Linzi Cassels, Breaking Barriers to Entry by Perkins&Will

Linzi Cassels ―

Breaking Barriers to Entry

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

Linzi understands that no project can be accomplished on her own: All of the interior designer’s work is a product of invaluable and integral collaborations between her team members, collectively working towards a beautiful solution.

At the intersection of science and art, ― architecture draws individuals who have both technical aptitude and untethered creativity. Linzi Cassels always saw herself at that intersection, yet never stopped pushing the limits of her creative side. Both an architect and artist by training, the Scottish-born Interior Design Director chose to chart her own course through the design profession through an education in the arts. Now, she’s at the helm of an award-winning architecture and interiors studio in London, uplifting the voices of other women in the industry, too.

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

“Growing up in social housing, I didn’t expect to have the same opportunities as others who chose to pursue art. From the moment I decided to attend the Glasgow School of Art, I understood what it meant to be an outsider.”

Cassel’s mother was a drama teacher who moved the family into social housing after a divorce left her with few resources, but a commitment to educating her children in the arts. One of Cassel’s earliest memories is a day trip with her to see a Salvador Dali painting. “[My mother] understood that there’s nothing like seeing art face-to-face, and having that visceral experience of seeing. I’ve carried that with me my whole life.”

While much of her family was involved in the fine arts, Cassels was attracted to a more professional career—one that could offer stability and reliability if the capriciousness of life got in the way. “Early on, I’d shown a penchant for more academic work, and I was interested in combining my creative and intellectual passions rather than pursuing one or the other. Architecture seemed to be the natural fit. But looking back, I had no idea what architecture was.”

↑ Colorful sketch of the interior flow and transitional spaces of 150 Holborn by Daniel Parker.

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

At the time Cassels was in school, girls took courses like home economics, and boys had exposure to more engaging courses like woodworking and principles of engineering. She saw this disparity reflected in her incoming university class, where women were often behind in the basics—from drafting techniques to model making—than men. “I looked around the studio, at all the drawings hung on the walls and the models on the tables. And I thought to myself, ‘I don’t even know how to begin to create a drawing.’ It was incredibly daunting, and though I’d been artistic my entire life, I felt wholly unprepared.” Little by little, though, she got her bearings. Cassels’ time at architecture school culminated in a thesis project on crematorium design. “I know, it might appear to some to be an odd choice, but my crematorium was a space richly situated in its landscape. It’s also a deeply symbolic form, and I nestled it in this rural, forested setting. I was interested in humanizing a space that no one really thinks about entering until some humanity is gone. That was the challenge.”

After graduation, Cassels found herself in London in the ‘90s at the peak of trend toward designing speculative, and often uninspired, office spaces. “I became disenchanted, to say the least,” she says, recalling that the work was often anonymous, and a far cry from her heavily experiential work in university. “My family would make fun of me, asking me what sorts of toilets I’d designed that day.” Still under 30 at that time, she knew she had the flexibility to rework her career. She decided to return to school and pursue the degree in fine art that always lingered in the back of her mind.

↑ Cassels at her first postgraduate job in Glasgow.

← A visioning session in the London studio

The ‘90s were also explosive years for the British contemporary art scene, as artists like Damien Hirst captured the public imagination and expanded the idea of what fine art could be. Cassels started at the renowned art school, Central St. Martins, part-time, keeping a job in an architectural office during the day and taking courses or working in her studio at night. But what she conceived of as her day-job turned out to be the source of much of her inspiration throughout her art studies. “It was an amazing feeling to go to work not in solitude, but surrounded by teams engaged in collaboration.”

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

One pivotal project for Cassels was a design for a large pharmaceutical company interested in an immersive brand experience that went above and beyond the ‘one-size-fits-all’ layouts of her previous experience. In 1989, the client’s vision was quite forward-looking for the time. “In a way, [the client] foreshadowed the trends in workplace that we’re seeing now, in 2020. These are the trends I was hungry to design and deliver, that put people first.” An early adopter of the concept of the playful, interdisciplinary office design that’s been embraced and in-demand for several years now, Cassels finds inspiration in the creation of new spatial types, combining only the best and most expressive elements in her designs and forgetting the rest. “I was always focusing my lens on interior landscapes and the storytelling ability they held. I was still very much entrenched in the built environment, and in design. It was a hard realization, but an easy choice, to return to the design sphere after that, and as an interior designer.”

