Arup London Campus

Client: Arup

Size: 135,000 square feet

Completion Date: 2021

Sustainability:

BREEAM Excellent WELL

Global built environment consultancy Arup’s London team sits across two sites in the city centre. When the lease on one of offices came to an end, the organisation used this as an opportunity to reconsider its London portfolio and rethink how they work in the future.

The new office is located in the 80 Charlotte Street, a new building that Arup delivered engineering services, and is located close to their retained office on Fitzroy Street. Although Arup embarked on this journey prior to the Covid19 outbreak, the pandemic prompted them to reconsider the ways they wanted to work as an organsiation, and ultimately how much space they required.

Of the two spaces, Fitzroy Street is predominantly with allocated seating in a more traditional workspace environment. Complimenting this, 80 Charlotte Street is an unassigned team space, with a wide range of work settings and collaboration areas, which supports the new, agile ways of working employees want in a post-covid world.

A Seamless Journey

The user experience of 80 Charlotte Street was a key driver of the design. We wanted to create workplace with a strong ethos, one that was frictionless, highly engineered, focused, accessible. Intuitive, and seamless. There had to be complete equity around the building, from the moment you entered the space to every work setting.

Entering the office on the ground floor, guests are met by a grand by welcoming space, passing by an experimental maker space, an open auditorium, and communal amenities. There is an emphasis on permeability on the journey to the heart of the building, with views to technology, workspace, and designer spaces. Moving around the first floor, there is a more intimate scale, where staff can bring together external guests and teams for meetings and collaboration.

Less but Better

Perkins&Will and Arup worked closely to understand the requirements of the Arup workforce, and create highly engineered space that would suit their varied ways of working.

Pivoting from a ‘me space’ to a ‘we space’ approach, 80 Charlotte Street supports the wider Arup campus with a flexible office that boasts a vast range of different work settings. The ratio of desk space to collaboration space was changed from 60:40 to 70:30 across all floors, with 50% of desks being removed on Level 1. There is also a new focus on long term adaptability, with three quarters of the fit our on each floor plate being able to be disassembled and moved.

We worked with an accessibility consultant on every aspect of the design, to ensure there is complete equity across all spaces and work settings at all scales.

A new lift was introduced alongside the main staircase, so that the arrival experience for those that needed lift access did not differ from the user journey of others. All individual settings are also suitable for DDA access and wheelchair users, so again all staff have the same access and ability to work seamlessly with their teams.

Smart and Sustainable

Arup wanted to push the boundaries with smart and sustainable design. 80 Charlotte Street is among the first large-scale allelectric buildings in London, and the office achieved BREEAM Excellent and Well Gold certification. Adaptable design was a key driver on the project, in a concerted effort to drive down embodied carbon. For example, 100% of the task chairs and meeting room chairs were reused or refurbished for the new office. By adopting smart technology throughout, such as people counters, air quality and temperature sensors, environment controls and feedback buttons, and desk user modules, the business can capture data to continually improve the efficiency of the space from both a human and environmental standpoint.

A Collaborative Team

Perkins&Will and Arup worked collaboratively throughout the process with Arup taking an initial lead on workplace strategy and Perkins&Will supporting the further development and application of the strategy, Perkins&Will also supported Arup in delivering a fully rounded Change Management process throughout the project, into occupation and beyond. Perkins&Will took overall ownership for the interior architecture, finishes and FFE, whilst Arup led the design of key building interventions such as the new structural timber auditorium staircase. The architectural team was complimented by a full Arup consultancy team of MEP, Acoustics, Smart Buildings, IT/AV, Accessibility, Fire Strategy and Project and Cost Management.