Silver lining

For the office group’s largest workspace, Dmfk and norm have brought thoughtful order to an otherwise labyrinthine space.

WordS: DomInIc Lutyens photogrAphy: Jake curtIs

Image on prevIous page: Terracotta, fawn and rust tones | JAke curtiS aBove Image: Natural, matt materials

Chancery House in Holborn, Central London – which has been retrofitted, refurbished and reconfigured by dMFK Architects, while its interior design has been overseen by Copenhagen-based Norm Architects – is the biggest workspace of The Office Group (TOG). TOG specialises in flexible, design-led co-working spaces, and Chancery House is the ninth dMFK has designed.

The gargantuan venue near Chancery Lane (previously owned by PSP Investments), with its complex layout, posed its own challenges to dMFK and Norm. Adding to the significance of the project is the history and prestige of the building. It stands above London Silver Vaults, a subterranean market that opened as The Chancery Lane Safe Deposit in 1885. During the Second World War, it was destroyed (although the vaults weren’t damaged). In 1953, a new building was constructed. It now houses silver dealers and is said to hold the world’s largest collection of silver for sale.

The reconfigured interior of the building, now owned by TOG, offers 130,000sq ft of office space, 1,495 desks distributed over eight storeys and 10,500 sq ft of outdoor space, encompassing a car park repurposed as a publicly accessible garden (created by landscape architects Spacehub) and outdoor terraces on different levels, planted with flowers and greenery. Other amenities include a café serving home-made, healthconscious food, 17 meeting rooms and event spaces and a parenting room.

Wellness is high on the agenda at Chancery House. Indeed, its soothing, predominantly neutral colour scheme – think nuanced hues of fawn, terracotta and rust that pervade the entire building – is influenced by this. The wellness areas include a fitness studio offering Pilates and yoga classes, a gym and treatment room. There are also 222 cycle spaces and 22 showers.

Also reflecting the importance placed on wellness here is a strong presence of natural, matt materials, although the project nods to the building’s context and history too. Flashier metallic finishes reference the silver vaults: the main entrance is boldly framed in metal, while a brushedsteel staircase sweeps theatrically down to the basement.

“With the neutral palette derived from natural materials, we aim to create a timeless, calming design that provides a sense of comfort, warmth, tactility and quality,” says Sofie Thorning, architect and partner at Norm. The neutral shades were also chosen because they are more likely to be universally appealing, she believes: “We wanted to feature natural materials which engage with sensibilities that are universal, not bound by culture or geography.”

Chancery House’s reconfigured, open-plan, groundfloor lobby, boasting comfortable seating aplenty, is more redolent of a glam hotel than the reception area of a coworking venue – albeit a serene, not bustling one. The architects worked carefully to achieve a sense of spaces flowing coherently, in what is a potentially labyrinthine, disorientating building.

Yet, for the architects, it wasn’t simply a question of interconnecting spaces (even though one goal was to improve circulation). Corridors offering clear sightlines weren’t automatically desirable in this context, they explain. Instead, they favoured punctuating corridors with different functions and zones that could both create an element of surprise and ensure facilities such as tea points were within easy reach of working areas.

“It was evident to us that we needed to break down the scale of the building, especially the corridors, which could easily feel endless,” reveals Thorning. “Placing kitchens, tea points and lounges halfway down corridors made sense in terms of them being conveniently near offices and providing places of interest along the circulation space.”

Meanwhile, Julian de Metz, director at dMFK, says: “For such a large project, it’s important to spread a variety of communal spaces around the building to create a series of mini-communities. While the ground-floor entrance, café and flexible workspace and their connection to the basement, with its gym and other amenities, are the most significant shared space, a hierarchy of other communal spaces are located elsewhere, such as a third-floor meeting room suite with direct access on to a spectacular roof terrace. If all the shared spaces are centralised at the entrance, a flexible workspace can lose its balance. We’ve learned this through working on several projects for TOG.” cLIent

Arguably the materials and colour scheme here help to unify the scheme and interconnect different spaces. Bricks laid into the floor, which add warmth and look aesthetically pleasing, are also designed to act as a wayfinding device; the bricks create paved paths leading to other parts of the workspace.

The palette of natural materials also reflects a concern for sustainability. Many fittings, such as lampshades made of seaweed hanging in the café, are eco. The building boasts 80 solar panels, windows can be opened to provide natural ventilation and all energy used is renewable. The building’s ground and lowerground floors are set to achieve the WELL Platinum certification, while the entire workspace aims to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating. And, for the record, sustainable fashion label Pangaia was one of the first companies to sign up to working at Chancery House.

The Office Group archItect dMFK

InterIor DesIgner

Norm Architects fLoorIng

Kronos, Prima Materia, Cenere, New Terracotta, Gravity, Ege Carpets furnIture

Rawside, Menu, Hay, &tradition, Cassina, Frederica, Resident, Lemon, Brdr Kruger, Thonet surfaces

Schüco, Stonecycling

LIghtIng

Lightforms (bespoke designs for Norm Architects) and Decode, Pinch, &tradition, Ferm Living, Ty Syml other

Schüco, Jansen, Renson, Stonecycling, PAYE opposIte page cLockWIse from top: Acoustic curtains

Publicly accessible garden

Matt materials frame the workspaces