Winner of the Best Fit Out of Workplace at the British Council for Offices (BCO) 2016
Perched high above the bustle of Cannon Street Station, the CMS headquarters at Cannon Place is no mere exercise in corporate fit out. It is a confident and intelligent reimagining of what a legal workplace can be, architecturally, culturally, and socially.
The project, designed by MCM Architecture with interiors by Savills Workplace, relocates a global law firm from a traditional, fragmented environment to a unified open-plan structure across three vast, light-filled floors. The gesture is not simply spatial efficiency, though a 30% reduction in area with a 15% increase in headcount is impressive, it is a deliberate act of professional reinvention.
Gone are the closed doors and deep corridors of legal cliché. In their place: transparency, movement, and collegiate energy. The architecture enables this shift, not as a spectacle, but as a finely judged response to human need. A pair of staircases stitches the floors together, physically and metaphorically connecting the amenity spaces, lounges, cafés, informal breakout areas, with the high-focus legal workspaces.
This is not just design for productivity; it is design for presence. People want to be here.
The arrival is theatrical without being indulgent. The formal reception is replaced by a concierge approach, a subtle cue that hospitality and welcome are part of the legal service culture. The visual identity is elegant but not overplayed: warm timbers, precise lighting, and tactile materials create an atmosphere that is confident, calm, and human. One senses a generosity of spirit, an attention to how people feel in a space, not just what they do there.
Technology is fully embedded and wireless, yes, but the real innovation lies in the sociology of the plan. Large floorplates are tactfully subdivided to human scale. Cellular spaces for focused work are seamlessly integrated into the open plan, allowing for both privacy and permeability. The bespoke workstations speak of an understanding not just of ergonomic requirement, but of dignity at work.
But perhaps the most important quality of this project is what it cultivates beyond the physical: a professional ecology. This is a space that fosters informal mentoring, serendipitous exchange, and intellectual community. Its architecture supports learning by osmosis, by conversational nuance, by proximity to experience. The legal profession is, after all, a culture of language, persuasion, and insight. CMS’s new home provides the spatial and psychological framework for those values to thrive.
Awarded the BCO’s Best Fit Out of Workplace in London and the South East, this project is evidence that when architecture listens, observes, and questions, it becomes a powerful instrument of organisational change. And when it does so with this degree of care and clarity, it becomes something more: a place people choose to return to, not just to work, but to be apart of.
