Elsley House, Design Studio

After 10 years in London, our client had outgrown their Soho base. The search began for new premises that could accommodate five teams that were spread across three sites, as well as being a springboard for future growth. The client settled on refurbishing and remodelling the ground and lower ground floor of an Art Deco building with a prominent street presence in Fitzrovia. Elsley House is a model and testbed for best practice workplace design. So how does a global design practice transform a neglected 1930s space into a productive, elegant and futureproofed workplace that exactly fits its culture, personality, and ambitions? The aim was to design for a studio culture, enable a cross-fertilisation of ideas, promote staff health and wellbeing, and to celebrate design excellence in all its forms. Drawing upon our expertise in evidence-based workplace strategy, our starting point was to research employee needs, behaviours and workstyles. From this, we designed spaces to address collective requirements, such as areas that promote chance conversations that stimulate idea generation, improve connectivity between floors, and accommodate different modes of working. A set of workplace guidelines (called LiveIt) was developed in tandem with this process and enshrine four concepts at the heart of our workplaces: studio culture, flexibility, collaboration and the idea that the studio serves as a Living Lab for the exploration and evolution of advanced workplace strategies and design solutions. Expansive ‘shop windows’ give the design practice a real opportunity to offer a glimpse of what lies within and celebrate the work of people and organisations that ignite creativity, inspire admiration, practise design excellence, and provoke debate. This was to be a flexible space, able to adapt to fulfilling many different roles: architectural front-of-house, enabling workplace, event venue, collaboration space, gallery and showcase, the ultimate live commercial interiors case study (or living ‘workplace’ lab), social and learning space for staff, engine room for projects… but most of all, a place to be proud of. The response includes space to showcase the work of artists, photographers, designers, thinkers, and makers. Space to run everything from workshops for children, to conferences for professionals. Space to host meetings of minds and spark serendipitous collaborations, in the design community, the built environment community, and the local community. On entering reception, visitors step into a creatively enriching space, with a programme of exhibitions, workshops, and talks. They might bear witness to a brainstorm or collective design review, with participants gathered in the generous collaborative space. Beyond are the design and operations teams. Within the studios a variety of settings cater for both privacy and community. The objective was to create an environment that organically responds to individual and group activities, always providing the right space for the task, be it learning, focusing, sharing, socialising or collaborating. The workplace is designed to support 20 distinct work modes with 11 types of collaborative space and eight types of individual work space. The studio is designed to meet exacting WELL and BREEAM standards, and has achieved BREEAM Excellent, with WELL registration to follow shortly. It embraces spaces, configurations and technology that engender creativity and collaboration, allowing for flexibility within teams and the wider practice.