← Creating small sketches and drawings of various workplace ‘menu’ options, the team is able to clearly visualize different daily scenarios in their design.

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

Today, much of Cassels’ work continues to revolve around the future possibilities of design, breaking down barriers through imaginative combinations and innovations with her Londonbased team. ― Specializing in corporate interiors, Cassels uses her sense of interior landscape to tell the story of a company, weaving unique narratives through her spaces and furnishings. She and her team often arrive at their solutions and predictions through hands-on modeling and prototyping, engaging with unbuilt concepts and competitions to sharpen their thinking.

↑ Cassels engaging with a community vision session for Gio Ponti

← For the Confidential Government Agency client, a combination of serene and energetic material palettes create spaces for both collaboration and contemplation within the same space.

Listen to our London studio interior design director Linzi Cassels discuss her inspiration for holistic design that goes beyond the office walls. Listen here

A recent example is a new building type Cassels conjured with her studio: Think of a hotel, but one where only 20 percent of the building is dedicated to guest rooms, and 80 percent is slated for dynamic public spaces. She’s flipped the hotel blueprint on its head. “The studio is full of designers looking to push the envelope and think creatively about what’s to come next. This may have been an unbuilt plan, but we pitched it to competitions and talked about it on our studio-wide podcast, Future Dialogues. It’s a part of the new building type revolution that has already begun to make an impact”

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

Cassels has introduced many other projects and cutting-edge innovations to team members and clients through the Future Dialogues platform, including some thought leadership that became very relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Dialogues are delivered like a podcast for the whole studio to tune into. Staff get a glimpse of what’s cooking in all corners of the studio, or hear the ideas of emerging designers. Recently, Cassels hosted one Dialogue inspired by her observations of the workplace emerging from lockdown. Living in London, she and her husband observed how much worse the traffic had been since the onset of the pandemic, with residents relying more on personal vehicles and fearing the risks of public transit. This prompted Cassels to confront the issue of commuting once the rest of the city reopened.

“The ‘new normal’ doesn’t have to regress. We currently have this enormous creative potential that we can either seize and use to impart change, or ignore and lose,” she says. “I see the new normal of the workplace being incredibly more decentralized, with an HQ of sorts in the main business district zone supported by several surrounding satellite offices, allowing colleagues to work closer to home with greater convenience and safety, as social distancing measures will surely be increasingly difficult in dense, inner city locations.”

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“WorkRest” is Cassels’ original thought leadership concept. In collaboration with colleague Mijail Gutierrez, it reimagines the distinct typology of the hotel from

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its focus on bedrooms to a more communal and public gathering space. Watch the video

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Cassels is adept at creating exploded axonometric drawings with digital tools to showcase the different layers of experience in her designs.

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

The ”15-minute” city, an urban planning strategy in which city dwellers have access to all essential needs within a 15-minute pedestrian radius of their home, acted as a model for Cassels’ conjecture, designing for not only convenience, but environmental responsibility and an active lifestyle for residents of all neighborhoods. Cassels has already begun to adopt a new attitude toward healthy work-life balance, making it central to her work as an interior designer: “Now more than ever, we are truly designing for life, not just work. Commute, workplace health, personal well-being, and urban planning are all interconnected in our lives as residents of cities as well as designers of them.” Through self-reflection and a renewed mindset that seeks simplicity, she is ready to make the most of this moment of profound change, and mold it to better the lives of all.

The Hub and spoke city Hub Major transit Network of small scale neighbourhood workspace

“It’s about challenging our preconceived notions, and getting outside our comfort zone. It’s asking ‘why?’ and then critiquing the response of, ‘It’s always been done it this way.’”

Selected Projects ―

Linzi Cassels

Client: Confidential Fintech Client Size: 61,000 square feet Completion Date: 2018 Sustainability: LEED Platinum® Awards: Winner, Hungarian Office of the Year Awards, 2019 Team: Anastasia Bekiari

Confidential Fintech Client ―

Budapest, Hungary

This global investment management firm was looking for a new space to support its distinct culture of collaboration, inclusion and feedback, all of which, the firm believes, are key drivers of innovation. Our design merges these values with Budapest’s diverse cultural context. Local Ruin Bars, the Sziget Music Festival, and even the Rubik Cube were used as sources for architectural inspiration. The layout provides various alternative workspaces and technologies that give employees more choice over how and where they work. The result is a space that celebrates the notion of people coming together, connecting, co-creating and interacting in an innovative and healthy environment. The design has set a new benchmark for the firm’s Global Office Design Guidelines, with the firm benefiting from teams working closely together in an environment that caters for different working styles and team requirements.

