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OCTOBER 2OI8

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PLAY ON WORDS Kellenberger-White’s Alphabet at LDF merges type with product design

LDF & 100% DESIGN This autumn, London is the design destination

BEYOND BERMONDSEY Jackdaw Studio’s interiors for AHMM’s new building

TALKING SENSE See, hear, smell, taste and touch our wellness special

Create a Healthier, More Productive Built Environment Your office is one of your most valuable assets, and you should be putting it to work. Your office lighting can do more than illuminate a space. It can empower employee productivity through improved ambience and intelligent uses of space. It can be connected to broader business drivers and the people within it. In short, it can be a contributor and not a cost.

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Smart storage solutions Agile working has become increasingly popular, but in designing an agile space, how do you handle storage?

At Euroworkspace we try to break down the old way of doing things and say ‘Don’t just reallocate. How can you have a flexible office when you don’t have flexible storage?’.

Our Simplicity+ solution is fully dynamic and flexible. Staff can move

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October 2018

54

OnGoing

OnTop

27 FROM THE EDITOR On multi-disciplinary design and cross-pollination

155 ON THE DOUBLE Phillip Ross says to ditch the working hours of 9-5

139 DESIGN ANATOMY An exhibition centre in China draws from the DNA helix

157 ON CO-WORKING People Work brings coworking to the Baltic states

145 IN SIGHT Bring the sun indoors with the Komorebi lamp

29 NEWS Plastic is chosen as LDF’s material of the year 32 GRANT GIBSON ON… RCA graduate Joonyeon Cho’s Motion Office 34 ON LONDON Peter Murray explores an ambitious London 37 ON TOPIC All Things In Between on reinventing materials 39 UKCW PREVIEW A peak into UKCW 2018’s nine dedicated trade shows 42 100% PREVIEW Highlights to look out for at this year’s 100% Design 47 100% Q&A In conversation with Liqui Group ahead of the show 48 LDF PREVIEW Launches to get excited about at this year’s event 170 PRACTICE PLAYLIST Start the week with Gpad London’s soothing mix

54 COVER STORY:

DESIGN ALPHABET Kellenberger–White’s letter seating for LDF reveals its designers’ multi-disciplinary backgrounds

147 SMOOTH SOUND The Ministry uses idyllic soundscaping for work 149 SWEET SMELL A scent diffuser that detects the right fragrance for you 151 GOOD TASTE Studio10’s sustainable way of growing food in the office 153 LIGHT TOUCH Studio Above&Below’s interactive room divider

OnSite 64 BEYOND WORK The Beyond Collective’s new office in Bermondsey 72 GOLD MEMBER O-Negativ sets the tone for business in office design 80 STUDIO BIPOLAR Esquire magazine’s new HQ comes loaded with colour 88 FRAME WORK Hayball architects creates a plywood-clad Sydney office

RegiOn 127 CAMBRIDGE Is it time to let go of the region’s academic past?

OnStage

133 GRAND SCHOOL The Spanish school facade created on a £1000 budget

Wellness Special OnGoing

25

80

OffStage 158 BEHIND THE SCENES Brokis lets us in on handblown glass from Bohemia

OnOff 163 PATTERN ISLAND Camille Walala transforms an NGO’s island HQ 167 COLOUR WORKSHOP Georgia Coleridge uses colour as a healing property

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October

October 2018

EDITORIAL

MARKETING

EDITOR Elissaveta Marinova

SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER Sarah Potter

ART EDITOR Linsey Cannon CONTENT EDITOR Rita Lobo DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT EDITOR Jenny McFarlane

CIRCULATION & MARKETING MANAGER Mark Kenton MARKETING DESIGNER Emma Langschied

PRODUCTION PRODUCTION OPERATIONS MANAGER Nicola Merry

DIGITAL CONTENT EXECUTIVE Gemma Parkes

PRODUCTION EXECUTIVE Hannah Fenton

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Lisa Allen

PRODUCTION ARTWORKER Milena Bailey

ADVERTISING

PUBLISHING

COMMERCIAL MANAGER Tim Price

PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Yvonne Ramsden

SALES MANAGER Stuart Sinclair

FOUNDING PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Daren Newton

SALES EXECUTIVE Max Luoma

For advertising enquiries, email stuart.sinclair@ onofficemagazine.com

DIVISIONAL DIRECTOR Justin Levett MANAGING DIRECTOR Richard Morey CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Lee Newton

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Professional Publishers Association

27

From the editor Klara Zagorjanska

FEATURES EDITOR Ayla Angelos

OnGoing

It seems like it was only yesterday that we were treading the cobbled streets of Clerkenwell, getting our post-Milan design fix, but it’s already September and the London Design Festival is poking its head through the door.

Inspired by the festival and set under the banner of design in all its glory, this edition is an exploration of, as much as it is a statement on multi-disciplinary design and the importance of cross-pollination.

Our LDF cover stars this year are design duo Eva Kellenberger and Sebastian White, from London-based Kellenberger–White, whose delightful Alphabet chairs promise to be one of the talking points of the festival. Intrigued by the project of a studio better known for its graphic design work, we paid Kellenberger–White a visit to find out more about what makes the pair tick, as well as the studio’s approach to multidisciplinary design. See for yourself on page 54.

Elsewhere in this issue, we visit AHMM and Jackdaw Studio’s new Bermondsey office for The Beyond Collective, a trio that has well and truly harnessed the power of behavioural design (p64). Speaking of, we have themed this year’s Wellness Special around the five senses (p145).

From designing pods to grow food at work, to composing a soundtrack optimised for wellbeing, let us remember that we shouldn’t design solely for the eyes.

In our OnOff section, we catch up with celebrated designer Camille Walala, who recently brought her trademark patterns to a Tanzanian training facility built for people with albinism (p163), and in OffStage, we take you to Bohemia, where OnOffice was privy to a mesmerising factory tour of Czech lighting company Brokis, which blends modern design with an age-old Bohemian glassblowing tradition (p158).

Of course, don’t go without checking out our comprehensive preview of LDF, including 100% Design (p42), where we have curated two subscribe exciting talks for you. today to make sure you get your copy

I hope to see some of you there!

onoffice

Elissaveta Marinova elissaveta.marinova@onofficemagazine.com @onofficemag

Contributors In this issue, Iain Aitch (1) talks to Kellenberger–White about Alphabet and more. Annabel Herrick (2) visits a modern office in Guildford and Alyn Griffiths (3) tours a plywood-clad Sydney HQ. Elsewhere, Ian Lowey (4) 3 explores an exhibition centre for biotechnology in China. Sam Tse (5), who’s also put together our LDF preview, talks to Benni Allan about his £1000 school.

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October 2018

News

OnGoing

29

Dirk Vander Kooij will show his plastic furniture

Lisa Klappe

Vander Kooij’s Buitenhuis Chandelier is 3D printed

EVENT

Plastic is king at this year’s London Design Fair Plastic has been chosen as the Material of the Year for this year’s London Design Fair.

Showing in Hall 13 of the Old Truman Brewery and running from September 20-23, the exhibition itself is designed by Ortie Studio, and will be divided using 100% recyclable expanded polypropylene, providing a fitting backdrop for the innovative works of four design studios.

Through their work, the designers will demonstrate new techniques, processes and

material compositions that turn something so controversial into a sustainable product.

Tokyo’s Kodai Iwamoto will showcase his sculptural vessels made from plumber’s piping, while Brighton-based Weez & Merl will present its first fully recycled low-density polyethylene table, plus a lighting collection – all made from waste plastic sourced from local businesses.

Charlotte Kidger, a recent graduate of Central Saint Martins’ MA Material Futures,

will show the potential of polyurethane foam dust through a colourful table made by upscaling a technique used for pots and vessels.

Dutch designer Dirk Vander Kooij will display the versatility of a process that involves creating 3D-printed furniture with reclaimed synthetic.

His collection features his Ice Bubbles and Oak shelving, Fresnel pendant LED lights and the Buitenhuis Chandelier, all suited to the green office.

30

News

OnGoing

October 2018

RESEARCH

Channon explores how to be Happy by Design Architect and author Ben Channon from Assael Architecture is publishing a new book, which explores the intersection of mental health and the physical space.

Happy by Design offers design tips to architects, designers, property developers and students, and outlines simple ways they can make homes or offices happier places to be in.

Inspired by the author’s own experience with mental health and illustrated by Channon himself, Happy by Design provides a resource for those looking to better understand the relationship between architecture and happiness, and will be published on September 15 by RIBA Publishing.

ARCHITECTURE

Burwell Deakins brings deco to its interior Architect Burwell Deakins has completed the first phase of refurbishment of two floors of Elsley House, an art deco building, in London’s West End. The building, which is owned by Great Portland Estates, is occupied by the media and creative industries. The work involved two office floors, a main and courtyard reception, plus a lift lobby and basement cycle storage.

The new interior (below) reflects the building’s heritage, achieved with brick, glazed ceramics and exposed iron columns, mixed with modern terrazzo flooring, laser-cut metal panels and bespoke moulded architraves.

INTERIORS

Commercial property specialist ThirdwayGroup has teamed up with developer Landsec to deliver Landsec Lab: a 120sq m pop-up workplace, within the Sustainable Ventures’ Bankside warehouse in London.

Liam Spencer, founding director of Thirdway Architecture, says: “Our vision for The Lab fundamentally focuses on creating a space that is completely adaptable to varying users and uses. This flexibility is achieved by a creative rethinking of the necessity of static furniture and physical space divisions; questioning the way things work, why we work like this and what we could do differently.”

Ben Blossom

ThirdWay pops up with Landsec Lab

DESIGN

MZPA designs The Planet chair MZPA, a wood-based furniture manufacturer, has designed The Planet – a chair comprised of wood, plants, flowers and an erasable surface, which can be drawn on. An LED lamp and USB charging are also featured.

The project is the result of a survey of employees who work in open plan office spaces, about the fundamental factors involved in designing an office.

Silence, privacy and personal workspace were among the criteria recorded, alongside comfortable seating and individual workstations.

FINA COLLECTION w w w.brunner-uk .com

32

OnGoing

October 2018

GRANT GIBSON ON

Joonyeon Cho’s Motion Office A recent RCA graduate and designer has created a piece that encourages movement and wellness within the office – but will employees be willing to remove their shoes?

So here I am in the London showroom of office furniture manufacturer KI, shoes and socks off, padding bare-foot on a mat made up of small, triangular resin, bronze, ceramic and timber tiles. I’m being watched intently by the product’s young designer Joonyeon Cho, a recent graduate from the Royal College of Art, as well as a member of the KI team and the company’s PR. And I have to confess I’m feeling ever-so-slightly self-conscious. The piece is a runner up from this year’s award scheme the company set up with the RCA three years ago – initially with the Design Engineering department but now also including Design Products – to ‘improve the working or learning experience of the future’.

With its companion piece – a long, strangely narrow and height adjustable desk – Joonyeon’s mat forms Motion Office. By encouraging movement, the idea is to prevent the user from becoming sedentary and, therefore, more liable to a litany of diseases. As such it’s part of the wellbeing agenda that the workplace cognoscenti – the kind of office equivalent of the liberal, metropolitan elites that Brexiteers like to lampoon – is eager (quite rightly) to promote but which, much to my chagrin, never seems to have touched any of the offices I’ve worked in.

Joonyeon, who has a background in mechanical engineering, initially intended to design a chair before realising that, as he puts it a litAn adjustable desk and mat form the Motion Office

Internal airbags encourage a gentle rocking movement

tle dramatically, “chairs are killing us”. Instead he decided to created a piece that encourages a series of micro-movements. The desk’s lack of depth, for instance, means users have to spread outwards and reach to get to their various tools. As one would expect it’s height-adjustable, but once you’ve found the perfect position it has, what the designer describes as, “stealth height variation” – a continuous, but tiny, upand-down motion which means you’re always subconsciously moving (full disclosure: this function wasn’t working when I visited).

However, the main talking point is found on the floor. The piece contains internal airbags that help provide the user with a gentle rock, while the tiles of different materials – which are contrasting heights and shapes – give a variety of sensations on the soul of the foot.

Certain areas are heated which also delivers a pleasing, tingly sensation. Essentially you can’t help but shuffle from foot to foot.

It’s worth pointing out at this stage that Motion Office is very

much at the prototype stage. This is a student project, albeit one that KI appears to believe may have some milage commercially. If it does make it on to the market it will have some hurdles to overcome, however. Firstly in the UK, there’s the whole issue of asking employees to take their shoes and socks off. I’ve had the dubious pleasure of working alongside a colleague who routinely removed his trainers while sat at his desk (having cycled into the office) and it simply doesn’t go down well with the rest of the workforce. In fact it’s deeply anti-social. At a time when people are paranoid about hygiene, would employees be willing to share a mat? Joonyeon thinks that each piece will be for personal use but right now the product is too heavy to easily roll up and carry away.

Another issue that the designer will have to overcome is space. The desk that requires people to move from side to side is a perfectly decent notion but persuading facility managers to give staff that much room could prove tricky.

Joonyeon will have to be a persuasive salesman. At the moment he thinks the matt would retail at around £1000 but reckons he could value-engineer it down to between £200-£500.

Ultimately there’s a reasonable idea nestled in here and I’m intrigued to see how the product could look when it’s fully resolved and ready to be manufactured.

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34

OnGoing

October 2018

PETER MURRAY ON LONDON

Breadth of ambition Game-changing designers, like Tom Dixon, see no boundaries

S

piritland in King’s Cross is hard to define. It’s a bar, a shop, a restaurant – as well as a radio and recording studio. It has a world-class sound system designed by Kevin Scott with horn-loaded speakers as big as telephone boxes. It’s a place where audiophiles can chill, sipping their coffee or cocktails and hearing a complexity and depth of undistorted sound that they would never get out of MP3 even with the most sophisticated piece of kit.

Spiritland runs a regular series of talks where people discuss their life and music – a bit like Desert Island Discs. I had the pleasure of doing the Kirsty Young bit with designer Tom Dixon recently. He had been the bass player in Funkapolitan in the early 1980s (you can still see him on YouTube in the background strumming to “As The Time Goes By” on Top of the Pops) until a broken arm, the result of a motorcycle accident, put paid to that career, so he was an ideal subject.

While his choice of tracks and his story were fascinating, my takeaway from our conversation was more about the role of game-changing designers like Dixon. To the amusement of the audience, he mentioned a number of times about his ambition to sell his own brand washing-up liquid in his new King’s Cross shop. But he was serious. It was a comment that reflected the breadth of ambition of a designer who started out welding chairs out of scrap metal.

When I started Blueprint magazine in the 80s with Deyan Sudjic, our aim was to illustrate the whole gamut of design unsegregated by professional boundaries. People like Philippe Starck, Ettore Sottsass, Ron Arad, Michael Graves, Nigel Coates and Zaha Hadid, who could turn their hand to a piece of furni-

ture, a painting or a teapot as easily as they did to a building, populated our covers. We featured Dixon in 1988 as an example of a designer who had benefited from the opportunities created during the economic boom that was about to end. His self-welded S chair was the coolest product of that year.

The S chair is still being made, but by Capellini, and is on sale in Dixon’s eponymous shop along with a prolific range of products from sofas to cocktail shakers. He has a workshop and a kiln where he made the plates and bowls for his new restaurants; he has a perfumery where he sells his own soaps and candles.

