ENGAGING

THE HUB

A slice of carrot cake is lifted off a plate. Coins rattle into a metal box on the kitchen servery – today is baking day, with all proceeds to charity. Behind, the coffee machine hisses into life. A gentle hum floats down from the floors above. A head appears over the mezzanine.

Outside on Pennington Street, two passers-by affect the light inside momentarily, as they pass the arched window. At the end of a long table four people are sketching out ideas. A client sits reading a proposal in one of the easy chairs, a shaft of light warming the bricks behind them, marking the approach of lunch like a sundial. A voice calls down from the ground floor.

At the base of the triple-height atrium lies The Hub, the social and creative epicentre at the very heart of the studio. A place for gathering, eating, drinking, meeting and presenting. After clients and guests arrive at reception, they are immediately led along The Promenade, down the staircase and made welcome here.

The central area of The Hub consists of a highly flexible mix of benches and long tables that can host breakfast, lunch, informal working and presentations. At the margins are sofas and comfortable seating for guests, where they can sit and work, relax with a coffee, and chat informally. A proper home from home. On the north elevation is an arched window – opened up for the first time in 200 years. Under the window is the kitchen servery, which on Friday evenings magically transforms into a bar. The worktop is made from Richlite, the same recycled newspaper product encountered at reception. A large projection screen drops down for presentations. At the studio opening party, the furniture was swept aside to create the perfect dancefloor. Even architects dance. Badly. But we dance.

Set within two vaulted arches adjacent to The Hub is the Charrette Room – the engine room of the practice. Here experienced staff and young talent hatch and test ideas, in design workshops that might involve clients, landscape architects, structural and civil engineers and property agents, as well as marketing and branding experts.

Often this intense collaboration will spill over into The Hub, bringing a sense of energy that is palpable throughout the office. Even smaller events in the Charrette Room generate excitement, as they are easily observed from the Vaults and upper levels of The Atrium through the elegant steel-framed glazed screens, with their fine bronze sections in stark contrast to the massive Portland stone piers.

At the push of a lever, the tables in the Charrette Room tilt vertically and can be rolled away and stored. Suddenly, this collaborative workspace becomes the perfect yoga studio, quiet, intimate and focussed.

THE MEZZANINE

The staircase connects a split level which ascends through the void at the centre of the studio, featuring an upper storey that projects over the ground floor. An added level of space and an added level of animation.

Throughout the design process, we wanted to express who we are as a practice and be respectful of and sympathetic to the building. We wanted honesty, humbleness, to pare things back. The qualities which make collaboration effective. These are also the traits we find in the building’s materiality.

Creating The Mezzanine meant reworking the historic shell. But where The Atrium subtracted fabric, the new floor added. In the adaptive reuse of listed buildings, sensitivity is all about balance. Retaining as much of the original character as possible, while keeping one eye on financial viability. The design of The Mezzanine is the result of many, many iterations. The final approach preserves a real sense of the original volume of the warehouse, while inserting a new structure with an appropriate look and feel. The resulting industrial aesthetic is born out of I-section steel beams, with surface-fixed bolts and exposed timber joists – which are oversized to provide fire protection. During construction, we discovered all the joists had been printed with codes, so we left those visible. Every detail tells a story.

It was the same with the ventilation ducts, left exposed to increase the sense of volume. We also set the distance from the floor to the underside of joists on the ground floor at a generous 2800mm, which just felt right for the scale of the space. Over by Reception, the western staircase to The Mezzanine is elegantly hung from the roof truss, also without intermediate support, and provides our tenants with a private access to their workspace.

CONVERSATIONS

A group of five huddle round a table, talking in low tones. One gets up and grabs a drawing from the wall. A client leans forward to touch and point to the monitor. The image on the screen changes. In the adjacent bay, ideas are being organised on a wall with magnets. Behind this, two people sit side by side at a laptop, one on a stool. A third stands behind them. In the corner an enormous drawing is rolled over a large table, a selection of pens sit abandoned on it, and the seat, for the moment, lies vacant. Tucked into an alcove on the north wall, two people chat, inaudibly.

Our ambition was for project-based working and greater collaboration within and between design teams. Or to put it more simply – nurturing more conversations. This meant moving away from rigid structures and fixed desks towards more flexible workstyles in different kinds of task-related spaces.

A series of zones were formulated, with a variety of formal and informal workspaces, neighbourhoods around which projects coalesce – with touch screens, extensive pin-up space and large drawing benches. Three of these bays are provided on the ground floor, one on The Mezzanine with model-making benches, and a fifth, more flexible zone in the Vaults, served by moveable display boards. We spent a huge amount of time choosing new desks. Asking staff to give up on a fixed space and embrace hot-desking meant we needed to get the product right. Family contacts led us finally to Opendesk. Made from FSC-certified birch ply, these were beautifully sculpted workbenches, soft to the touch and environmentally friendly.