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

Client: Confidential Government Agency Size: 143,838 square feet Completion Date: 2019 Sustainability: Core & shell - LEED Platinum, Interior fit out - Fitwel 3 Stars Awards: Winner, Interior Architectural Project of the Year Irish Building Design Awards, 2019 Team: Joelle Laney, Graziano D’Agostino, Clay Thompson

Confidential Government Agency ―

Dublin, Ireland

Our client is a forward-looking government agency who wanted to create a transformative and transparent workplace which would enhance connections, support staff and have best in class amenities. They decided to relocate their headquarters to a new waterfront location which could accommodate their requirements for a 21st century office. The office design, as a whole, reflects quality and stability to visitors without being lavish. With a strong focus on sustainability and wellness, this newly uplifting working culture for staff now includes an activity based working environment. The state-of-the-art design embodies this government agency’s values and culture whilst also providing a sustainable working environment and legacy for future generations. It meets the specialist requirements of the business units whilst allowing for future flexibility.

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

Build Back Better: Reworking Office Space ―

Thought Leadership

Build Back Better is a new intiative from New London Architecture (NLA) which looks to the future and showcases new ideas and solutions for a post-pandemic London. The NLA tasked its network to take on the Build Back Better challenge and present an idea responding to a particular theme. Led by Linzi Cassels, we responded to the ‘Reworking Office Space’ category, which called for concepts for mixed-ued flexible buildings, that encourage new ways of working, and reimagine user behaviours in spaces, from home, to work, and the journey in between. Workplaces have been changing and COVID-19 has dramatically accelerated that change- it’s our coming of age in the digital revolution which heralds a new way of living our lives with more fluidity. Our physical and digital world existing simultaneously and our desire for human connection and shared experience will be ever omnipresent, driving us to deeper understanding of the world we live in.

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

The Hub and spoke city Hub Major transit Network of small scale neighbourhood workspace Hub and Spoke City: In this new world the whole city and suburbs are a network of major work hubs located in the city and at major transit zones. And in between are a lacework of neighbourhood work points, large and small, both privately and publicly funded. It’s a major redistribution and decentralization of office space due to a significant amount of work happening locally

The Neighbourhood - Live and Work Locally: A re- imagined neighbourhood with multiple spaces to work, a refreshing of existing buildings and workspace potentially attached to schools, libraries and health centres.

Jungle Gym Events and Work Node Co - living

Marketplace of creativity Communal Farm University of life

Ideas lab Citizens workshop

Marketplace of creativity

Citizens workshop

University of life

Communal Farm

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

The City - A New Typology We see a new typology emerging - a re-purposing of the city office for not only work, but for play and living too. Companies no longer have a need for so much city space- so landlords will be looking for new uses. This type of building could be part occupied by a corporate as their showcase HQ or by a co-working/ co-living brand or even by a hospitality brand.

Events

The City Tower: Let’s take a closer look at the new city workplace. The ground floor is public realm, a mix of experiential workplace- a showcase for business, hospitality, spaces to meet and to collaborate. On the first level there is flexible workspace, the second level is home to co-living units, and finally there is public realm in the form of roof top gardens.

Roof Garden

Co-living

Workplace

Hospitality

Retail

Exhibition

Public Realm

― Breaking Barriers to Entry

Hospitality

Retail

Events

Public Realm

Exhibition

The City Workplace: The workplace is built of modular component parts and will be flexible for different uses- particularly, training, meetings, mentoring and collaboration. You will order your space the night before and it will be reconfigured overnight by robotics. The component parts can be easily disassembeld and moved, even to another building. Circular economy will be the norm.

The City Experiential Hub: At ground floor level, there is a public thoroughfare through the centre, with a constantly changing physical and digital display, including retail, café, auditorium, cinema, and events space. If this is an HQ it’s a carefully curated experience which draws employees in, and invites them to participate to do their best work

On demand space adapted by robotics

Training and Learning

Community

The City Experiential Hub: Office space will be converted to modular co-living units where all generations can live and work side by side.

farm and paint

live and create

stargazing tower

The City Roof: The roof space consists of public realm, alongside private gardens for the co-living units. There is a community farm, a stargazing tower, and places to exercise.

paint camp

learning