The shop looks out on to the Coal Drops Yard designed by Thomas Heatherwick, another boundary-free designer who has moved from small-scale product design to massive projects like the new Changi Airport in Singapore (with architect KPF). I asked Dixon if he was interested in doing buildings: “No, not really, I’m more interested in city planning!”

Design is increasingly more and more specialist, as regulation becomes more complex and risk-averse clients seek experience above imagination. So Dixon’s take on the world, his humour and entrepreneurial flair, was refreshing and exciting.

But how do we balance that individualism with a need for greater collaboration in complex systems and with an increasing pressure to democratise decision-making in design?

The success and failure of products can be determined by the marketplace, but how do we marry the ideas of popular and community choice with innovative city-making?

Breaking down boundaries is one way – which is why Spiritland was such an apposite location for Dixon to take the stage.

“How do we balance

individualism with a

need for collaboration?”

Does specialism restrict individualism? @PGSMurray & @onofficemag

Photography by Bernd Ott / Illustration by Lorna Jameson

October 2018

BE N E .COM

October 2018

OnGoing

37

ON TOPIC

Object lessons At this year’s LDF, All Things in Between is showing how designers WORDS BY ELISSAVETA MARINOVA

can learn from exploring the possibilities of unusual materials

A

ll Things In Between is a group of designers who like to push boundaries, working with a selection of unusual materials – some of which have been developed for applicable, others for experiential purposes.

The collective was born in 2015 for the Ventura Lambrate exhibition in Milan, though the four designers initially studied together at Central St Martins, under celebrated designers and professors Nelly Ben Hayoun, Caroline Till and Carole Collet.

Now, German designer Sophie Rowley works with recycled denim, Slovakian Zuzana Gombosova with leather-like biomaterial grown from coconut water, Daniela Toledo experiments with woven fabrics inspired by CAD textures, and Dawn Bendick forms rocks cast in dichroic glass.

So, why are materials an important tool for designers, and how do you stay innovative?

Bendick believes sustainability tops

“How can designers start working with new materials?” the list. “There is so much waste in large-scale production. How can we reduce the waste and make it go full circle?

“Another factor is that our lifestyles are changing. So how do we relate to that as designers?

People are interested in meditation

Marbleised denim tiles by German designer Sophie Rowley

more and more these days, they’re looking for recluse, they want technology but they find it distracting. ” Poetic as it sounds, the name of the collective addresses that gap in sector and audience. As Bendick explains, “All Things In Between references materials that do not always fit inside traditional brackets. While our individual work and designs are used for many different applications, often it exists somewhere in between categories.”

Indeed, the group’s creations are not a direct fit for the world of furniture design, product or even art. “It’s a real exploration of materials,” says Bendick. “How can designers start working with new materials? How do we create that relationship between the

Dawn Bendick believes in design cross-pollination

waste, the manufacturer, the client and ourselves?”

All Things In Between’s mission revolves around collaboration.

Ultimately, the designers want creatives to come to them with a project in mind. And despite the challenging conflict between experimentation and application,

Bendick believes there’s room for both. “When you explore, you might not have all the parameters, but you have the time,” she says, highlighting the importance of cross-pollination between these different types of work.

Titled Substanz and organised in the spirit of a Cabinet of Curiosity, the collective’s exhibition at 18 Lillie Road in West Brompton will make all materials available to designers, who will be encouraged to reflect on how they can integrate them into their work. As Bendick explains, festivals like LDF are about starting a conversation – providing a platform where creative professionals can find inspiration to communicate new ideas.

She concludes: “We hope to be a resource for architects and designers.”

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October 2018

OnGoing

39

PREVIEW

UK Construction Week 2018 With this year’s UKCW drawing closer on 9-11 October, OnOffice WORDS BY AYLA ANGELOS

picks out the highlights from the event’s nine dedicated trade shows

H

eld at the NEC in Birmingham on 9-11 October, this y e a r ’s U K C W i s fast approaching.

Alongside new arrivals and programmes to discover, OnOffice picks the highlights to look out for from the event’s line-up of nine dedicated trade shows.

Timber Expo

As an event exclusively devoted to timber – and the only UK event to do so – expect three days full of products, innovations and developments across the sector and, unsurprisingly, new designs all made from the wooden material.

From timber frame through to CLT and plywood, the event will be a place to showcase new designs, where architects can connect, share their knowledge and discuss latest products with the largest collection of timber brands.

Included in this year’s roster is STEICO, who will present I-joist

“Exhibitors for The Build Show include Aggregate Industries, Combilift and more” wall studs that offer a high loadbearing capacity with a quick and easy installation, and Hanson Plywood who will exhibit specialist panels that can suit all weathered purposes – including dry, humid and exterior use. Alongside this,

The event brings together crowds across the construction trade

Rothoblaas will provide systems, fixings and equipment required for timber-based projects, and TRADA will shed light on independent guidance and connections, offering an insight into the industry.

The Build Show

As one of the largest UKCW shows, The Build Show returns again this year to offer insight into trends, forward-looking predictions and knowledge into the industry that every construction professional needs.

Event highlights, and new to 2018, are four additional sections: Offsite, which will showcase more than 100 exclusive product launches; Doors, Windows and Glass; Roofing, Cladding and

Insulation; and Tools, Health and Safety. Plus, the Regeneration Hub will host a seminar, chaired by property expert Kunle Barker, which will discuss the affordability of housing, using London as an example. Confirmed exhibitors for The Build Show so far include Aggregate Industries, British Gypsom, Combilift, Concrete Centre, Easy Trim Roofing and Construction and various others.

Building Tech Live

Formerly known as Smart Buildings, the show returns as newly titled Building Tech Live – an evolution of the event that is set to showcase the latest technological advancements in IoT, lighting, automation, security, communica-

tion, technology and more. Aimed at those within the integrated technology community, expect this to be the vital destination for anyone interested in electrotechnical engineering services, design, installation, inspection, testing, maintenance and monitoring.

The Gooee Internet of Things (IoT) Arena is new to the show, and will present Gooee’s awardwinning IoT ecosystem with its partnered companies, including Aurora Lighting. Gooee is a company focused on providing enterprise IoT solutions to the lighting industry, which coincides with Building Tech Live’s aim to provide educational content, debate and the latest technological advancements throughout the entire event.

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PREVIEW

Surface & Materials 2018 This year’s show at Birmingham’s NEC on 9-11 October is set to raise WORDS BY AYLA ANGELOS

the bar of surface technologies – we select the brands to look out for

Returning for its forth year this October, the specialist Surface & Materials event – one of UKCW’s nine dedicated trade shows – will present the latest in surface solutions for architects, interior designers, specifiers and for industry professionals who are looking for cutting-edge innovations and developments. Alongside the ‘Future of Construction’ theme running throughout, plus the Surface and Materials Hub, the show’s Innovation Trail is set to release the latest ideas, products and systems from a wideranging mix of exhibitors. Below, we round up a selection of brands to keep an eye on this year.

ANS Group

For this year’s event, ANS Group – a company that provides living walls across the globe – will showcase one of its products as part of its UKCW stand. The company strives for environmentally friendly designs and its focus on living walls proves just that. At the show visitors will be able to experience the walls in person and speak to specialists to find out more about how these designs are at the forefront of sustainable architecture in the 21st century.

Formica

Formica, the leading designer and manufacturer of high-pressure laminate (HPL) for commercial residential and exterior applications, will host a session at the Surface & Materials Hub. ‘Future Vistion II: A trend and colour forecast for design in 2018/19’ will be the pivotal topic of discussion, as the talk will explore trends and colour forecasts set to influence the design needs of architects, designers and end users.

Crown Décor

Crown Décor, the niche luxury laminate brand from India, established itself in 1978 and has since accrued 45 years of experience manufacturing high-pressure laminates. This year, the brand will showcase Royal Touche: a collection of products that includes compact laminates suitable for wall partitions, office work-tops, interior wall claddings, plus many more – all of which are available in over 600 designs and 50 surface finishes.

Pfleiderer

Pfleiderer is a leading manufacturer of engineered wood materials. The company specialises in the production of melaminefaced chipboard, high-press laminate, melamine-faced MDF and a wide range of core materials. As a well-known brand for trade, industry, DIY, specifiers and architects, Pfleiderer’s release of particleboard, laminates, compact HPL and worktops at the show will be greatly anticipated.

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PREVIEW

100% Design 2018 OnOffice selects the highlights from key brands at this year’s WORDS BY ELISSAVETA MARINOVA

100% Design, which returns as part of LDF on 19-22 September

Missana

Spanish furniture brand Missana has been demonstrating experience and passion for the design and upholstery worlds for over 20 years. Every product is traditionally handmade in the factory in Alberic, Valencia.

At 100% Design, Missana will be exhibiting a range of products including the striking Klein Blue Block collection by MUT design (pictured), the Ara sofa designed by Perez Ochando and Nest by Paula Rosales.

Arper

For the third year running, Italian heavyweight Arper will be hosting the Arper Social Hub – a welcoming venue for digital professionals and visitors to come together, connect, share and get inspired. Previously known as the Arper Bloggers Lounge, Arper Social Hub will be furnished with the brand’s distinctive Kilik collection; and with WiFi, charging stations and refreshments, it is, once again, set to draw quite a crowd.

Established & Sons

British design brand Established & Sons will be exhibiting its 2018 collection, which aspires to respond to the practicalities of contemporary life, all the while exploring every designer’s unique language. Products include the Cassette sofa by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec (pictured), the Barbican chaise by Konstantin Grcic, the Light Light

by Dimitri Bähler, the Mauro Chair by Mauro Pasquinelli and the Filigrana Light by Sebastian Wrong.

LOCO Design

LOCO Design, a multi-disciplinary design house based in New Delhi and Gurgaon, will be showing its entire portfolio for the first time in the UK, plus launching its Taamaa line. Minimal yet with a quirky twist, this will feature LOCO’s Mug pouffes with wide handles stitched along the side – a product that would make a perfect addition to any office’s breakout space.

FROM TREE TO FINISHED PIECE Gleda Collection by Space Copenhagen benchmarkfurniture.com

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DelightFULL

With a mission to “design unique lamps”, DelightFULL offers a fresh reinterpretation of mid-century lighting design. Drawing inspiration from the mid-nineties, the brand shows a passion for craftsmanship and a know-how culture that combines heritage with future needs. You can find DelightFULL on stand L340, where the company will be exhibiting a range of products including the art deco Turner light (pictured).

Hayche

Heer

Designed to address the controversy of breastfeeding in public, Heer blends comfort with discretion and offers a middle ground between the user’s needs and cultural norm. As means of providing an alternative, its elegant shield covers the bust area, securing privacy without disruption. A design-driven and ergonomic solution, Heer joins a timely conversation on work-life balance and childcare provision in the workplace.

Actiu

Headquartered in Spain’s Alicante region, office furniture manufacturer Actiu has over 40 years’ experience in the creation of furniture. With a product range spanning the entire office – from seating, through to storage and acoustics – the company’s flexibility and productive capacity enables them to offer solutions tailored to the wellbeing of people across the globe.

www.100percentdesign.co.uk

Formerly known as H furniture, Londonbased Hayche is a British seating and contract furniture company that creates timeless, original designs. With its beautifully crafted collections, Hayche embraces contrast and celebrates differences. Among other products, Hayche will exhibit its vibrantly coloured WW Armrest chair, designed in collaboration with Studio Makgill.

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100% DESIGN

Presidential ambition Inspired by the Roosevelt desk in the White House, Liqui Group’s new WORDS BY ELISSAVETA MARINOVA

Theodore Bench Desk System shows how the firm sets its sights high

B

righton and Londonbased Liqui Group was originally founded in 2007, by furniture designer and maker Cameron Fry. Today, it is a multi-faceted, cross-disciplinary practice, ranging from contract furniture to branding.

We caught up with Fry ahead of the practice’s launch of its Theodore Bench Desk System at 100% Design.

The Theodore Bench Desk System focuses on sustainable longevity Cameron Fry (right) with technical director Alex Trenear-Thomas

Q What inspired you the most in the original Roosevelt desk?

A It was the realisation that it’s not really the desk that’s amazing, it’s what happens on it. We realised that for the first time our furniture could be involved in some amazing things. We were trying to take some of that thought process into the design of a very practical product.

What’s your design process?

I’m very process-led. I love learning about a new process, then figuring out the best way to design products around it. The reason I became a designer rather than an artist was because I enjoy the problems that have to be solved when something needs to go into production.

Q A

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Q Tell us about your new Theodore Bench Desk System. What makes it smart and sustainable?

A We drew inspiration from a bygone era where desks were more than just something to sit behind; they could become a status symbol within their own right. We named it after the Theodore Roosevelt desk that still sits in the White House to this day – if that’s not sustainable design, we’re not sure what is.

Although it can be quite tough, the satisfaction you get when you get it right is worth it – at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Q What drove you to expand from furniture to the cross-disciplinary brand Liqui is today?

A It was always the plan. I’ve been obsessed with design from a very young age. I believe that regardless of the discipline, the thought process behind good design is the same.

Although we span many different sectors, design is the common thread that runs through them all.

Q You now head up four separate companies under Liqui Group. Do you still find time to design?

A Yes still quite a bit, I’ve tried to hire people that are much better than me at the technical side so my job becomes more and more focused on creative direction and design concept. But none of it would be possible without the guys who actually draw this up and my technical director, Alex TrenearThomas, who designs ingenious ways to produce it all.

Q Liqui’s motto is “Because things can be different”. What makes you different?

A When I started, I couldn’t believe some practices going on within the manufacturing sector – it still astounds me today our food comes in packets where at least 50% of it can’t be recycled. If you have to use materials that aren’t good for the environment, it should be on something that is going to last a long, long time.

My aim is to have the motto become less and less relevant as more and more companies follow suit. I’m pleased to say over the 11 years we’ve been going, it is already starting to happen.

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LDF PREVIEW

All roads lead to London Emerging and established talent converge in the city WORDS BY SAMANTHA TSE

to celebrate the 16th edition of London Design Festival

On 15-23 September, London Design Festival returns for its 16th year with a series of installations, talks, exhibitions and product launches throughout the city. Here’s what we’re excited about from this year’s event.

EAST KW3 Striped Stools

Bristol-based furniture brand King and Webbon will showcase its Striped Stools at London Design Fair. Made using beech ply, the simple stackable frame gives a nod to classic lab stools used in school and is finished with a contrasting stripe and stainless steel bolts throughout.

The flat-packed perch stools come in tall and small, and can be used in conference rooms or grouped together to form breakaway areas.

1 Inch Reclaimed

by Jasper Morrison for Emeco

As part of SCP’s A World of Ordinary Things exhibition, Jasper Morrison will be presenting the newest member of the 1 Inch product range. The Reclaimed chair incorporates life-cycle engineering ideas in its design by utilising 90% industrial waste materials. The stackable chairs are made using recycled aluminum frames and reclaimed wood, polypropylene, plywood and upholstered seats.

Observatory

Lee Broom has been celebrating his 10th year with a trilogy of shows that began in Milan, then in NYCxDesign and will end at LDF. Each location had a new product drop and, in London, Broom will release a new black edition of his Orion modular tube light, originally finished in polished gold (pictured). The monochromatic palette is reminiscent of his Optical light collection launched two years ago, at LDF.