Opendesk is a unique concept. While most office furniture is mass manufactured in one place and then shipped worldwide, the company has established a local network of local craftsmen to create and install its designs – in our case Wilder Creative in Walthamstow, just four miles away. We loved the idea that you could both support local business and reduce carbon emissions in one fell swoop.

Alongside the varied workspaces set within project neighbourhoods, we created a range of meeting spaces with distinct characters, designed to facilitate different kinds of collaboration – by varying size, technology and atmosphere. Named after former uses of the warehouse, The Rum Room and The Spice Room are located in the Vaults, and The Newsroom and The Print Works are on the ground floor.

The Rum Room

Two vaulted arches wide and one bay deep, the Rum Room is enclosed by glazed screens set between the stone pillars, with a visual connection to The Hub. A five-metre long boardroom table and fixed furniture in black toasted oak create a serene environment with an executive feel. LED uplighters illuminate and emphasise the beauty of the brickwork arches. Services are concealed within the fixed furniture.

The Spice Room

Perfectly square, and set partially below street level facing onto Pennington Street and the entrance, it’s perfect for people-watching. The room is all about the pattern, texture and colour of the vaulted brickwork arches. The detail changes through the arch from a stepped brickwork section to a perfect arch. Brick specials define the line of the arch. Chilli-and cumin-coloured upholstery to the chairs are a reminder of the spices once stored in these vaults.

There is a great tranquillity to both of these meeting spaces in the Vaults. The subdued lighting, historic brick and gently curved ceilings all play a part, but also perfect acoustics make conversation easy. It’s as though the spaces themselves encourage consensus and defy heated debate.

The Newsroom

All of our reference books, catalogues of design and access statements, design guides and practice publications are gathered and placed around the walls of this library-like haven on the ground floor. A quiet space for meeting and reading, it also serves as our Prayer Space.

The Print Works

We deliberately brought together all our printing, plotting and binding facilities in a single location, to create an informal meeting point. It doesn’t have the glamour of catching up by the coffee machine in The Hub, but many important decisions have been made whilst waiting in gleeful anticipation for documents to arrive through the printer.

The Nook

A more intimate meeting setting, tucked out of sight in the north-west corner of the ground floor, The Nook is protected and private. It is perfectly soundproof for those more sensitive discussions.

Alcoves & Arches

Already a perennial favourite, these informal workspaces emerged out of conversations with staff. Five ground-floor arches on the north elevation provide intimacy and privacy from the open studio. Seating and tables are constructed in birch ply with coloured upholstery. And on the south elevation, the height of the existing windowsills, and the depth of the reveals makes for perfect seats. Befitting a warehouse that once stored spices, the cushions are coloured in paprika. Tucked off The Promenade and with excellent sound insulation, they make a great place to sit and concentrate, with the sun pouring in.

DARK HUMOUR

Sometimes it’s good to confound expectations; it makes people smile. Generally, the restrooms in offices are neglected, perfunctory, unloved – something there only because they have to be there. Unflattering lighting, cheap, clattery. We wanted our people and our guests to feel a million dollars when they spend a penny. So, we invested many pounds.

In contrast to the light and openness of the studio, our restrooms were conceived as dark and stylish, with a spa-like luxury. The darkness is created through the use of black toasted oak doors and screens. Vanity units are sculptural and cantilevered from the wall, the smoothness of the Silestone finish contrasting with the irregularity of the brickwork. The brass taps are solid and textured, a timeless design reflecting the character of both the building and the practice.

The floor is finished with Ketley quarry tiles. In keeping with other elements of the building, the tiles are utilitarian, industrial and hard wearing, yet still perform their luxury role in this context. Like the brickwork, they have imperfections and a delicate inconsistency. The colour brings warmth to the space. A long debate resulted in the decision to make the restrooms unisex. Men gallantly ceded access to all of their cubicles, while ladies retain three for their exclusive use. Inside the cubicles, LED lights illuminate the brickwork arch from below, giving them a cocoon-like feel.

In a separate area, we worked hard to make space for three large shower rooms, with associated lockers and also a room for drying wet clothes. Part of our strategy for a healthy and sustainable studio, this was all about making it easy for our staff to cycle or run to the studio. Combining exercise with a carbonfree footprint – what’s not to like? Secure cycle storage has also been provided down in the Vaults, right alongside the workspaces.

We also brought some playful fun to the signage and wayfinding. This was designed by our in-house graphics team and was inspired by the distinctive painted numbers on the warehouses of Wapping. We used master signwriter Nick Garrett, who has, over the last twenty years, established himself as one of the greatest exponents in the country, publishing several books on the styles and techniques of this art form. Beyond his incredible skill, we loved that he’s a local, and also that he specialises in sustainable, safe and natural materials. Our signs were painted using egg whites.