Arup
Clarendon Rd, Watford
Following a 'Working with Arup' survey conducted company wide, Arup decided to open a strategic team-working office outside London, with a view to helping staff improve their work/life balance through not always needing to commute right into London. The location was chosen after much research into staff's commuting habits and best rail links to the Fitzrovia estate.
MoreySmith designed the new space, ensuring synergy with our designs for the London estate while still maintaining a separate identity. This image shows the highly flexible training suite.
The office is used as a 'think tank' - bringing multi disciplinary teams together to share knowledge, design and problem solve. Flexibility and demountability are keywords, both in the configuration of the space and in the specification of furniture and fittings. Almost any space can be easily adapted to hold a large presentation, team meeting or an event.
The café offers staff a relaxed space for meetings and large presentations and provides high quality refreshments throughout the day - important in an out of town location. Through the deconstructed ceiling and lighting design, a very different feel is created in this area, separating it from the open plan workspace. The furniture is lightweight, mobile and stackable, keeping the space infinitely flexible.
The feature cantilevered staircase leads up from the café to a warm and bright open project space. Colourful furniture, reclaimed timber floors and magnetic whiteboard walls combine with the raw ceiling and feature lighting to create an atmosphere that encourages team working.
'I have now seen four different layouts in the flexible design workshop at Clarendon Road... being able to change the layouts is proving really effective, and makes this area very versatile.'
Ross McLee
Arup
The open plan workspace has bespoke acrylic screens with a magnetic whiteboard surface bonded to each side. This provides vertical pin-up and write on surfaces within a very open work space, providing users with display surfaces located near their desks as well as informally dividing up the space.
Arup
Fitzrovia 2&3, 8 Fitzroy Street London W1
Arup, the giant global engineering, design and consulting firm, is moving into a 13,200 sq m building, built in two phases - and using the change to promote new ways of working. MoreySmith is working closely with Arup to design five floors of offices including meeting rooms, project and team areas, public spaces and the library.
Phase 2, seen here, completed in 2008. A comprehensive building analysis has been undertaken by MoreySmith to assess the success of Phase 2 and to influence the design of Phase 3 which is now under construction.
Connectivity between the floors is of paramount importance and this was successfully achieved by the alignment of meeting rooms and flexible breakout spaces around the atrium on each floor - creating vertical rhythm and adding life to the central space. Display areas for models and work have been incorporated throughout the building, and splashes of colour and subtle branding create a different identity for each floor while maintaining the overall theme.
Fitzrovia 2&3 will initially house 400 staff, but by the end of 2009 is expected to accommodate over 600. The multi-disciplinary teams which include engineers, architects, economists and even psychologists, come with varying requirements and expectations and MoreySmith heavily researched all roles and the implications of these within the workspace in order to inform their design. This has allowed the interior to cater for the needs of those employees requiring a corporate environment, while at the same time offering a more creative design studio workplace to others.
The team breakout areas, with their exposed ceilings, and raw, studio feel, differ from the general office spaces, and are crucial to promoting the more relaxed modern workplace practices, and the sharing of ideas. Whiteboards and pin up areas to display work, along with multi functional furniture, allows Arup's teams to reconfigure these spaces to suit their varied requirements, be they presentations, meetings, team working or socialising.
'MoreySmith had the capability to match our tight programme
needs but most importantly, we felt that their creative ability and
innovative aspiration as designers would challenge us in the way
we view our working environment and help us make the step
change we were looking for. Their collaborative nature gave us
confidence we would achieve it.'
Dick Lee
Director, Arup