Cameron Design House x Geronimo

Cameron Design House is pushing the boundaries of lighting design with its collaboration with Los Angeles-based balloon artist Geronimo. Jihan Zencirli, the artist behind Geronimo, specialises in large-scale balloon pieces and for LDF she will present an immersive installation, alongside CDH’s hand-blown glass chandelier that will light up the Old Truman Brewery.

Inspired by Barcelona

Barcelona has always been a hub for creativity and this year, as part of LDF’s county pavilions, five Catalan brands will showcase work inspired by the Spanish city. Participating will be: Toru, which manipulates vegetabletanned leather into exquisite chairs (pictured); Noem by sustainable practice Nutcreatives, which produces streamlined flat pack pieces; and Sergi Ventura, whose light fixtures blur the line between objet d’art and design.

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King’s Cross Design Route

King’s Cross has revamped itself into one of the buzziest areas of London and this year’s Design Route shows how the much the area has embraced the creative industries. Highlights include: PlasticScene (pictured), curated by Modern Design Review with James Shaw, showcasing new works using waste plastic; House of Illustration’s exhibition of 20th century textile designer Enid Marx; and Matter of Stuff’s pop-up gallery that will emphasise its forte in expanding the vernacular of marble and ceramics.

MoS will also show commissioned pieces together with international brands Bocci, Flos and Wonderglass. Creative Unions celebrates the work of Central Saint Martins’ graduating class, and Electroanalogue, hosted by Tom Dixon, explores digital technology through events and installations at its new HQ.

CENTRAL

Blown Away

Design research gallery Matter of Stuff will be returning to Sketch this year with a new site-specific exhibition featuring beautiful hand-blown glass products by six international designers. Among the highlights is a bespoke chandelier by Vancouver-based firm Bocci, with spherical pendant lights made by carefully controlling the temperature and airflow into the glass (pictured). Plus a large-scale light fixture by Italian glassblower Simone Crestani, that sees hand-blown borosilicate orbs delicately suspended from a brass structure.

Bill Amberg Print

Leather expert Bill Amberg will be debuting his collaborations with Timorous Beasties (pictured), Tom Dixon, Alexandra Champalimaud and Natasha Baradaran. Each brand will create a graphic that will be digitally printed on to Amberg’s bull hides and displayed as part of Tom Dixon’s Electroanalogue exhibition. The printed leather hides can be used as upholstery or a wall hanging, and to showcase their versatility, each brand will refurbish a piece of its own furniture with the leather.

Spin

At Designjunction, Levon Lim will present a modular desk that targets smaller workspaces. Office real estate is often at a premium and Lim’s Spin desk builds upwards rather than outwards, maximising the existing space. Lim, a recent graduate from Central Saint Martins, has created a highly adaptable desk that features a slim tabletop with a pivoting shelving unit that towers out. Its configuration is completely customisable, ideal for condensed work environments.

Paddington Central Design Route

Paddington Central is the newest addition to LDF’s Design Routes, and will be a key hub.

Three RCA installations will examine the future of residential, retail and office lobby spaces, and how art influences the way people interact within them. On the underside of the Westway viaduct there will be a multi-hued immersive installation by Liz West, while along the canal is a life-size interactive pop-up book created by Ido Garini, and on Kingdom Street, design firm Snøhetta will unveil a rotating book pavilion.

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Below the Heavens

WEST

The Solid Lightness Poltrona Frau’s 2018 collection explores notions of lightness and it has collaborated with designers including GamFratesi, Jean-Marie Massaud and Roberto Lazzeroni on this theme – including Lazzeroni’s woven leather tables and chairs inspired by dancer Isadora Duncan. This year also marks the launch of the Objects lighting collection, with pendant lamps by Neri & Hu, inspired by Chinese lanterns (pictured), and GamFratesi’s elongated globe lamps.

Sé’s collaboration with Ini Archibong titled Below the Heavens was unveiled in Milan earlier this year and select pieces will make their UK debut at the brand’s flagship showroom on Fulham Road. Inspired by the threshold between heaven and earth, the collection has been imbued with a sense of ethereality. It includes products such as the Moirai chandelier, which evokes a cluster of clouds, alongside the Circe sofa with its voluptuous upholstered seat atop a rounded steel frame, which would brighten up any reception area.

This will be the Space

Cassina’s Brompton Road showroom is exhibiting a collection of five reissues by some of the industry’s most recognised names, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Gaetano Pesce. Patricia Urquiola, Michael Anastassiades and the Bouroullec brothers, who have expanded their Cotone range (pictured), will show these pieces alongside new creations. The Cotone collection will include a large rectangular table that would be a statement piece for any conference room, plus corresponding chairs with an ashwood seat and back.

60th Anniversary Collection of Fritz Hansen Flint

Joyce Wang Studio will be launching a limited edition collection of terrazzo furniture, lighting and design objects at LDF. The refined collection errs on the side of delicate femininity, subverting traditional ideas of the robust material. Small side tables, with curved tops and tapered legs, and a series of sculpted spherical objects are among the highlights.

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Arne Jacobsen’s work on the SAS Royal Hotel, the Republic of Fritz Hansen will present a travelling exhibition celebrating the designer’s work, and a limited edition collection of Jacobsen’s Egg, Swan and Drop chairs with lavish gold-plated bases.

Alongside will be new works from the Objects and Lightyears collections including the elegant NO1 chair by Nendo, Paul McCobb’s Planner coffee tables reworked with marble tops, and iridescent mirrored wall sculptures by Studio Roso (pictured).

Kellenberger–White’s Alphabet is set to draw a crowd at this year’s London Design Festival.

OnOffice visited the studio to find out more Words by Iain Aitch | Photography by Sarah Cresswell

Cover story

October 2018

esign practice Kellenberger-White’s functional outdoor seating Alphabet is set to be one of the hits of this year’s London Design Festival, with the brightly coloured aluminium lettering placed across Finsbury Avenue Square in Broadgate and left for the public to interpret.

A primary school Scrabble set for people to lunch on, lounge in and arrange into their own words – this piece of simple design quietly shows off years of practical learning.

Eva Kellenberger and Sebastian White, who met at the Royal College of Art in London, have become known for their use of typography in graphic design, so it makes perfect sense that their most high-profile 3D design project since founding the practice in 2009 should be based on lettering and partly inspired by paper. Prototypes for the lettering sit atop shelves in their top-floor Shoreditch studio; imagined in paper and

Visualisation courtesy of LDF

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Eva Kellenberger and Sebastian White set up the studio in 2009 People can interact with, and sit on, the letters at Broadgate

glue, their naive form belies the in-depth knowledge that has gone into each one.

“For the last year and a half we’ve been doing more furniture-making projects, where we’ve had the opportunity to make temporary furniture for exhibitions,” says White. “The process of making is becoming more familiar.”

One such project was a commission to work with Turner Prize-winning artist Elizabeth Price at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, with the folded paper of their information leaflet and the folded aluminium of stools eventually providing a prototype for Alphabet’s finished look.

“She asked us to design a concertina leaflet,” says Kellenberger. “We thought: how can you make furniture that is folded too, in aluminium rather than paper? So, we looked at the Ulm stool, which was developed by Max Bill for the Ulm School in 1955.” Each student had to make their own, which they would carry to class. This revolutionary-yetsimple piece of design was used to teach students basic woodworking skills, but it also instilled a taste for the practical, which the pair have adopted.

In the world of print design, they learned that following a project from laptop to bookshelf was the surest way to stay ahead of problems and develop their craft. Educating themselves about ink, paper, trims and print means that

“We thought: how can you make furniture that is folded, in aluminium?” they are in control of the whole process, where others are happy to press “send” and wait for a courier to arrive at the office with the results.

Alphabet allowed the pair to maintain this hands-on approach, as Broadgate is just a five-minute walk from the Kellenberger–White studio, which employs two permanent staff alongside its founders. Field trips to the site were as simple as wandering out to one of the area’s numerous coffee outlets. It also means that lunchtime visits to see how the public

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October 2018

interact with Alphabet may be hard to resist.

“I quite like how we could change someone’s lunchtime,” says Kellenberger. “People might spell something out, or make a new letter as they sit down. There are so many opportunities for interaction.”

The practical part of the design for Alphabet was partly inspired by architect SOM’s 1990 bridge-building hybrid Exchange House on Broadgate. The ten-storey office block was built around an exposed steel bridge, showing off its practical bone structure. The bridge also harks back to a project the studio is undertaking in Middlesbrough, using the colours from the famous Transporter Bridge in a branding and identity project for Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, and tracing flakes of ancient paint back to their industrial palettes. Indeed the Transporter bridge’s vivid Cornflower

Cover story

Blue also makes its way into KellenbergerWhite’s Alphabet letters, which demonstrate a variety of paint colours chosen because of their use in industrial metalwork.

“I quite like how we could change someone’s lunchtime” But the seating itself draws on much of what makes the pair tick. As well as the Ulm stool, it reflects on their own learning as makers, as well as the work of sculptor Bruce McLean and designer Bruno Munari. Both

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are huge fans of Munari’s work. “There is a project we really like by Munari, Seeking Comfort in an Uncomfortable Chair,” says Kellenberger. “It’s a playful comment on modern furniture. We also looked at McLean’s ironic pieces with a reclining figure on a plinth. We were also inspired by the Bauhaus metal workshop from the 1920s.”

Zurich-born Kellenberger and Bristol-born White come from quite different backgrounds.

Kellenberger was brought up next door to Ulm stool designer Bill and was drawn into a design background, whereas White grew up painting with family and was eventually drawn to textiles.

Humour and playfulness has always been important to the pair and it was this common language that sealed their friendship in 2008, when they teamed up for a student project.

Mooted as a glance at their future final show, the pair decided to base it on potatoes.

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“We found out it was the year of the potato,” says White, at which point one of the studio staff stops work and turns around with a quizzical look, before laughing. “We made an animation of a potato. Everything was black.

But you could see everything, like in an eclipse.

There was also a solar eclipse that year.”

As they worked together so well, they both started to think about what life post-college may look like, drawing up lists of dream clients and eventually formalising the practice as a company. “I try to compare our studio with other relationships or conversations that you have with other people,” says White.

“We don’t always agree with each other, but the conversation is always moving forward.

We talk, we go on visits and field trips, we still surprise each other. I think our backgrounds and knowledge are a bit different, so we talk about a book we’ve read, a scene in a film or the element of a design project.”

These differences are certainly something that Kellenberger-White celebrates, although A brush used to paint the Transporter Bridge with a letter in the same shade

Alphabet prototypes in Kellenberger-White’s Shoreditch studio

the lines are more blurred than at first.

“I think in the beginning it was more clear-cut,” says Kellenberger. “He couldn’t use InDesign because he was a textile designer, and I didn’t have any colour theory. So we taught each other.”

Constant collaboration with other creatives, institutions and clients ensures that the learning continues, as well as the

“We don’t always agree but the conversation is always moving forward” inspiration that minor differences can provide. Although Kellenberger-White like to offer as much inspiration as they take.“We’ve found it’s really useful to make that conversation public,” says White. “We might have a presentation showing our influences, which is more than a mood board, it’s a series of moments or artefacts that are connected to the client, area or place. We try to make that useful for everyone involved in a project.”

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This method ensures that everyone is learning on the job, with architects or artists welcome to learn the processes that the studio uses too.

“I think we’re just trying to constantly learn from the other disciplines and bring that into it,” says Kellenberger. “For example, for an exhibition that we designed at the Tate Liverpool, we worked with a sign painter who would paint all the graphics straight on to the wall, but the way he divided the space up, the rules, was very much like we’d divide up a page in a book. We do think of graphic design in quite a spatial way.”

With a new branding and identity commission for Goldsmiths CCA – the new centre for contemporary art that opens in south London this autumn – the practice will continue this approach, with typefaces based on visits to the converted Victorian swimming pool that will house new studios.

Cover story

With the studio running at full tilt, the question of what comes next could well be answered by pointing to the back of a large queue, but the pair definitely have ambition, as well as a taste for surprises. “We say things like, ‘Oh it would be great to do an airport wayfinding system’,” says White. “Or we’d like to create a piece of public furniture that can be used across the country, but it seems so abstract.

We’ve talked about doing a playground.”

What about office design? “We’ve always liked Vitra,” says White. “We’ve got lots of their books and old catalogues. All these real projects, and assembly halls with 3,000 chairs. These publications are design projects in themselves.”

Kellenberger–White’s own studio was designed by friends Faudet-Harrison as a skills swap of graphic and web design for furniture and styling, although the boardroom table we chat around is Swiss shuttering

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board that was driven to the UK by Kellenberger’s mother, before being turned into a table by Felix de Pass.

The bright green splashes of colour are the pair’s own touch, using Porsche Frog Green after being inspired by an article about the colours of the 911 model. “Not that we can afford one,” says White.

This may well be the case for now. But with their profile and workload, it won’t be long before both partners in Kellenberger–White can. Or, even better, before Porsche approaches the studio for new graphics, factory wayfinding or even office design for a new HQ.

Porsche Frog Green doors at the studio were inspired by the 911 car

Beyond

compare Jackdaw Studio’s functional and beautiful Bermondsey offices for The Beyond Collective never lose sight of the end user Words by Elissaveta Marinova Images by Peter Landers

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OnSite

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M

uch like its bad counterpart, good design, in its widest sense, is everywhere.

But once in a rare while, amidst the beautiful and the functional, there comes a space that knows not only the value of design, but that of the end user too.

A short walk from London Bridge station, The Beyond Collective’s new headquarters at 87 Weston Street has lots to be proud of. In many ways, I can’t help but draw a parallel between the chosen design approach within the space and the behaviour of a nurturing, trusting parent with high aspirations for their beloved child.

For one, everyone involved takes visible pride in this project. Designed by Stirling Prize-winning architect Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM) in collaboration with developer Solidspace and interior design

“We start with functionality and then we work backwards”

studio Jackdaw Studio, the new home of this micro-network of specialist companies sits in a brick-clad, mixed-rise building with windows reminiscent of a game of Tetris.

“It was mutual knowledge that we’re working together towards a collective thing,” says Alex Cleave, director of Jackdaw Studio, backed by Jane Ashe of AHMM, who asserts: “Solidspace had a very clear idea of what they thought the space should be, and that was the bridge between [Jackdaw] and us.”

As for The Beyond Collective, CEO Zaid Al-Zaidy says the agency was “built out of the need to offer our clients a more diverse offering” and, with companies spanning PR, media, advertising, strategy and production under the same roof, The Beyond Collective

Interiors: Jackdaw Studio Architect: AHMM Developer: Solidspace Client: The Beyond Collective Location: London Duration: Nov 2017 - Jun 2018 Floorspace: 436sq m

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believes in the power of bringing “unusual suspects” together – something the company calls “the atomic soup effect”.

Coming back to the parent analogy, one of the main strengths of this space lies in its understanding that, in essence, good design can encourage good behaviour. And as Jackdaw co-founder Pippa Roberts explains, this can be attributed to the studio’s top down approach. “We start with functionality and then we work backwards.”

The brief required a deep understanding of the client. “If you give them the correct tools, people will start to understand how they operate within the space,” says Cleave, adamant that in order to implement all criteria, “the space had to work really hard”.

