ThirdWay Architecture has teamed up with Landsec to design a unique, creative and playful workplace, for clients and employees, to encourage new ideas, innovations and push the traditional boundaries of their work environment.
Known as Landsec Lab, the 1,300 sq. ft pop up, has been built within the Sustainable Ventures’ Bankside warehouse, alongside start-ups focused on sustainability.
Designed to provide an alternative space that is fresh and vibrant, the space breaks the mould of how Landsec usually approaches creative thinking in its work environment. It inspires creativity via design while providing a multi-functional, innovative and, importantly, flexible solution to achieve the best possible working space.
Founding director of ThirdWay Architecture, Liam Spencer, said,
“Our design creates somewhere ‘different’, challenging the norm for Landsec. Our vision for The Lab fundamentally focuses on creating a space that is completely adaptable to varying users and uses; a stage set if you like. This flexibility is achieved by a creative rethinking of the necessity of static furniture and physical space divisions; questioning the way things work, why we work like this and what we could do differently.”
The concept, designed by architect Amy Martin, is based on an interpretation of the Landsec brand guidelines, using grids and angles to define a flexible multi zone floorplate that can be connected to or divided from the rest of its vibrant warehouse setting.
With it being a temporary structure and an opportunity to think more innovatively, the budget was modest and a large proportion of it ringfenced for furniture and M&E elements. A custom designed CNC workshop table was designed to assemble in pieces that can be stacked to change function or moved around on industrial castors and locked into place.
Different tones, moods and colours across the walls and floors, further enhanced by lighting and retractable curtains, have been used to demarcate zones. As a result, distinct spaces have been crafted without the need for solid walls. A ‘floating’ scaffold frame supports all tracks and electrical servicing for the space.
Each end of The Lab is anchored by a smaller, more focused zone. One centred on a pinup and presentation area, and the other an informal, more relaxed space. With an endless variety of compositions, in an instant the space can change from an open plan agile working environment to a presentation zone, lounge space and/or private meeting room.
Carissa Kilgour, Workplace Director, at Landsec, said,
“Landsec Lab is a place where our teams work creatively with our customers. The simplicity of the modular, moveable and deliberately unpolished space triggers a new way of thinking and open-mindedness to ideas and solutions. It’s used as a place for exploring and testing new ideas in design and behavior. It’s somewhere we innovate with partners and customers whether through hosting customer workshops to identify their pain points, hearing pitches from start-ups on their latest innovations, or actively trialing new products ourselves.”
One year on since its launch, ThirdWay Architecture, part of the ThirdWay Group, has grown from a team of two to 13 talented architects, technicians and designers.
ThirdWay Architecture is currently on site at Chapter House, part of a collective scheme known as ‘Chapter & Verse’. Designed for LBS alongside Buckley Grey Yeoman, it provides unique creative workspace within a converted Victorian School building close to Old Street roundabout.
The team is also currently designing and on site at a wide range of projects including the conversion of a Victorian stable block into a HQ office space for a creative client; a two-storey extension of a warehouse building in Old Street; and the complete reworking, activation and extension of a 230,000 sq. ft. campus office building in Tower Hill.
Founded by Liam Spencer and Petr Esposito, ThirdWay Architecture is a progressive studio of architects and designers focused on unlocking potential and understanding the specialist conditions of every site, to create spaces that challenge, enhance and excite the fast-paced industry of workplace design.