the time we pitched up at the last of these in 2008, Clerkenwell was allegedly home to the highest number of architects in the world, and we were using the design of our new studio at 23–25 Great Sutton Street to explore a burning passion of ours – sustainability.

At that time, it was unusual to invest heavily in a rented building, but we saw the studio as an opportunity to research and develop – setting a new benchmark for what could be achieved with an existing warehouse. Every avenue was explored, from wool-insulated rooms and shower-water recycling, to photovoltaics and solar thermal panels for hot water and natural ventilation over air conditioning. Measures taken made for remarkable energy efficiency, had an enormously positive impact on well-being and absenteeism, as well as winning lots of awards and recognition.

It was here at Great Sutton Street that our Collaborative Placemaking methodology was developed. Born out of JTP’s pioneering approach to Community Planning, this was a more holistic approach to development – a truly human-centric way of thinking, focussed around creating urban experiences that nurtured communities of shared interest, in characterful neighbourhoods. This approach demanded much greater teamworking and a more agile workspace that could facilitate impromptu conversations, brainstorming and cross-fertilisation of ideas. However, our highly sustainable studio struggled to keep up. Sure, we had a fantastic Charrette Room – the stage for many a memorable placemaking session – but on an everyday basis, the limits of being physically split across four floors were taking their toll on communication and our ability to work together effectively.

Heavily glazed walls were perfect for natural light and ventilation but left nowhere to pin up or share work in progress. Increasing storage needs were reducing working space, cutting work-bays apart and eliminating possibilities for eye contact and casual conversations. In our hearts, we knew that, although brilliant environmentally, the studio was not contributing to our new workstyle or supporting the flow of knowledge and spontaneous conversations from which placemaking innovation emerges.

The impending arrival of Crossrail in Clerkenwell was accelerating the inevitable. The big city firms and retail chains that could offer strong covenants to landlords were pushing up rents. Finally, the day came when an increase in our own rent review arrived in the post. Enough to raise not one eyebrow, but two. And keep them there. A tipping point had been reached, and with all signs pointing towards change, we began to think about the positive effects a move might bring.

Creative cogs began to turn. THE SEARCH FOR A NEW HOME

We had spent a great deal of time and money in making our rented workplace at Great Sutton Street the sustainable success story that it was, and part of the internal resistance to moving was the pain of leaving all this behind.

What this clarified was that if we were to invest heavily again, the benefits had to last – it had to be our own property. So, we needed to buy somewhere. More than that, we needed a blank canvas we could shape to our own needs, in an area that reflected our belief in supporting regeneration.

Our great city, especially in its central core, is notoriously difficult for finding properties that are unique and offer good value. The laments of developers and especially their land-buyers were well known to us. With their little black books, ear-to-the-ground and painstaking detective work, they went about their job of quietly seeking opportunities and assembling pockets of unloved space. What we needed was their help.

Having worked on the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station, we approached them. Yes, there was a space in Phase One. Yes, it was the right size. Yes, it was somewhere rapidly transforming with positive energy. But suddenly, it wasn’t available. They too were growing fast as an organisation and needed the space themselves. We came very close to becoming their new office tenant, ahead of their spectacular Apple deal. Disappointingly, the deal fell through. But later, we’d be glad that it did. With every cloud there is a silver lining.

With time ticking on the end of our lease in Clerkenwell, we scoured London for something suitable and pursued a series of wrong turns and dead ends until suddenly we remembered London Dock.

Why hadn’t this occurred to us earlier? A number of years before, we had placed second in a competition to masterplan a colossal site in Wapping owned by a major client of ours, St George (part of the ever-successful Berkeley Group).

Maybe it was the pain of losing the competition that had struck this place from our memory. But what we remembered more than anything was the remarkable 315-metre-long historic brick warehouse at the heart of London Dock, which had been earmarked as a potential cultural hub for the new residential neighbourhood.

Was that a possibility? We called, and somehow convinced St George to at least allow us to visit.