And work hard, it does.

By utilising the L-shaped open interior, Jackdaw treated the corner as a turning point in the visitor’s journey. After entering through an almost domestic-sized door, a neon sign salvaged from the agency’s old premises welcomes you into the space. Look to the left, and you will see the rounded edges of a blue reception desk poking its head behind the corner, which in Roberts’ words, is like “the prow of a ship” luring you in.

Once past an informal seating area, the 4.5m-high office appears in its full glory. We sit on a bespoke shared work table dubbed “The Perch” and take in the space. A concrete wall with timber board marking runs along the

A round-edged blue reception desk marks the office entrance The diverse workforce can share “The Perch” bespoke work table

October 2018

left side and turns into a galvanised steel display wall further into the space, while American oak with flashes of stainless steel feature on the right. These flashes of steel lead to the bathrooms and private meeting rooms. As for the oak, look a little closer and you might notice the timber wall hides integrated lockers with no demarcation other than a delicate key hole.

Small as though it may seem, this decision shows that both The Beyond Collective and the designers of its space know to trust the end user. “You build a muscle memory of buildings,” says Roberts. “They’re not gym lockers. It’s saying: something is really practical, let’s make it really beautiful.”

This belief that rituals and day-to-day requirements should be celebrated and not hidden away manifests itself again further into the space, where Jackdaw decided to leave facilities such as the printer out in the open, in keeping with the exposed services above. “If you hide these things, they become filthy and no one takes responsibility for them,” says Roberts.

This sense of ownership is present throughout the rest of the space, too. From the unassigned desk concept and the agency’s clean desk policy, to the shared resources in the canteen-cum-boardroom, there is understanding, and there is respect for a

OnSite

space, which is considered a home. And as Roberts points out, “the space is alive, because people look after it”.

Interestingly, and though the office was designed to accommodate 100 workers, it only offers 50 desks, drawing on the agency’s

“It’s saying: something is really practical, let’s make it really beautiful” projected occupancy rate of 50% of the workforce on any given day. “Some days, everyone’s out and you don’t want the space to feel empty,” says Cleave, who placed a lot of emphasis on versatility and future-proofing the office by ensuring that “every flat surface has multi functions”. As such, the desks aren’t demarked as individual workspaces and this is made possible by the lack of legs. Reminiscent of long sharing tables with support only on the far corners, these pastel-pink, Forbo Marmoleum-finished desk surfaces were designed to cater for the “ebb and flow”.

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Long shared work tables are finished in pink Marmoleum Bright soft seating breaks out from the neutral colour palette

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October 2018

OnSite

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The location of this soft seating area isn’t accidental. It not only sits comfortably at the back end of the office, it also takes full advantage of an overhead light silo carved out from the concrete ceiling. “The oculus is critical in this space,” says Roberts – and critical it is, for most of the natural light in the office comes from this oculus and two narrow skylights along the length of the space. With the concrete wall cast along an existing Victorian wall, AHMM had to resort to overhead openings to let light into the space.

As we stand under this light silo, a thick beam of light cuts through the space like a knife through butter, reminding us of the astounding backdrop provided by the Stirling Prize-winning practice. “What AHMM did was an incredibly beautiful canvas to work with, it felt like an honour and a terror taking it to the next step,” says Jackdaw’s founder, whose studio has not only taken it to the next step, but to the next level.

Sliding glass doors link the kitchen with the work area and canteen

A light silo cut into the concrete ceiling lets sun into the space

“It’s about thinking about those surfaces as not just desks,” says Roberts. “Everything multitasks and the space can transform from workspace to event space.”

The breakout-cum-kitchen area is a perfect example of both the versatility of the space and the sense of ownership permeating the company culture. The kitchen features a bespoke worktop with wood chips embedded in for a terrazzo-like effect. “You need these points of creative opulence to counter this utilitarian style that we’ve got elsewhere,” says Cleave, highlighting that materiality within the space was born due to a very tight budget.

Adjacent to this tea point is the canteen, which doubles as boardroom and where two sets of orange tables can be pushed together or apart as required. Access to this room reflects the duality too, with sliding glass doors connecting it to the kitchen as well as the main workspace.

Back on the work side and at the top of our imaginary “L”, just opposite the canteen, there lies an area of soft seating where Jackdaw created a breakout area that doubles as review space, complete with a magnetic display surface lining the back wall. On both ends, the designers have now installed a pair of curtains for client confidentiality, but also to allow for a theatrical reveal during presentations.

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OnSite

Good as A showstopper reception by design studio O-negativ sets the tone for big business with a dramatic metallic reception desk Words by Annabel Herrick | Images by Steve De Vriendt

Visit us at 20 Old Street.

Alfi...

20 Old Street Clerkenwell EC1V 9AB www.oceedesign.com @OceeDesign

October 2018

OnSite

A A cylindrical copper reception desk adds drama to the space

modern business knows that a modern worker demands the exceptional. They hunt for a job they can be proud of and each box must be ticked: the work itself, the office culture and the workspace. Revealed in spring 2018, the new design for Unit 2 at Guildford Business Park is mighty, which seems appropriate as the space aims to attract the strong-willed and those who are not easily intimidated. The building stands to challenge the concept of a traditional office layout in a location that is already home to big names such as Philips, Ericsson and Colgate.

The original shell of the building was stripped back to the frame and remodelled by architect TP Bennett. As for the interior, Guildford Business Park was looking for something fresh so it picked London-based visualisation studio O-negativ to bring it to life. The studio’s managing director, Rati Supavasuth, led the project and added new depths using his experience in visualisation:

“We didn’t see the space in person until after I designed it. I had five days to turn it around.”

Following the win, O-negativ was in charge of transforming the reception, mezzanine and show suite of the building – in other words the aspects that bear the important task of introducing the space to a visitor upon arrival.

As Supavasuth explains, the essence of the place had to be encapsulated and presented within the first few steps of someone walking through the door: “The TP Bennett design was commercial but for the interior the client was looking for something sharper with a more boutique feel. We didn’t want it to even resemble an office space.”

For this particular project, the communal areas were of the highest priority. With the ever-increasing blurring of boundaries between work and life and the importance of soft furnishing in the workplace, these informal spaces were key to help teams relax, brainstorm and socialise. The first floor even boasts a roof terrace that overlooks the entire town – a perfect addition for those seeking a shot of inspiration

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BEAUTIFUL, PROFESSIONAL, FLEXIBLE WORKSPACES ACROSS CENTRAL LONDON FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT US: +44 (0) 20 7866 4040 proworking@foraspace.com foraspace.com

/ fora_space

FO.RA: Plural of Forum; a place where great minds meet and work; space to be brilliant.

October 2018

OnSite

Architect: TP Bennett Interior Design: O-negativ Client: Cube Real Estate/Benson Elliot Location: Guildford, Surrey Duration: Feb 2017 - Jun 2018 Floorspace: 7,600 sq m Cost: £15m

The first floor roof terrace opens up views across the town

during the working day in the grey suburbs of Surrey. For Supavasuth, this was important: “I spend around 70-80% of my life in the office.

People want to feel proud of where they work.

All companies need to attract young talent, so it’s important to have a cool office.”

The double ceiling space stands at 6.5m so there was plenty to play with above eye level.

The large reception area sits under a balcony with a mezzanine overlooking the entrance.

Those walking in feel on show, which seems apt for a space that demands immediate attention from the first glance.

“First impressions are important, so we made it striking with a lot of visible contrasts,” explains Supavasuth, whose carefully curated selection of materials is all about contrast.

Indeed, the studio went for an off-white wall, black-stained timber and concrete floor, while the tan leather, copper and living wall were picked over manmade materials for a natural – and therefore timeless – finish.

Originally, the studio considered commissioning a piece of artwork, but to avoid dividing opinions, they chose an organic display of leaves instead. The plants themselves are not too dense so they don’t detract from the copper desk but gently contrast with it. Of course, many studies have shown that plants ease stress in the workplace

and have become a sought-after interior accessory for many millennials.

Supavasuth decided to retain a lot of the old features such as the timber, which would also help with the acoustics. Instead of using an oak finish that would be drowned by the sheer size of the place, the designers stained the timber to give it a moody, sophisticated feel. Then a rich American walnut was chosen to bounce off the copper reception’s red hues.

“Companies want to attract young talent, so it’s important to have a cool office” An unusual curved capsule shape, the welcome desk turns heads immediately.

“It started as round, then we dropped one side of it to make it work for wheelchairs,” he explains, an example of form and function that work in unison. As for colours, he states: “We didn’t want to inject strong colours to risk the palette looking dated, so we chose materials that hold colour in them naturally.”

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GETTING DOWN TO

BUSINESS www.comfort.global www.comfort.global

October 2018

OnSite

in colour is subtle and is revealed between the slats. This way, as well as a sign, it also serves as a feature wall.”

According to Supavasuth, the project has been a huge success: “The client had faith in our vision, so they didn’t change anything.”

Through his visualisation work, he could picture something loosely abstract and develop it into a solid, accurate framework: “It was easy

“It was easy for us to build something in 3D and imagine what it would look like” for us to build something in 3D and imagine what it would look like. Apparently it was one of the few projects where the final product looked identical to the CGI.” Most importantly, the whole space is centered around the communal. Seating areas encourage socialising, the balcony and roof terrace perhaps metaphors for the dizzying heights of success, while a concern for acoustics shows that teamwork is welcome in this open environment. Silence may be golden, but perhaps, for Guildford Business Park, collaboration is copper.

Strong colours were avoided to prevent the palette looking dated Natural materials and a living wall give the space an organic feel

The lighting, according to Supavasuth, was complex, as there were a lot of strip lights on the ceiling in random locations: “We wanted the ground floor to be powerful so we avoided making the lighting the centre of attention.” In order to implement this idea, the MD incorporated linear slots and pendant lights to draw the eye to the area: “Instead of making it complicated I decided to simplify it.” Through this, the warm light highlights the matt copper softly rather than causing harsh, flashing glare.

The tenant board signage was tricky, Supavasuth explains, as he wanted to experiment with the traditional format but still had to respect its purpose: “Instead of merely using a clear pane of glass with letters stuck on top, which would make the outside light reflect too much, we chose to use a polaris matt laminate.” The material is scratch proof, soft and has a leather feel, meaning it acts as a centrepiece that blends in with the overall sharp look of the space: “We wanted the signage to stand out without being garish. The slight difference

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r u o l o ad Ce r p s

W o a rds ge b y s

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W

hat constitutes “sophisticated madness” and how can this be applied to workplace design?

According to architects Ujjwal Sagar and Sanjana Mathur, the duo who founded New Delhi-based design consultancy Studio Bipolar, it’s a conscious move involving colour and impactful user engagement.

“We would define ‘sophisticated madness’ as something that evokes a sense of awe, as well as engages the audience, and something that makes them laugh and think at the same time,” explains Mathur.

In its recently completed headquarters for the New Delhi nightclub set up by US men’s magazine Esquire, Mathur and the team have in some ways turned this definition into an office – creating a colourful display out of the publication’s inner workings. Completed late last year, the 111sq m project features an abundance of digitally printed vinyl wallpapers, quirky spaces and branded storytelling in its workplace for the new club.

“The office at first glance is a mix of colours, but a closer look will showcase the simple yet powerful forms we have incorporated and the historical references used,” she continues. The design brief had three pillars: firstly, to reference the Esquire brand and encapsulate its historical past; secondly, to accomplish a balance between sophistication and playfulness; and lastly to reflect the New Delhi surroundings and its latest venture into nightclub ownership.

Founded in 1933, with its first headquarters in Chicago, Esquire is the

Art deco curves refer to the style at Esquire was founded

October 2018

OnSite

Studio Bipolar’s sketches explore the colourful space The 1980s Memphis movement was one of the design inspirations

pinnacle of menswear fashion. Now with more than 30 international editions, it has successfully marked itself as a beacon for the stylish and intellectual man around the world.

Most recently, the magazine acquired its own branded nightclub in the heart of the Defence Colony Market in New Delhi. This location, built in the 1960s for ex-defence service people, is an affluent locality brimming with restaurants, coffee, shops, high-end retail and is popularly known for its exotic cuisine. In this prime location, the new office needed to serve as a hub for the creative owners of the new nightclub business and also to adhere to Esquire’s trademark sophistication in a “quirky way”, while fitting the style of its new evening venue.

“We wanted the space to make the inhabitants look around and engage with each other”

Architect: Studio Bipolar Client: Somprabh Singh Location: New Delhi, India Duration: Sept 2017 - Dec 2017 Floorspace: 111 sq m

“The space had to reflect the brand ethos and vibe for the nightclub they were trying to create,” says Mathur. “We drew inspiration from Esky, the magazine’s mascot since 1934; Esky stands for fashionable sophisticated gentlemen everywhere, but their eyes keep wandering on the lookout for the next big thing. We wanted the space to make the inhabitants look around constantly and engage with each other. We used distinctive

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KASTAWAY Kastaway is symbolic to being somewhere tranquil and relaxing opposed to a high pressure environment. The Kastaway collection can be linked together with details or shapes, or used as stand�alone pieces, creating flexible furniture solutions that can easily be arranged in a variety of dynamic configurations, making them ideal for employees and small groups to relax or meet informally.

Designed by David Fox, manufactured in the UK by

Yo u r O f f i c e F u r n i t u r e W h o l e s a l e r

October 2018

OnSite

A clear yellow-tinted boardroom table gives a feeling of space Breakout space features beanbags and floor lamps

elements like the Memphis-style partition, as well as the striped wallpaper, but as a space it all comes together.”

As well as a huge influx of brand representation, the design pays homage to the art deco era – a movement where traditionalism gradually converted into modernism, and one that heavily influenced architecture, product design, jewellery and fashion. Mathur explains how “arches and asymmetrical shapes were synonymous with the art deco movement”, and shows how the design of the new Esquire office echoes this.

The composition of this era is evident throughout the entire space: tinted distorted glass partitions, conflicting wall patterns and wayfinding achieved through decorative flooring are a few of the elements that make up this extrovertly unusual space.

In terms of functionality, the space has various uses and areas for different types of work – be it an informal meeting, private

call or a light lunch break with colleagues.

In fact, part of the brief revolved around the requirement for several cabins. There are four executive directors who all need their own space, plus a conference room, space for a team of six to hold a meeting, a reception and a breakout area. “Our task was to make sure that people were not locked up in a glass box all day, and that they would still be forced to look around and talk to each other and collaborate,” says Mathur.

Entering the building, the guest is greeted by a large open space occupied by the reception area, filled with a desk, colourfully coordinated seating and a coffee table. The same large space features the team table, where the staff will work and perch throughout the day. As the main focus of the area, this large zone also incorporates the breakout space, with beanbags, a floor lamp, bar counter-style work table and gallery of magazine covers – a place to switch off from that desk-working mindset and get inspired.

As far as the materiality of the office is concerned, glass was used in abundance.

For the creation of the partitions, glass panels were fitted into mild steel sections, with adhesive film then pasted on at the end of the process. Tinted toughened glass was also used to create the conference table, which Mathur says was “completely custom-made from scratch”. The use of glass imparts a sense

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Framed Esquire covers line the workspace The kinetic stripes of the wallpaper extend to the table surface

of openness and lightness to a space that would have otherwise been overbearing if wood or gypsum had been used.

