This project was conceived by Savills Workplace & Design for an international organisation operating within a complex and highly regulated field.
The setting is correspondingly assured: a substantial new building in the City, designed at metropolitan scale and constructed with the expectations now attached to the best contemporary architecture. Yet the quality of the workplace does not depend upon the status of the building or the prominence of its address.
The more accomplished workplace projects recognise that an organisation is represented most convincingly by the degree of attention it gives to concentration, exchange, privacy, comfort, dignity and choice.
Savills’ work here is particularly sophisticated because these concerns have not been treated as supplementary amenities. They have been built into the underlying organisation of the plan, one that acknowledges that productive work moves continually between different mental and social conditions.
An individual may need sustained quiet, a short confidential conversation, a period of informal discussion, a structured meeting, a moment away from the desk, or a setting in which an idea can be tested without the administrative weight of booking a formal room. The project provides for these shifts without making them feel exceptional. Choice is embedded in the workplace, and with it a measure of autonomy.
This is where the language of flexibility becomes substantial, genuine flexibility is psychological as much as physical.
A well-designed office can become a method of liberation, releasing people from the assumption that every task must be performed in the same posture, under the same acoustic conditions and within the same level of exposure. It allows an employee to withdraw without appearing disengaged, to collaborate without disturbing others, to think without having to defend the need for concentration.
In businesses whose work depends upon judgement, attention, confidentiality and sustained intellectual effort, the quality of the work is shaped by the ability to concentrate, the confidence to exchange incomplete ideas, the ease with which knowledge passes between colleagues, the sense that one’s time and effort are respected, and the belief that the organisation has made serious provision for the realities of the working day.
World-class workplace design is not defined by visual extravagance. It is defined by the completeness of its thinking. It joins organisational strategy to spatial intelligence, operational requirements to human need, and commercial ambition to a credible ethic of care. It understands that the office is no longer justified solely as a place in which employees are gathered. Its value lies in what becomes possible when people are brought together under the right conditions.
The Anslow Partnership Consulting Engineers | Parkeray Ltd | John Mullen and PDG Architects | THEM | Spacecraft International | Savills Offices & Workplace
