Structure studio HawkinsBrown has taken over a former furnishings showroom, giving its employees a workspace with a store window, a social kitchen and a Richard Woods-designed cabin.
The previous Vitra showroom on Clerkenwell Highway is now a three-level workplace for 250 of HawkinsBrown‘s 350 employees. The recent street-front tackle was designed to provide the architects a workspace that facilitates extra numerous methods of working and provides better alternatives for social actions and occasions.
“Our immense shopfront means we’re on show, presenting us with a recent and stimulating alternative to point out the world who we’re and what we do,” stated HawkinsBrown managing associate Hazel York.
“It is a spot to attach with our shoppers, collaborators and the broader Clerkenwell neighborhood by a programme of talks and occasions, momentary exhibitions and artwork installations.”
Central to this method was turning the ground-floor area right into a malleable “canteen” that includes a stainless-steel counter the place employees meet for espresso and cafe-style furnishings that may be simply moved round.
“Our floor ground canteen is our working experiment, our laboratory,” stated HawkinsBrown’s artistic director David Bickle.
“It is a spot the place we will host talks and seminars, workshops, supper golf equipment and sundown yoga, and invite takeovers by like-minded organisations,” he instructed Dezeen.
“We have purposely saved it unprogrammed, free match and unfinished, preferring to ‘present not inform’ what we do to the world exterior.”
A shed lined within the vibrant cartoon-style prints of artist Richard Woods may be discovered on this ground, surrounded by crops.
Often called Hut, it provides employees a spot to search out isolation.
The concept was to create the texture of a constructing inside a constructing, an method that HawkinsBrown beforehand explored on initiatives together with the Gantry at Right here East and the Right here + Now places of work.
“We recognised that many people labored from sheds, residence places of work, lofts and kitchen tables through the Covid lockdown and that this type of isolation was critical for sure concentrated artistic duties,” said Bickle.
“We talked by our concepts with Richard; he was instantly taken with our pondering and open to creating one thing recent,” Bickle stated.
“The closed type of Hut creates a speaking level. Paradoxically we positioned essentially the most non-public area in essentially the most public location however, by its design, we created a sanctuary from the remainder of the studio and the world exterior.”
Extra artwork may be discovered on the glazed facade within the type of graphics designed by architect June Tong, the successful entry in an in-house competitors.
Energy-assisted acoustic curtains permit the area to be subdivided if mandatory, whereas a newly painted crimson staircase encourages employees to cease and chat whereas shifting between flooring.
Assembly rooms may be discovered on all three ranges. These embody a pair of adjoining basement rooms affectionately often called Ray and Charles, which may be mixed into one bigger room referred to as Eames.
These have been named in tribute to former occupant Vitra, which produces furnishings by the famed American architects.
A modelmaking workshop is positioned within the basement however noticeable from above, whereas pin-up boards have been built-in into sliding doorways in addition to cellular partitions.
York stated the recent workplace has formed a extra collaborative tradition amongst employees. Amid the broader shift to hybrid working, she believes it has strengthened the agency’s sense of neighborhood and collective id.
“We knew having a store window on a bustling road can be nice however it has surpassed our expectations,” she stated.
“Watching the world go by is a continuing reminder of how our work shapes and is formed by the town and communities we serve.”
“Equally, we’re very open concerning the work we do; everybody can see in. We draw on the home windows, stick up work in progress and repeatedly wave at individuals on the bus cease!”