While some may find this design bold, others might find the colour palette rather garish and intrusive. This resonates with obvious implications, such as the idea that this would be a place full of distractions rather than an attractive place to work. Questioned why such a loud visual narrative was chosen, Mathur responds stating how she and the team decided “colour and pattern can become very activating forces in a space”. They also took close care to make sure that the workspaces were far from visually heavy, so “not a single seat is facing the striped wallpaper head-on,” and that there is always a mixture of spaces for work. She continues: “We would say that while it is a ‘mad’ space, we did make sure that

people have a variety of spaces to sit in according to the type of work they want to do.”

Overall, the design and input of colour has been a highly positive outcome, and one that has even been seen to increase employee energy. “There’s no need for that morning cup of coffee,” jokes Mathur.

“The main purpose of the space was to showcase the Esquire brand to potential

“Not a single seat is facing the striped wallpaper head-on” partners and investors, and our clients feel that it is very easy to do that with an office like this,” she says. “Since its launch, the inhabitants have told us that it is a wonderful space to work in, because no matter where they look there is something to inspire them. The whole space encourages them to think differently, which is a huge change for them as they are used to working in the standard cubicle format.”

It’s clear, then, that colour choice and a flexible layout influence productivity levels within the working environment – and perhaps we can use this latest addition as an example to those thinking of updating the office in line with wellbeing. Mathur concludes: “Here the employees have the freedom and flexibility to work in the way which suits them best, and that leads to an increase in employee productivity.”

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OnSite

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Architect Hayball drew up a set of design principles for its warm, plywood-clad Sydney studio based on the input of its own staff Words by Alyn Griffiths | Images by Brett Boardman

October 2018

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he best architects practise what they preach, so when Australian firm Hayball needed to move its Sydney office to a larger premises it developed a set of guiding principles for the interior design that now inform its commercial projects. The principles were defined following a co-creation process involving the whole staff, which resulted in a workspace that reflects the attitudes and aspirations of its users.

Founded over 30 years ago, Hayball established its first Sydney studio in 2015 and is now one of Australia’s largest architectural firms. Recently, a growing portfolio of projects and a substantial increase in staff numbers prompted a move to a space that currently accommodates around 30 people, with room for even more. The new office is located in the central Surry Hills neighbourhood, on the ground floor of a five-storey brick building that was once a shoe-making factory. To provide a blank canvas for its experimental design, the

Architect: Hayball Client: Hayball Location: Sydney Duration: Sept 2017 - Dec 2017 Floorspace: 450sq m

October 2018

architect completely gutted the interior, leaving just a pair of meeting rooms intact.

Through its work in the commercial and education sectors, in particular, Hayball has consistently adopted a co-creation approach that involves the end user in the design of its

“We focus on lateral questions that help them think about how they might like to work” environment. By applying these methodologies to the Sydney workspace, the firm was able to pinpoint the key criteria its staff needed.

“During the co-creation process we try not to ask people what they want, but rather focus on more lateral questions that help them think

The two refurbished rooms are set in a plywoodclad volume

October 2018

Booths with Zero’s Silo Pendant lamps offer focused privacy

OnSite

Staff can retreat into an inset nook when they want peace to work

deeply about how they might like to work in the future,” says Hayball’s studio director, Fiona Young, while giving OnOffice a virtual tour. “The main themes we established were community and collaboration, which helped to inform the layout and design of the office.”

Having outlined these requirements during a series of workshops and group activities with the staff, Hayball asked interior designer and friend of the studio Bettina Steffens to bring a different perspective to the implementation phase. Together, they developed a proposal for a series of warm, welcoming spaces designed to inspire creativity and promote interaction between colleagues, collaborators and clients, as well as providing a sustainable workplace that helps to enhance staff wellbeing.

Employees and visitors enter from the street into an open reception area that can also be used to host workshops or activities aimed at fulfilling Hayball’s commitment to engage with

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other architects and the local community. The main office space beyond features conventional workstations, but the concept of collaboration is supported by encouraging employees to migrate around the office rather than sticking to a specific desk. This act is facilitated by mobile technology – everyone has their own laptop – as well as the provision of portable tote trays for carrying pencils, pads and other personal items. The trays stow away neatly into lockers to ensure spaces remain clear for others to use.

However, with the added flow of people, the need for improved sightlines took on extra importance. Each desk has a single monitor to avoid the visual separation that can occur with multi-screen set ups. According to Young, once people got used to switching desks, it prompted conversations between colleagues who rarely spoke before. “I feel I get to know people better and I also gain a better understanding of the projects happening across the studio as a result of moving around,” she claims as she wanders through the office. “I think some people are

October 2018

more movers than others, but those who do move are definitely recognising the benefits.”

In addition, Hayball and Steffens created a variety of different realms within the office that provide opportunities for both work and play.

“I feel I get to know people better as a result of moving around” An angled, plywood-clad volume extending along one wall incorporates the two refurbished rooms. One is now a meeting room that doubles as a table-tennis arena, featuring a boardroom table from Australian brand Koskela and swivel seats from Danish company Hay. An adjacent lounge-like space

known as the Fire Side can be used for informal meetings or presentations. The chairs and tables in this room are produced by local supplier Cult, which also helped to source many of the other items throughout the office.

Next to the private meeting areas is a whiteboard room that allows users to write or draw on every surface, including the walls and even the floor. The remainder of this built-in volume contains a pair of intimate booths ideally suited to quiet individual or group working, as well as a cosy nook surrounded by shelving that staff can duck into when they need a break from the collective. Lighting was carefully chosen to create the correct ambience in each space, with a pendant from Danish brand Muuto illuminating the Fire Side room and Zero’s Silo Pendant in the booths.

On the opposite side of the workspace is a library with bookshelves and bench seating built into another wall of plywood units.

Adjoining the library is a kitchen where people come together for lunch or evening drinks, Bookshelves and seating are built into a wall of plywood units

LVT meet carpet We’ve designed our LVT and Carpet Tiles to work together – seamlessly with no transition strips. Because we like to think of the floor as a blank canvas, allowing you to make your space unique. Hard surfaces, soft textures, and endless pattern and colour combinations – all you need is a vision. interface.com/lvtmeetcarpet

LVT meet carpet.

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while a model-making area with a 3D printer is positioned just beyond the entrance to a utility space housing the printing facilities, toilets and a foosball table. A Triple Kick pendant lamp by Volker Haug hangs above the kitchen island, which is surrounded by Leon Ransmeier’s Revolver stools by Established & Sons. All of these zones are separated from the main office by a set of movable screens that can close off areas when privacy is needed. Magnetic whiteboard surfaces fitted to these panels enable them to be used by teams on both sides.

“The retreat spaces are as important as the collaborative workspace” The layout of the office purposely provides a variety of working environments, allowing employees to choose how much engagement they wish to have with their colleagues. Ideas can be developed over coffee in the kitchen or table tennis, but if privacy is needed staff can cocoon themselves in the nook or the booths. “I think the retreat spaces are just as important as the collaborative workspace,” Young suggests, adding that a standing desk by the window is one of her favourite spots for work. “During the research process, people talked about the need to be able to retreat from their teams and have space to reflect, which often aids their creativity.”

A whiteboard room allows users to write or draw on every surface

The kitchen island features Revolver stools and a Triple Kick lamp

Throughout the interior, a pared-back palette of natural materials reflects the idea of sustainability in the guiding principles. Concrete, plywood and leather create a neutral yet tactile backdrop enlivened by numerous plants. These were chosen for their ability to remove toxins from the air, but also based on research suggesting certain species can support shortterm memory. “That’s why we’re propagating rosemary at the moment,” insists Young.

“Although it’s also because it smells nice!”

By trialling a new creative process and innovative workplace concepts, Hayball has established principles that will be implemented across future projects, including its Melbourne and Brisbane offices. “We definitely consider this office as a prototype for how we want to work,” Young claims. “We recognise the importance of asking the end user what their aspirations are and how they will use their space, and that’s exactly what we’ve done here.”

BRITISH AND ITALIAN WORKPLACE FURNITURE

ICF & Marelli are exclusively distributed by TASK in the UK

FUNCTIONALITY, DESIGN SERVICE & FLEXIBILITY Four words that have formed the back-bone of our Company approach and which have influenced our product portfolio for the 35 years that we have been supplying furniture to the contract market.

Three decades of experience have helped us grow into one of the most well-established and professional organisations with an enviable client base spanning a wide variety of market sectors.

Today, our business continues to expand as we invest in our product development programme, our customer service, our premises and new employees.

LinkedIn, London Denton Associates

Alpha Bank, London Resonate Interiors

Hudson River, London Space Workplace Ltd

Maersk, Maidenhead 2M2 Studio

Sports Direct, London PENSON

Our comprehensive range of workplace products includes a leading sit-stand desk solution, a new circular desk for team based working and the collaborative ARC family which achieved a ‘Highly Commended’ award status in a recent Product of the Year category.

Complementary to our own in-house designs, for over 10 years we have proudly held the exclusive UK distribution rights for two Italian producers; ICF and Marelli. Both these companies have a

Park Square, London Space Workplace Ltd

remarkable heritage and have been making beautifully designed products for over half a century.

Over the following pages, you will be given an insight to a selection of innovative and design led products both from TASK’s own portfolio and those from our Italian Collection comprising ICF and Marelli.

TASK HEAD OFFICE

TASK SHOWROOM

Gemini Business Park, Hornet Way, Beckton London E6 7FF

85 Great Eastern Street Shoreditch London EC2A 3HY

marketing@tasksystems.co.uk

tasksystems.co.uk

ARC Mobile Whiteboard, Pinboard, Space Divider, Acoustic Panel, Personal Storage

ARC Family

ARC Family

ARC Connecting Spaces

ARC Media

TEAM DESKING Noir Chair

SPACE POD Work Table, Stick Cantilever Chair

LiFT Sit-Stand Desking

WORK DESKING Storage Planter

CIRC WORKSTATION AIMISI Chair

LiFT Sit-Stand Desking

AIMISI Task Chair

ICF was founded in Milan in the early 1950s. With its roots firmly established in Italian design and traditional craftsmanship, its chair collections created a new standard for the market, both nationally and internationally. ICF’s work since has reflected a passion for developing classically designed products for the modern day office environment.

Everything that goes into an ICF collection is developed internally, with great attention to every design detail, to make every product competitive and extremely reliable. For almost 70 years, this passion has been the driving force pushing ICF to the forefront, anticipating the needs of a continuously changing market.

The recent introduction of a new height adjustable meeting table, innovative finishes including a bronze frame, as well as maintaining the traditional, well-loved Una chair and Unitable range, has helped ICF to continue to expand and grow globally.

UNA EXECUTIVE CHAIR Unitable Meeting Table

UNA CHAIR Collection

UNITABLE Meeting Table

FINN CHAIR Collection

VALEA ELLE CHAIR Vee Meeting Table

VALEA SOFT CHAIR NoTable Desk

BEVEL MEETING TABLE Valea Elle Chair

BEVEL DESK Valea Elle Chair

VALEA CHAIR Collection

NOTABLE MEETING TABLE Una Management Chair

NOTABLE Desk

NOTABLE Meeting Table

NOTABLE Sit Stand Desk / Meeting Table

STICK CHAIR Collection

UNA EXECUTIVE CHAIR Unitable Meeting Table

VALEA ELLE CHAIR NoTable Meeting Table

VALEA SOFT Chair

UNA MANAGEMENT Chair

Established in 1964, Marelli is a traditional family owned Italian company, specialised in the production of upholstered armchairs and sofas. Marelli has since developed an extensive range of both contract and luxury products from sofas and chairs to coffee tables and agile working solutions for European and international markets.

All Marelli products are carefully designed in order to meet the highest standards regarding both materials and the manufacturing processes. Special attention is given to the study of product life cycle, and to the use of recycled and recyclable materials.

Marelli have the wisdom of generation old techniques mixed with modern day production technology, specialist skills and world class designers. Using only the finest of quality materials, Marelli maintains its position in the market with its wide array of on-trend finishes, and an amazing ability to satisfy special demands.

ANDY SOFA Clip Hexagonal Coffee Table, Frame Console & Coffee Table

CLIP HEXAGONAL Coffee Table

TWIG Coffee Table

THOR Coffee Table

PARIS CHAIR Twig Dining Table

CONNOR Sofa and Armchair

PARIS Sofa and Armchair

TATLIN COFFEE TABLE Clip Hexagonal Coffee Table, Paris Chair, Break Dining Table, Andy Sofa

FRAME Coffee table

BREAK Coffee table

CLIP COFFEE TABLE Slide Sofa

TATLIN Coffee Table

JOY ARMCHAIR Break, Clip Coffee Table

FRAME CONSOLE Joy Armchair

NEW YORK Sofa

L-SOFA COLLECTION Clip Coffee Table

H-SOFA Pivot Chair and Table

PIVOT Chair and Table

STRIPES COLLECTION Pivot Chair and Table

STRIPES Sofa and Table

STRIPES Sofa with roof

HEAD OFFICE

SHOWROOM

Unit 3 & 4, Block C, Gemini Business Park, Hornet Way, Beckton London E6 7FF

85 Great Eastern Street Shoreditch London EC2A 3HY

T: +44 (0)20 7540 6400 marketing@tasksystems.co.uk

T: +44 (0)20 7749 1960 tasksystems.co.uk

BRITISH AND ITALIAN WORKPLACE FURNITURE

October 2018

RegiOn

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AYLA ANGELOS

TAKE A PUNT ON CAMBRIDGE Following on from OnOffice’s Oxford focus last month, we take a punt in its historic counterpart to take the temperature of another flourishing city built around academia for bioscience and technology research and development.

As mentioned in last month’s Oxford feature, the East West Rail connection will play a major part in the Cambridge awakening. Adam King, communications manager at East West Rail, explains how the Western Section route will “drastically” reduce journey times within the region, and act as a catalyst for bringing communities together.

“The Western Section route is located partly on existing lines and partly on a section of mothballed railway between Bedford and Oxford, Milton Keynes and Aylesbury Vale,” he says. “The section between Bedford and Cambridge should be complete by 2030.”

With this prospect for transport in motion for the near future, Cambridge’s current offering is destined to thrive. But what’s interesting is that the region

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O

n the River Cam, about 50 miles north of London, Cambridge has sat with status and pride since receiving its town charter in the 12th century. As the home of the world-renowned University of Cambridge, it shares many similarities with its educational counterpart Oxford (OnOffice’s RegiOn in last month’s issue). It’s clear that both of these historical towns have their feet firmly pressed on academic turf, yet Oxford presents a hopeful future for its students, longtime residents and newcomers alike. Can Cambridge claim the same prospects?

Recent Spotlight research (2017) from Savills, the global real estate services provider, suggests that the city is building a global future, although there is some potential for a few bumpy roads ahead. “Cambridge is already a globally successful city. Yet its success risks being held back by looming shortages in the commercial and residential markets, and by infrastructure bottlenecks,” says the report.

The commercial development pipeline is undersupplied, with only 1.3 years of office and lab space remaining, which means the government has a crucial role to play in reassuring its lifeline. Despite rising rents – up by £12 per sq ft since 2009, twice that of “regional competitor” Edinburgh – and pressures on office and residential space, it’s not all doom and gloom, according to Savills.

