LastWord thelastword
IMAGINE THAT
CHRISTOPHER JENKINS, DESIGN DIRECTOR, PELDON ROSE, ASKS CLIENTS TO LET THEIR IMAGINATION RUN WILD WHEN IT COMES TO WORKPLACE DESIGN
IS IT A BUS, IS IT AN IGLOO OR JUST A ROWING BOAT ON THE SERPENTINE? TO BE HONEST IT DOESN’T MATTER, THEY ARE ALL PLACES TO EXCHANGE AND MEET.
Workplace design is in a renaissance and ballooning with imagination that runs wild with excitement and challenges traditional values. Whilst laying in a rabbit burrow, dreaming up ‘fantabulous’ ideas, Alice sprang to mind; in that white negative space between our conscious and our sub-conscious @Waterloo was conceived. With inspiration spinning from the Mad Hatter’s Pub and the original milliners factory the serviced offices @Waterloo has sprung from a rabbit hole to create truly exceptional serviced offices which pay absolutely no reference to the traditional rut of vanilla, bland environments; thus creating emotional engagement that’s beyond our wildest dreams. By recreating the fable and reinventing how our minds dream about Alice: we have created a Lewis
Carroll inspired interior complete with the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, a grinning cheshire cat and the Queen of Hearts meeting spaces, seamlessly linked by a glistening white negative space of calm tranquillity.
It is designed to make the occupants smile from ear to ear and to come back again and again, whilst the environment is a huge grin it has a raw business proposition, in just over 3 months from opening it is nearly 100% full, an unknown statistic in the serviced office sector and something Office Space in Town is rightly proud of. Let’s be real, the workplace had to change as the baby boomers retire and generation Y populate the landscape of work, the workspace therefore had to reinvent itself to allow freedom and imagination to filter through organisations. For Friends of the Earth we have created grassy banks, tree houses and rowing boats in which we meet and igloos and skyscrapers in which we find peace and individual space linked with a cardboard reception and shared working in a rainforest.
The day of a desk for all has been eroded, surely all that’s needed is a place to sit, seek connectivity and a glass of water, oh yes water, coffee is on the ‘out’ list. Creativity and imagination in the workplace is not always about wholesale change, true creativity in the workspace is about taking what works and just making it better. Surely unless you are ‘Apple’, which the workplace can never claim to be, it’s about re-thinking what we know and providing premium space that works for the individual. The future of the workplace, whilst unknown, is never going to be vanilla again, it is certainly going to continue to be edgy, oozing brand personality and be a space in which our imagination is allowed to run wild. I’m off now, down our helter skelter, with my virtual office on my i-pad to engage with my very own third space.
www.peldonrose.com July 2014 Interior Design Today 81
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