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PROJECT REPORT: COMMERCIAL & WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENTS
It was important to Joules that the outside spaces were viewed by staff as an extension of the workspace
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ounded in 1977 selling colourful ‘country’ clothes, Joules eventually established its own successful clothing line in 1999 and opened a network of shops in the 2000s. Reflecting its rapid growth, the firm’s disparate office bases had also expanded in an ad hoc way, but with some negative outcomes.
Architecture and design firm Edge’s managing director Mark O’Neill says the growth had “created silos and inefficient work processes,” and head office Joules’ founder Tom Joule had a vision to house everyone in one place, a greatly expanded version of the current HQ in the firm’s home of Market Harborough. This led to the purchase of adjacent land, a partial demolition and refurbishment of existing structures, and a new, 60,000 ft2 building which would enable all of the admin teams to work under the same roof for the first time.
Flexibility brief Following a ‘creative competition,’ Edge was appointed to design a new building with the “brand architecture” that would make it the “physical manifestation of the Joules brand values to inspire and provide the springboard for the brand’s continued growth,” as O’Neill puts it.
As well as placing an emphasis on a new workspace that would represent the brand’s
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heritage, the other key brief elements were making best use of the semi-rural setting, and future-proofing so that the building would adapt to modern hybrid working patterns. This evolved dramatically throughout the design and construction process, with the arrival of Covid in 2019. Edge’s detailed plan allowed for expansion and increases in the number of employees. The building was originally designed to begin with ‘1:1’ desking, before gradually evolving in an organic way to agile working practices by year five. With this approach planned from the outset, “the framework was easily adjusted to accommodate post-pandemic hybrid working,” explains O’Neill. “Changes to work layouts and plans were accommodated even while the building was under construction, with little or no change to the design,” he says. The only change was that the ‘year five’ strategy was implemented immediately, to allow for agile working as soon as the building opened in 2021.
The key motivations for bringing the teams together under one roof were “improving efficiency, collaboration, and creating a unified team spirit,” says O’Neill. This was alongside the creation of the “physical embodiment of the brand in the town it was established in. “It was an opportunity to create a space that lives and
ADF NOVEMBER 2022
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