Cambridge continues to flourish with educational talent, and is a hub of global importance

Interiors at the Cambridge Judge Business School extension The building adjoins the Old Addenbrooke’s Hospital

seems to be less focused on new builds, placing more emphasis on extensions and renovations.

For example, award-winning London-based practice Stanton Williams has recently completed a £21.5m expansion for Cambridge Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. As a new hub for postgraduate and executive business education, the extension adjoins the business school’s Grade II listed Old Addenbrooke’s Hospital – a “group of buildings which has undergone almost continuous transformation

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over the past 200 years,” says Gavin Henderson, director at Stanton Williams.

When asked about the project’s brief, Henderson explains that there is a huge demand for further educational facilities. “At the heart of this brief was the requirement to provide world-class facilities, while enhancing, consolidating and expanding the school’s ameni-

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Neubau’s shipping container porters’ lodge for Hughes Hall Pigeonholes for students’ post at the Hughes Hall lodge Niall McLaughlin’s new link building at Jesus College

“It has drawn this collection of buildings back into the life of the college community”

Photo Nick Kane

ties on its existing site. The project also brings faculty, staff and students together in one location, so that the school could operate more collaboratively and support future growth,” he continues.

“The school had several steeply raked lecture theatres suited to didactic teaching styles: there needed to be more flexible and collaborative teaching spaces.

The school already had successful social spaces, but these needed expanding, with the addition of dining and ‘milling’ spaces – essentially breakout areas for the executive education programme.”

Hughes Hall, another college within the university, has also seen a recent expansion. Until now, the college was the last without a porters’ lodge – a small booth at the entrance that serves as a base, a reception for visitors, storage and a collection point for the students’ mail. Its recently added porters’ lodge was designed by Cambridgebased design studio Neubau, which proposed a bespoke conversion of a shipping container for the project. The result responds to an underperforming reception and serves as a dedicated space for all porterage-related functions.

Another development sees an extension to the university’s Jesus College. After commencing work

in 2014, London-based practice Niall McLaughlin Architects has now completed phase one of its work for the college, including the refurbishment of a 1970s building, adding a new facade with a vertical tower of stone and timber elements. The project was delivered in sequential parts over 18 months, with the renewal of the Grade II listed Webb Building handed over first, followed by a new cafe and bar, and lastly the remodelled Rank Building and new entrance.

The building provides offices, social spaces and student accommodation, and pays attention to its predecessor; the existing buildings are linked by a new extension, highlighted by lightweight glazed timber, and feature various traditional materials including oak, stone, brick and quarry tiles. According to the practice, the extension has been a huge

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triumph: “The success of phase one might be measured by the extent to which it has drawn this disparate collection of buildings back into the vital life of the college community, while also providing an outward-looking public presence in the centre of Cambridge.”

“University farmland is being transformed into residential and commercial uses”

Photos Jack Hobhouse

Besides these glorious additions to the architectural history of academia, there is also progress in the realms of new builds currently in development. Mole Architects, an award-winning practice based in Cambridge, and architectural heavyweight Wilkinson Eyre are in the first phase of the £1bn North West Cambridge Development, Housing in the North West Cambridge Development Solar panels on the North West Cambridge Development

which sees plans for 150ha of university farmland to be transformed into new residential and commercial uses. The designs include a supermarket, retail, 177 key residential units, a healthcare centre, police station and an energy centre.

Evidently, this will aid the progression of Cambridge as it steers towards office and residential improvements, but will it ever fully move beyond its university heritage? It seems there’s always a hint behind every design that steers towards the worldclass educational facility, influencing its progress in some way or another. Should Cambridge keeps its firm grasp, or is it perhaps time to let go?

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133

Dressed for school Architect Benni Allan goes back to his old school in Spain to give it a vivid exterior revamp – all on a budget of £1,000

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rchitects are used to tight budgets but when Benni Allan of Londonbased Estudio B was tasked to create a new facade for one of the first British schools in southern Spain, he had only £1,000 to complete the project.

Located in the Alicante wine region, the academy was set up

by Allan’s father in 1973 and runs from preschool to GCSEs. The main building was an existing structure but, because it sat on a designated agricultural area, Spanish regulations prohibited further permanent buildings on the land, so additional facilities were housed in cheaply made prefabricated buildings meant for temporary use.

Fast forward 30 years and the buildings had become tired and uninspiring. Allan, who was a student from the ages of one to 16, and his younger brother, who

The cladding refreshes the tired prefab building

Benni Allan with his brother Nico, who helps to run the school

now runs the show alongside their father, decided it was time for a revamp, starting with the exterior of the primary school block with a limited budget of £1,000. “It’s a privately owned school by my dad with no government funding. It’s been through the financial crisis so we always knew the budget was going to be very small,” explains Allan.

He sourced corrugated bitumen panels from the local warehouse for €12 (£10) each to keep costs down. The material is most associated with warehouses and farm buildings but Allan wanted a warmer, cosier aesthetic. He cut up the panels into smaller sizes so

they resembled a patchwork, and painted them in shades of red and pink, giving a nod to the region’s ochre – a spiced earthy shade – and the terracotta roofs that are synonymous with southern Spain.

The team had to meticulously match each corrugated bitumen tile so that the undulating form had perfect symmetry. The ripples resemble traditional textiles worn by Valencian women at festivals, giving the project its name, La Falda – “the dress” in Spanish.

“The colours are very strong in the region and most buildings in southern Spain are clad with roofs in this terracotta tile, in a really

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strong orangey-red – and that’s one of the inspirations that we found in developing this project. It has a strong link to that image that you see across the region. So the undulating form across the facade has this direct reference to the roofs,” he explains.

The building was made using aluminium panels so he designed an aluminium framework featuring vertical brackets to affix to the existing structure. From those brackets, Allan and his team, which included some of his students from

“I didn’t want it to be too clean and modern.

We wanted it more crafted and subtle”

the University of Greenwich and his studio staff, were able to support timber battens across the building.

To keep the budget strict, Allan figured out the number of corrugated sheets he would need and each panel was cut into quarters then fitted to the aluminium wall like a mural. “I didn’t want it to feel too clean and modern. We wanted it to be more crafted and subtle.

The paint we applied, which is a

The undulating wall draws inspiration from Spanish roofs

The corrugated panels are painted in waterproof colours

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special waterproof paint, actually gives the panels a much softer feel,” he says.

The project began about a year ago. Initially Allan and his father considered just painting or tiling the block but when they went to the local warehouse, they discovered the corrugated bitumen sheets, which could be easily cut to whatever size was needed.

“It came down to the cost and trying to be quite clever with the amount of material we could use.

It was finding interesting ways of using very inexpensive materials,” Allan explains. “The whole technology in the project is incredibly simple. It’s just the panels, the paint and then fixing them to the walls.”

After the material was sourced and the tiles cut, execution of the facade took about five days. It is the first phase of a larger renovation over time. “I’ve studied a lot into spaces for young children for other projects and it’s really important to make a building that’s inspiring –

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a building that actually gives children empowerment and that they can feel inspired themselves and that’s what we’ve tried to do with this project,” he tells OnOffice.

The team has already started on the interior and painted half of the

“It was finding interesting ways of using very inexpensive materials” corridor a vibrant lime green. Allan is already looking at reworking another prefab building and hopes to involve pupils in the design process. As he explains: “I think this project will just show them exactly what you can do with buildings.”

Corrugated panels are painted and cut into sections by the team Younger pupils will learn about the design process

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139

It’s all in the DNA WSP Architects’ Exhibition Centre for a Zhengzhou science park draws its spiralling shape from the fundamentals of life

The design has drawn comparisons with Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Zhenghzhou’s new biopharmaceutical park will be complete in 2020

T

he newly completed Zhengzhou Linkong Biopharmaceutical Park Exhibition Centre forms the centrepoint of what will, upon completion in 2020, be the largest base for biotechnology research, development and production within China’s populous Henan Province.

“We believe informal interaction always brings new ideas, and the building is like a living room for the park’s users to meet, exchange and share such ideas,” explains Nelson Tam, associate design principal with China-based WSP Architects.

The Biopharmaceutical Park Exhibition Centre – a striking, seemingly off-kilter, three-storey, elliptical building – is surrounded by a park, which will eventually feature an international conference building and startup incu-

bator complex. And to ensure that the centre does indeed fulfil its designated role as the site’s social and creative hub, the architect has ensured that, in a manner of speaking, all roads lead to its door. By way of meandering pathways that converge at the building’s wide and welcoming entrance point, the exhibition centre is physically linked to the aforementioned facilities.

Appropriately, with respect to one of WSP Architects’ guiding principles that truly habitable cities should comprise mixed-use space, the Centre has very consciously been conceived as a mixed-use building. In the words of Tam, one of the chief architects on the project: “It is like a mini complex” – one that consists of three offset, elliptical layers which provide distinctly different functions. As such, the

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ground floor operates as an exhibition hall designed to showcase the technological achievements of the park, while the second level houses flexible office and conference space. The top floor is given over to a coffee lounge and restaurant facilities.

Rather ingeniously, given the irregular way these layers sit atop of each other, each level features an outside terrace that looks out across a different section of the campus but which, taken in totality, allows visitors the potential of an elevated view of the campus across a 360-degree panorama.

These usages are linked and unified by a walkway that spirals upwards around the central atrium and helps delineate and blur public and private space. “We understood the centre to be primarily a public space and we predict that the space will become more and more public as time goes by,” says Tam. “Therefore, we chose to place the emphasis on the circulation aspect of the building which links all func-

Each terrace looks over a different section of the campus The three layers have different functions within the building

tions, meaning that while these functions may change in the future, the atrium and spiral would stay.”

On a purely superficial level, in terms of the building’s curvilinear shape, white interior, ascending walkways and skylight, it’s difficult not to draw at least some comparison with Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Guggenheim Museum of 1959. But where Lloyd Wright is said to have taken inspiration from a nautilus shell for the spiral core of his modernist masterpiece, the

“We chose to place the emphasis on the circulation aspect of the building” designers of the Exhibition Centre go to the fundamental building block of life itself. Its coiled shape, punctuated by exterior louvres, is modelled on nothing less than the chain-like molecular structure of the double helix of DNA.

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The white interior suggests spiritual calm rather than lab sterility Aluminium louvres shade the building and hide night illumination

“We were looking for a design that would give us both a pleasant spatial experience within a form which speaks for itself in terms of revealing the theme of the park to its primary users – the scientists within the biopharmaceutical field.” says Tam. “However, we also feel it’s important for our work to be understood not only by architectural professionals but also by people of different backgrounds. As such, we felt that the choice of the double helix of DNA would serve to remind the architects and the scientists using the building that our efforts are ultimately for the people.”

Indeed, WSP Architects places great emphasis on the human experience of buildings. And this can perhaps be seen in the allencompassing whiteness of the interior. While this might suggest the clinical conditions of a hi-tech laboratory, any sense of ensuing sterility is offset by the notion of white being the colour of peace, tranquillity and even spirituality.

And there is a palpable sense that the architect has sought to

imbue the building with something of a transcendental, or meditative, quality. Though it might not be too fanciful to suggest that the way the exterior of the building appears to emerge out of water points to the origins of life itself, while looking up to the atrium skylight from the ground floor of the centre, the helical walkway gives a curiously Escher-like illusion of ascending up to the very heavens.

But back down to earth, this louvred skylight serves as an integral part of the temperature control system, bringing diffused sunlight into the interior without too much heat gain. Similarly, the perforated aluminium louvres, which cover the outside shell at a 30-degree angle, conceal the light that illuminates the building at night but also serve as sun-shades in the daytime.

All of this, as well as being energy efficient, is ultimately aimed at helping the building fulfil its primary function as a light, airy and inspirational environment that fosters human interaction and the informal exchange of ideas.

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146 SIGHT The Komorebi lamp brings dappled sunlight inside 147 SOUND Laying down the right soundtrack for work at The Ministry

WELLNESS

SPECIAL Wellbeing at work requires surroundings that address our sensory needs, as these five designers have found Words by Ayla Angelos

149 SMELL A lamp and scent diffuser that detects your sleep patterns 151 TASTE Studio10’s blueprint for growing food in the office 153 TOUCH Studio Above&Below creates a playfully tactile room divider

146 WELLNESS SPECIAL

October 2018

See the light The Komorebi lamp replicates the dynamic effect of sunshine in dull, dark rooms, making residents and office workers feel better

L

ight and space are becoming sought-after commodities. As the demand for offices rises, factors such as windows and natural ventilation are in danger of becoming an afterthought. The inner workings of a well-designed office most certainly affect our productivity levels and overall happiness, though artificial light still has its place. It seems like a simple task, but how can we make sure that all employees are able to experience the benefits of natural daylight?

Leslie Nooteboom is a London-based designer who is currently tackling the issue of natural light deficiency within the home and the workplace, as seen through his latest project, Komorebi – a lamp projector that meticulously replicates the effects of the sun.

The project emerged from his graduate collection from the Innovation Design Engineering course at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London; it’s an easy and programmable device that would ideally suit a basement space or attic studio – or any sun-lacking room, for that matter.

windows, you can still enjoy the beauty of sunlight shadows.”

Nooteboom’s main inspiration for Komorebi was sparked after visiting social housing in London, where his findings were that natural experiences – most dramatically sunlight falling through the windows of a room – had an impact on the interiors of these houses and on the residents’ wellness within.

Although the idea stems from domestic purposes, Komorebi – which takes its name from the Japanese for “sun dappling through the leaves” – is well placed to have significant use within the modern workplace. “There are so many working environment cubicles where blandness has a negative effect on the energy

“Even if you have no windows you can still enjoy the beauty of sunlight shadows” “The reason for developing Komorebi was to generate happiness in people’s homes,” says Nooteboom. “I interviewed people in bad quality housing, did experiments with people in cardboard boxes and found out that people really appreciated natural experiences – from a setting sun to the sound of rain on the window.”

“Komorebi aims to bring a more natural experience of light into a room, so that even if you live in a place with little sunlight or no

levels of employees. By giving subtle changes in the visual experience of that space, you get tired less quickly and there’s a positive effect on the mood of the people working there,” says Nooteboom.

According to the designer, people spend more than 90% of their lives indoors in often statically lit environments. With Noteboom’s plans to commercialise and develop the project on a larger scale, the Komorebi couldn’t be more suitable for the current interest in wellbeing: “With more natural light experiences, people have better circadian rhythms and increased alertness – these are some of the impacts the Komorebi aims to influence.”

Komorebi shines a window pattern of light on to a blank wall

October 2018

WELLNESS SPECIAL 147

Sound affects Tom Middleton has given the co-working space set up by the Ministry of Sound the soundtrack its occupants deserve

James Jones

A

The luxurious Ministry interiors have a soundtrack to match

fter our online coverage of the launch of The Ministry in July – The Ministry of Sound’s new Southwark-based private members club and co-working space – one aspect went slightly overlooked. That is, the inclusion of site-specific sound design and how this can influence wellbeing.

But that’s not to say that OnOffice was unknowing of the audio-sensory aspects of the space – rather, it seems that sound design is something of an unmarked territory that doesn’t seem to get the press that it deserves.

Let’s not forget that the new hub has grown out of the legendary 1990s dance music destination, so the space needs to reflect the brand in every essence – visually and audibly.

So how did the brief come about for this project? Tom Middleton, sound architect and psychoacoustics sound designer who led The Ministry’s soundscaping, explains: “The brief was to design a delightful audio-sensory interior and exterior experience for the members to complement the overall brand look, feel, taste and fragrance.”

He continues: “Most importantly, the design needed to deliver a memorable daily soundtrack optimised for wellbeing, elevated mood and increased focus – and productivity enhancement. This was achieved by creating an ambience that helps give members a warm positive feeling that going to work is a pleasure and not a chore.”

Middleton goes on to explain how each zone now requires a unique soundtrack or soundscape to “complement the purpose,

energy, look and feeling of the space”.

At their first entry in the reception, or “initial sonic touch point”, visitors to The Ministry are greeted with a “gentle, cool and classy”, yet familiar first engagement with the brand and space.

“This connects to the restaurant and bar, which is a chic, comfortable, warm, friendly and welcoming space you want to spend all day in,” says Middleton. Next is the adjoining terrace, marked as a calming outdoor retreat and antidote to the desk, then the lower ground floor toilets which have a “delightful, tongue-in-cheek soundtrack full of sonic surprises”, and finally the workspace floors with a background layer of undisruptive sounds that aid focus and productivity.

Soundscaping can be highly beneficial for the design of a workplace, especially if it’s in the hands of an experienced professional.

From Middleton’s wide-ranging involvement in the industry – he has worked with Aphex Twin, Prince, Coldplay, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, to name a few – he explains how he’s learned the effect of sound on those working in the office. “It is well documented that sound can profoundly and very positively affect and influence many aspects of wellbeing,” he says.

“Through neuromodulation of cognitive states and the impact on physiological and behavioural outcomes, such as modulation of heart and breath rate, the release of dopamine in individuals and prolactin (human bonding) in groups lowers stress, reduces feelings of anxiety, boosts confidence, motivation and elevates mood.

Sound is a powerful and still relatively under-rated wellness tool.”

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WELLNESS SPECIAL 149

Scent to sleep Creating wellbeing at work starts in the home, and Lena Saleh’s Zeitgeiber Kit for better sleep is well attuned to the zeitgeist Light levels are adjusted to suit sleep level and heart rate

R

A diffuser is programmed to adjust the release of scent

ecently, experiments on the topic of sleep have been streaming into the headlines.

As part of a growing focus on wellbeing throughout the entire workplace spectrum, researchers, employers and employees alike are taking mammoth steps to ensure a healthy office environment.

What’s surprising is that many offices tend to forget what happens outside the 9-5.

Addressing how sleep affects productivity levels is imperative and, in particular, with the rise of technology it’s never been so important to switch off, allow for a decent resting period and to incorporate tranquil scents into your daily routine.

Lena Saleh is a designer and researcher who devotes her time to exploring this four-pointed relationship between scent, technology, human performance and sleep.

Her recently completed product The Zeitgeiber Kit – part of a larger project titled Future Sleep – involves a series of artefacts to encourage mindful breathing rituals in the hope of creating an alternative to that long-lasting evening in with the blue-lit screen.

The objects are functional as much as sculptural, involving short sensory experiences that fit into the day using both scent and light.

“I have always been fascinated by sleep, especially as I noticed my own behaviour and those around me change due to our increased use of technology,” says Saleh. “Why do we need sleep? How will it evolve with technology?

And is this something we must protect?”

“People will need to recharge in a deeper way, based on the amount of technology use” With these questions in mind, before continuing and refining Future Sleep, Saleh began the collaborative project in her first year while studying at Central Saint Martins. “We investigated the idea that people will need to recharge in a deeper way in the future, based on the amount of technology use today,” she adds.

“Our research was based on how NASA is exploring how to put astronauts to sleep for up to 14 days on the way to Mars. This is where my interest in sleep piqued and I wanted to continue in the same vein for my thesis project.”

Scent plays a huge role in relaxation techniques and is something that can easily be incorporated into your working day, as much as in the evenings. Saleh’s scent emitter works in a way that sees certain smells programmed via the Internet of Things and released depending on how you are sleeping – “through a radar within the lamp that measures sleep and heart rate”.

Working alongside the lamp, the scents are customisable, and the designer has worked with a herbalist on the most effective: a blend based around lavender for the evening shift, and peppermint for the morning.

“Sensory experiences are vital for our wellbeing and will only be harnessed more through technology in our future. When we are able to include wellbeing in design, we are helping not just ourselves but our societies,” says Saleh. “In particular the role of scent has been around for centuries, but we are only now beginning to understand its positive impact on our wellbeing and health.”

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w l gro ce l a we he offi h c i wh d in t n i n t ure city – a u f ds a in t he r a w g to le food n i k r b s wo ustaina i 0 ce1 ds Spa ous an iti nut r

Main photo: Nicklas Ingemann

s r e k a m e t s Ta

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pace10 is a future living lab that aims to research and design innovative responses to some of the world’s biggest challenges – which includes everything from rapid urbanisation, the scarcity of natural resources, loneliness in cities, food security, the lack of affordable housing and even investigating artificial intelligence and its effect on human empowerment.

Niklas Adrian Vindelev

The Growroom is an open-source design for growing food at work

The Farm grows microgreens three times faster than they would in a field

Most recently, the Copenhagen-based lab has completed its latest project, The Farm, which is an exploration into alternative methods for growing, distributing and integrating food production into our cities.

“Our exploration within food actually started when we discovered that a simple hamburger takes over 2,000 litres of water to produce, and that our appetite for red meat is becoming a problem for everyone on the planet,” says Simon Caspersen, co-founder and communications director of Space10. “We started to explore ways to produce tasty, nutritious and affordable food in the heart of our cities – the result unfolds literally from the ground up. In the basement of Space10 we have The Farm growing a range of vegetables and micro greens; we also have a bioreactor for growing spirulina, an insect farm for mealworms, and an aquaponic system, which grows fish and plants together in a closed-loop system.”

By utilising The Farm in the workplace, Space10 employees now benefit from 100kg of food per month, used for lunches, dinner events and even delivering produce to a local high-end restaurant. Due to its artificial lights, hydroponic system and

computerised automation, Caspersen explains, the plants get exactly what they need in terms of light, water and minerals all year round. Not only this, but the greens also grow up to three times faster than in a field and use 90% less water – a highly sustainable way of supplying the cities, indeed. But where does this fit into the modern workplace?

“Maybe The Farm is too big a challenge for most workplaces, which is why we have designed something a bit more approachable: we call it The Growroom. It’s a spherical urban garden that enables people to grow their own food right on their doorstep or in their office,” says Caspersen. “We have open-sourced the design, meaning anyone can download the cutting files and produce their own Growroom locally. All you need is two rubber hammers, 17 sheets of plywood and a visit to your local makerspace.”

Fresh and delicious produce is enough to satisfy any employee in the working hours.

Yet to have your own growing farm on site is on another level. Caspersen concludes: “In my view, there are a lot of reasons to start growing more food within our offices.

Besides taste, it just makes the office greener, healthier, and more interesting to be in.

It also bring people closer to nature, supports our sense of wellbeing, secures more delicious food as well as reminds some people of where food actually comes from.”

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October 2018

WELLNESS SPECIAL 153

Feeling good Studio Above&Below’s interactive room divider installation for the Bloomberg building gives a satisfying connection

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Above&Below’s interactive and playful Sêma room divider

hat does the future look like? According to the website of Londonbased Studio Above&Below, it will present “emerging technologies and code that have the potential to improve our planet’s wellbeing”. A positive outlook on the looming future, absolutely – yet, with rising anxieties about the influx of AI and the ever-growing addiction to our screens, how will this sit with the happiness of the next generation to come?

Interactivity might be the answer. The studio’s recent project, Sêma, sees this blend of touch-sensory involvement and technology sit in perfect harmony, as it invigorates play and acts as a catalyst for user wellbeing.

Devised as an interactive art piece for Bloomberg’s new workspace in the City of London, the piece functions as a room divider, although it’s not your typical isolating screen placed in between two co-workers.

“Sêma is not an ordinary wall which separates people; it brings people together through a transparent interactive communication way,” says Daria Jelonek, artist, designer, researcher and co-founder of Studio Above&Below. “The purpose of this art piece is to give people a moment of rest and playfulness, to create new thought processes and improve their wellbeing through creativity and play.”

Sêma was developed as a collaborative project, stemming from a Hackathon at the Royal College of Art – where Jelonkeh and

Perry-James Sugden from Studio Above&Below joined forces with designers Kotaro Abe, Pierre Bottriaux, Rami Kanaan and Yena Park.

The specific brief was to create a room divider for a larger space. “As soon as we found our group we knew we wanted to create something interactive and playful,” says Jelonkeh. “The only restriction: no electricity.

After researching, we came across the physics of a double pendulum, which allows everchanging patterns and movements once it is set in motion. Combining this playful movement with compass needles, Sêma was born (we first wanted to use ferrofluid, but there was also a liquid restriction).”

The piece functions by activating a centred handle at the heart of the artwork, which allows a double pendulum within the wall to then be set in motion. The pendulum includes magnets and its momentum causes the compass needles in the wall to move – creating a new position in the structure. This movement, Jelonek describes, is a “satisfying moment” between your hands and body.

“A lot of activities in our everyday lives are currently screen-based, such as working at computers as well as spending leisure time in front of smartphones. These static poses can be emotionally and physically draining,” she says.

“Interactivity for us means movement and stimuli from our environment, forcing us to step into new and unusual interactions.

Tactility is a crucial part in the design process of those new and unusual interactions. We think that interacting and setting something into motion through touch can lead to better wellbeing, as it satisfies your body and mind.”

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October 2018

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On The Double

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by Philip Ross

Say goodbye to the 9-5?

The evidence is mounting that shorter working hours keep staff happier, healthier and more productive. So why not give it a try?

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cross the world, the 40-to-48 hour minimum working week is almost standard in many professions. Despite new technologies promising fewer working hours as machines take over menial tasks, in many industries we seem to be expected to work longer every year. Crucially, this tends not to be by choice; if your company tells you that you work from 9am to 6pm, then that is when you will work.

Humans are not robots, however. They cannot work on a task for five solid blocks of eight. Nobody who has an eight-hour working day actually works for eight hours.

Anyone who has had a job knows that you need to subtract time spent getting coffee, talking to colleagues, going to the bathroom and so on, which all take a considerable chunk out of your eight hours.

Those are just the legitimate distractions – often you must also subtract time spent reading the news, looking at social media and texting friends. Having said that, most people get their work done in time. Despite being human and not actually working eight hours a day, the majority of people – however distracted – still do not get sacked.

Why does this disparity occur?

The idea that we must be at work for a certain number of hours is an antiquated one that has its

roots in factories with long lines of workers performing some manual process. But service work and knowledge work in particular are not like that. An idea may come while strolling around the office or getting a coffee.

The evidence that spending large amounts of time at work is detrimental to our health is mounting. A large-scale research study published in The Lancet has shown that the longer people work, the greater their risk of stroke and coronary heart disease.

health, particularly for women.

Even employee-friendly legislation such as the EU Working Time Directive limits workers to 48-hour weeks, so it seems that most of the world is geared up for working longer than is healthy.

Faced with weak productivity, many companies are now starting to look at ways to reduce working hours, an approach that chimes with anecdotal evidence – people often report that having less time to do their work actually makes them more efficient and better

“People report that having less time to do their work actually makes them more efficient and better able to concentrate” The findings for strokes were particularly compelling: you have 1.3 times higher risk of stroke if working more than 55 hours per week compared to working up to 40 hours. Stroke risk was found to increase with every hour working over 40, even when adjusted for socioeconomic status, age and sex.

Research by the Australian National University published in 2017 has shown that longer work hours are detrimental to health, with anything above 39 hours per week causing a decline in mental

able to concentrate, not to mention the benefit of an extra day for relaxation.

Sweden has been pioneering experiments in reducing hours for several years. A widely reported study at an elderly care facility in Gothenburg had nurses working for six-hour days instead of eight-hour days for two years. After two years, they found that nurses were taking fewer sick days and were getting more sleep; they also anecdotally reported feeling a lot less stressed and happier during the trial.

Staff at Glasgow-based Pursuit Marketing offer another example of working fewer hours per week.

They work for four days on a permanent basis, following an earlier successful trial. Productivity has increased by 30% and their turnover has more than doubled.

The firm’s operations director reports that companies specifically choose to work with it because of the way the company treats its staff, that its culture drives better results and performance, and that it has been more successful in attracting and retaining talent.

Although it may not work for every job or organisation, there are clear benefits in reducing the amount of time at work. Employees are likely to become happier and healthier, taking fewer sick days and being more productive.

In a society in which we are killing ourselves to work, can we afford not to consider shorter working hours? Companies should at least experiment with the idea to see if it might work.

Next month Jeremy Myerson has his say

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Clare Dowdy on co-working

Co-working Baltic-style With its 1920s converted factory building, People Work in Riga is leading the charge towards co-working provision in the Baltic states, and is keeping an eye on the future The Latvian capital of Riga is awash with period properties.

Romanticism, Gothic, baroque, classicism and modernism all jostle for position. People Work – at 3,500sq m the biggest co‑working space in the Baltic states when it opened last year – is housed here, in a former knitting factory from 1925.

Judging from People Work, co-working Baltic-style is much the same as elsewhere – with one eye-catching difference.

On the ground floor, the hotdeskers can choose from a mix of pods, stools in front of the window, and sofas, mostly produced in Latvia. On the first floor, there’s a big conference room and a tiered lecture room for 210 people. This floor is just for fixed-desk members, either in open-plan space or in offices behind glass walls and doors.

The second floor has more fixed desks, and a lounge area with wooden flooring, sofas, a

People Work has a total capacity of 200 members, and is currently three-quarters full. Like all these places, funky graphics and splashes of colour rarely disguise the fact that when they’re not humming with activity around the coffee machine or in the breakout spaces, they can feel a bit soulless. As is typical in such spaces, fixed desks far outweigh hotdeskers at 170 to 30. The former pay €179 plus tax a month in the open-plan areas, while a four-person office costs €799 plus tax. A monthly hotdesk pass is €99 including tax.

Riga may be the biggest city in the three Baltic states, but with a population of around 641,000 there isn’t scope for an unrestrained mushrooming of co-working spaces, à la London. Already

Which are the markets that are open to co-working expansion? @onofficemag

“There were two treadmill desks – and, what’s more, one of them was being used” bit of bleacher seating and green tiling in the kitchen area. And nearby I spied something that I can’t recall seeing anywhere else apart from at trade fairs: a treadmill desk. In fact, there were two InMovement TreadMill Desks – and, what’s more, one of them was being used. But then People Work is the brainchild of Georgy Guselnikov, a Russian businessman behind the regional People Fitness chain of gyms.

The roof terrace isn’t yet landscaped or furnished, except for some beanbags occupied by a handful of young women working at laptops on the day of my visit. The interiors were handled by in-house designers Baiba GiniborgaAsere and Ramona Cirule.

on the scene is Teikums, which also opened last year, and has had a more consciously “designed” execution by local firm Lauder.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that founder Guselnikov is instead eyeing up Lithuania and Estonia. “In Tallinn and Vilnius there are already People Fitness places, so the company is looking forward to expanding,” says Giniborga-Asere.

Could People Work be exported further afield?

Perhaps it could, if it heads for yet more presaturated markets before the bubble bursts.

Greenery and moodily lit breakout spaces help to set the tone

Raising a glass to tradition Before Jan Rabell founded Brokis in 2006, hand-blown glass from Bohemia was falling out of fashion. Now its unique shapes and organic quality have revived a centuries-old tradition words by

Rita Lobo

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Behind the scenes

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silica sand is heated at temperatures of up to 1723°C

4 Shattered glass waste is a reminder of the delicacy of the process

2 Blowers

carefully remove the molten glass with a hollow pole

5 The glass has to be blown to the right size and shape in one go

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6 Once it has been blown, the molten glass is lowered into a mould

first act is to spin the glass to remove any bubbles

ohemian glass is a thing of beauty and delicacy, a mere mention of which conjures up visions of luxury and quality. As the name suggests, it is exclusively manufactured in the western part of the Czech Republic and is hand blown and hand cut, making it a high-risk – and high-waste – product, but one so exquisite that its reputation has spanned centuries.

Because its manufacture is a delicate process that requires highly skilled and fearless individuals to mix, blow, and cut the fine material, Bohemian glass can be prohibitively expensive. Many factories in the region have abandoned traditional glass blowing as modern manufacturing allows quicker, cheaper, and less risky glass production. But Brokis founder and owner Jan Rabell is on a mission to keep this centuries-old way of life alive, and to bring it into the 21st century by combining it with cutting-edge contemporary design.

Long before Brokis was born, Rabell acquired an ailing traditional glassblowing plant 140km south east of Prague. Originally, the Janštejn Glassworks produced glass objects for other designers working on oldfashioned designs. With demand for the old traditions in decline, Rabell decided that the way to reinvigorate the industry was to inject modernity into this antiquated cycle. “We use glass as the main material for the body of the lamps and the lights,” says Rabell. “Then we use a natural material like wood, or leather, and now we are using metal parts like copper and brass. But the main focus is the glass.”

The result of this is Brokis, whose handblown, but thoroughly contemporary, lighting systems have been attracting the attention of interior design connoisseurs and light enthusiasts alike. With the help of Czech

designer Lucie Koldová, Rabell has created glass lamps with such a specific USP that they are essentially unique: contemporary designs that push the boundaries of traditional glassblowing. “The main thing is to keep the tradition of the hand production. So we never use technology, or robots, or machines to accelerate or to have bigger productivity.”

The Janštejn Glassworks is the hot core of the Brokis universe. Though Koldová’s designs are decidedly cosmopolitan, the remote setting where they come to life is as rural as it gets. The glassworks is the main employer in the village, and the acrid – though not unpleasant – smell of molten silica wafts through the quiet streets night and day.

When OnOffice visits, it is a glacial morning and a seemingly endless blanket of white covers the neighbouring fields. Upon entering the gargantuan warehouse that makes up the main manufacturing area, the first thing that hits you is the heat, exacerbated by the biting cold on the other side of the doors.

Glassblowers wear shorts and protective gloves, each one assigned an area in the shopfloor where they carry out their duties as part of a production line. The first step is to mix the silica sand to create colourful glass.

Brokis works with clear and opaque glass in colours including white, black, onyx, pink, and orange. Each of these colours and treatments is made using pure silica sand and a chemical compound, and will melt at a different temperature, requiring different furnaces burning at temperatures of up to 1723°C. The hotter the melting point for the glass, the more challenging it is to work with. When the experienced blowers remove the molten silica sand from the furnace using a hollow pole, they must do it with extreme care.

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is a danger of glass exploding when sprayed with water

8 The almost-solid design is taken to cool down in the kiln

They first spin the molten mass to remove bubbles, then it’s time to blow.

Koldová’s exquisite designs are often a challenge, requiring the blowers to make large and often unwieldy shapes. Her latest creation, Puro, can be over 1m in length, and the beloved Macaron is up to 60cm in diameter in its biggest size. Each piece must be blown to size in one go, as the blower furiously spins his hollow pipe and blows into it at once. When the right size and shape are reached, the molten glass balloon is lowered into a mould, where it’s finalised into a uniform shape with more blowing and sometimes a spurt of cool water.

“I have to be really flexible when it comes to the handmade manufacturing,” says Koldová. “It’s not like other types of design.

With Brokis, each piece is an original; I need to count on that from the very beginning.

Which means that when I have an idea, I start thinking about a new product, from the very first sketch, that it needs to stay loose and I need to combine materials that allow this.”

Any number of things can go wrong at any step of the process: the blower might miss the shape, or the glass might explode in the mould if it’s the wrong temperature when sprayed with water. Only after all these hurdles are cleared can the new object, now almost solid, be taken to the kiln to cool and set.

The final step is to hand cut and finish the glass, making sure edges are smooth

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pieces are polished and finished ready to leave

10 Lucie

Kolková’s Lightline design is produced at the factory

and the correct shape for connectors. Finally each piece is washed and polished before the electrical elements are added and they are shipped around the world. Though completely handmade, all Brokis pieces feature hi-tech elements like dimmable LED lights, and some even feature wireless controls.

The partnership with Koldová has been so successful that in 2013 Rabell made her art director at Brokis. His role is in managing the business and the manufacturing and she handles the design side including partnerships with international names. In 2018, Koldová headlined the experimental design installation Das Haus in the IMM festival in Cologne. It was mostly populated

by Brokis products, including the Puro system arranged like an exploding supernova and the new Ivy pendant light, a delicate string of pearly orbs that fade in and out in a soothing pattern (but can also be set to stand still), that can be combined to create a veritable garden wall of ethereal light.

It’s all very cutting edge, so much so that it can be easy to forget that these futuristic objects are made by hand by local craftspeople, but traditional technique is the backbone of the design. As Brokis conquers the world of design, it has achieved Rabell’s aim of revitalising the glassblowing industry in Bohemia. The Janštejn factory is brimming full of new apprentices blowing new life into this beloved local tradition.

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In the next issue OnOffice goes behind the scenes with Task, ICF and Marelli

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A brighter future ×

Camille Walala’s trademark vibrant designs are boosting a training facility in Tanzania that supports persecuted people with albinism words by

Elissaveta Marinova Harry Freeland

photographs by

Julia Jomaa and Camille Walala at the Umoja Training Centre

This summer, celebrated artist Camille Walala and her creative director Julia Jomaa brought their patterned trademark to Ukerewe, just in time for the centre’s second Summer Skills Workshop, which

“I wanted to do something that they can be proud of” saw 85 participants engage in creative workshops over a period of two weeks. “It took us a long time to get there. Three planes, one boat – and so I only had five days,” says Walala, who happens to be travelling as we speak.

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n a Tanzanian island, far, far away, there is a vibrant building.

In this building, there is a diverse community. And among this community, there is a level of creativity and passion that transcends colour. But it wasn’t always that way.

Deep in the heart of Tanzania’s Lake Victoria, the Ukerewe Island has a long history of discrimination against people with albinism. Over the years, these people have been ostracised, abused and abandoned, all the while being at high risk of skin cancer due to their condition.

Since 2012, Standing Voice – an international NGO with a mission to end human rights’ abuses against marginalised groups – has been working towards bridging this divide and building a platform to unify a fragmented community. As a result, the organisation, spearheaded by filmmaker Harry Freeland whose 2012 documentary “In the Shadow of the Sun” catalysed a wave of interest in the issue, has built the Umoja Training Centre (UTC), an inclusive community training facility providing skills development and economic enrichment to people with and without albinism.

The library had been renovated before Walala added her designs

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October 2018

Over the span of that month, the artist visited four continents, “from a crazy casino in China to the middle of Tanzania on a small island”, prompting her to think ahead of time. “I did some designs, worked with the colours looking at pictures of Tanzania. I also did some prints for charity; that was how we got the funding to go there.”

Walala draws a lot of her inspiration from architecture.

“Everything around me is patterned. I take pictures of pipes on windows; I see stripy floors created from different textures. When I’m lacking inspiration I take a step back and look around by travelling, going to see exhibitions,” she says.

Interestingly, Walala also draws inspiration from another African tribe called Ndebele, whose patterns are designed to convey feelings and emotions.

In Ukerewe, the artist’s patterns seem endowed with the same power. “I wanted to do something that they can be proud of,” she says. “People might struggle on an everyday basis, but it was nice to do something where you give them love and interest.” And so, she spent five days dressing the UTC with patterns – from the library, to the water tanks and external facades – injecting it with a vibrant backdrop for workshops and activities.

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Before Walala left her mark, the training centre had been refurbished by UK-based, designer-fabricator Simon Sawyer, who worked with artist Alex Booker and local carpenter Lusato Mkeka to renovate the centre’s community library.

Harry Freeland explains how the architecture of the building has elevated the albinism association’s status on the island and across the country. “These build-

“Camille’s designs have added another layer of personality and vibrancy” ing are renowned on Ukerewe Island,” he says. “What Camille’s designs have added is yet another layer of originality, personality and vibrancy to a place that is buzzing and growing in confidence each day.”

Aptly named – with Umoja being the Swahili word for “unity” – the Umoja Training Centre was designed to help encourage inclu-

Vibrant colours adorn the water tanks The training centre facades are brightened with a repeated pattern

sion. As Freeland explains: “The centre and its grounds cater for the specific needs of people with albinism (PWA). The buildings are positioned to minimise exposure to sunlight, creating a tranquil and shaded environment for PWA and their visitors. The gardens’ many trees afford additional cover from the sun. The centre itself has high ceilings and broad overhangs, with ample shade to guard against UV radiation.”

Coupled with wheelchair ramps and gutters that lead to water tanks, which harvest up to 180,000 litres of rainwater, the UTC might not have been ascribed an official “green” certificate, but it is certainly worthy of a similar accolade.

There is “a wonderful sense of community ownership” and pride in the building of this centre, which involved the whole community. And to borrow Freeland’s words: “For them to see it now, emblazoned with Camille’s signature designs, it has made them even more proud of their home.”

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Swatch this space ×

Colour therapist Georgia Coleridge explains why designers need to make use of the healing powers of colour words by

Ayla Angelos

Focus/18 will present a series of workshops on the theme of colour

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odern day society is at the height of technology, globalisation, medical advances and constant accessible information. Yet these days, many people around the globe spend the majority of their time in enclosed rooms and buildings – particularly within an office. Thus, creating a workplace that can aid productivity and wellbeing is an obvious move – but how exactly can this be achieved?

Colour and its influence on psychology has been the subject

of a longstanding debate throughout history. One of the earliest studies into this correlation was in 1979 by AG Schauss, who examined the effect of colour in American prisons – the outcome was that by painting the walls pink, aggressive behaviour was therefore reduced.

This result became a widely accepted factor that was adopted around the US and Canada, though whether or not its results are applicable in other areas has been raised for discussion. It’s not easy to decipher: the relationship

Healer Georgia Coleridge will discuss colour and wellbeing

between human behaviour, colour and a particular environment at any particular time is complex, and highly dependent on the situation at hand.

To break down these barriers, Georgia Coleridge, a Londonbased healer specialising in colour therapy, will be joining the line-up of speakers at this year’s LDF on Wednesday 19 September at 2pm to discuss the fusion of colour and wellbeing in design.

Held over 16-21 September, Focus/18 in the Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, presents

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a series of workshops centred around the key theme of colour and, alongside Sanderson which will host a psychology of colour workshop, Coleridge will discuss its healing powers and how we can all benefit from the right hue.

“People are even happier if they also have pops of colour to cheer them up” “Focus/18 is concentrating on colour, so I was approached to discuss how colour can boost your health, heal your home and enrich your life,” says Coleridge. She plans to decorate her stand with

OnOff a “bundle of coloured silks” that she uses in her healing studio, and admits that she will be easy to spot during the event.

Coleridge specialises in energy healing; her work is announced as a gentle, relaxing therapy that can be highly effective for treating physical, emotional and spiritual ailments, but how did this venture into healing – and the use of colour – come around?

“In my twenties, I felt permanently exhausted with a foggy head and aching joints. I went to the gym and cut back on coffee but that didn’t help,” says Coleridge. She then dabbled in therapies like reiki – a technique involving palm healing or hands-on healing through “universal energy” – acupuncture and reflexology. Their positive difference on her health, ignited her decision to become a healer.

“I heal people and buildings.

I start by identifying where the

energy feels heavy and stuck. If you have ever been into a cold, creepy house, or an office full of unhappy, angry people, then you will know what I mean. When a place doesn’t feel right, it can make everyone droopy, nervy or both,” she says. “But a home or an office with good energy is a joy. You can work hard, play hard and sleep well. I unblock stagnant energy with my hands, with sound, movement and even with colour.”

Colour has always been a focus point to her work. Noted as a slight “obsession”, Coleridge explains some theory – that the seven colours in the rainbow spectrum are linked with seven powerful energy centres on the body, “called chakras”, and “each chakra is linked to a different colour”.

She’s even written a book about the subject, which depicts “rich earthy reds (base chakra)

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to beautiful, ethereal violet white (crown chakra)”. She explains further: “Individual colours have a particular vibration on the spectrum of visible light, so they can work energetically. But working only with the energy is not enough because our reaction to colour is so personal,” she says.

How can this inform design and influence the workplace?

“Many architects would disagree, but I find monochrome, colourless rooms completely soulless,” she says. “Uncluttered, modern design is great, but people are even happier if they also have pops of colour to cheer them up.”

So next time you’re sitting at your desk feeling uninspired, Coleridge suggests you put a colour on your desk that makes you happy: “Try a blue mug, a purple orchid or a funky orange lamp. It’s much better for your energy than instant coffee and a biscuit.”

Coleridge’s “bundle of coloured silks” will be easy to spot at the show

170 OnGoing

October 2018

Practice playlist ×

The designers at Gpad London start off with a relaxed soundtrack that sets the tone for the rest of the week

GPAD LONDON LTD

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STYLE IN CONTEXT Gpad London is a growing architecture and interior design practice based in Old Street, London.

Its approach focuses on creating high-quality architecture that provides simple elegant solutions sympathetic to the context of each site. Well-considered materials root the buildings, both residential and commercial, in context.

Gpad’s Concordia Works workspace in Leeds won a BCO award in 2017, while its brick and bronze-clad Wittering House in north London won top prize at this year’s Evening Standard New Homes Awards.

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JUNGLE BUSY EARNIN’

SBTRKT AND LITTLE DRAGON WILDFIRE

KAYTRANADA GOT IT GOOD

CATCHING FLIES STAY FOREVER

MICHAEL KIWANUKA COLD LITTLE HEART

DEEP SHOQ GRAINS

MASSIVE ATTACK PARADISE CIRCUS

BONOBO WE COULD FOREVER

CARIBOU CAN’T DO WITHOUT YOU

THIEVERY CORPORATION TRUE SONS OF ZION

This is our typical Monday morning playlist, to get us focused. A mix of downtempo electronica with a hint of soul and reggae, with a decent beat that gets our creative juices flowing.

Our work is fast-paced so a playlist that’s stimulating but not distracting is important.

As the week progresses things step up a notch, with heavy metal and drum and bass influences coming in.

Search for Practice Playlist on our website onoffice magazine.com

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