Premier Construction

Eden McCallum Offices London

Eden McCallum
Written by Roma Publications

Eden McCallum Offices

Workplace design specialists align have created a new workspace for Eden McCallum, as the leading management consultancy sought to re-locate its existing team into a more flexible workspace, whilst remaining in a central location in London’s west end. Having found a sixth floor space in Orion House on St Martin’s Lane, the company came to align to space-plan and design the new 6,000sq ft footprint, following on from the successful working partnership developed when align designed the company’s previous offices on Air Street. With many of the firm’s senior partners and analysts spending a good proportion of the week out of the office, the brief to the design team was to create a workspace that combined fixed desking with more agile working practices, while also making it feel open and comfortable and creating a variety of productive working spaces.

“Eden McCallum’s brand values and therefore its directive for its look and feel hadn’t changed,” Gurvinder Khurana, Director and Co-founder of align commented, “in that a quiet, understated and sophisticated environment was requested, with an interesting, human-scale and unregimented feel. What was different was the challenge of creating a more flexible and agile office within the new footprint, whist incorporating all the variety of staff requirements – from team to group, semi-private and private working – and ensuring it still feels spacious.”

The design team planned for the requisite of fixed desks in the outer, window-lined area of the space for those who wanted a daily repeat station and then made the central area of the footprint completely open.
Creating a feeling of spaciousness meant maximising light and breaking open the cellular aspect of the inherited office space, as well as being playful with colour. The space-plan includes an open-plan office area, plus closed and open meeting spaces, solo working booths and private phones booths for discreet conversations with clients and consultants.

Arrival at the premises brings visitors to a reception area, which doubles as both a welcome point and business lounge, where three two-tone blue Mango pods from Boss Design are located, so that any team member can use them for quiet, concentrated work. The welcome area features the company’s branding against a painted petrol blue background to the left, along with a waiting/lounge area zone, featuring three Vita chairs and a re-worked existing storage wall, with new white doors. The existing lobby space was reduced to allow for a one-person phone booth to go in too, built around a column for effective use of space. The scheme features three booths in total, all with sound-absorbing, round acoustic panels on the inside walls.

To the left of the arrival/welcome area, the circulation route leads to three enclosed meeting rooms, followed by a board room, as well as an open meeting area opposite for agile working, meetings or to eat and drink. The open meeting area is a focus point of the scheme and features Osborne & Little ‘Trailing Hummingbirds’ wallpaper, a highly dynamic design which almost gives the impression of being a mural. Furniture here includes one Jensen booth seat from Verco, inherited from the previous office, alongside a brand-new matching seat, except that the two-tone fabric palette has been inverted for contrast. The booths are quite solid in feel and balance out the more feminine feel of the paper. Two huge-scale pendant lights with white shades from Albion Court hang directly above.

The meeting room designs are kept simple, with single painted walls as highlights in pale grey, blue and purple. The glass doors and walls continue a theme from the previous office with bespoke manifestations by align, created anew for this office. The board room features a subtle new white gold wallcovering – the Lounge Lux design by Engbald & Co.

Interest and segmentation are created in the open office area by a number of floor-to-ceiling hanging felt acoustic sliding panels with a striking fret-cut motif, in alternating aqua and teal panels, created by Edinburgh-based Friends of Wilson. Two are located just beyond the welcome desk, with three further panels beyond. Flooring in the general office area is a selection of four different carpet tiles from the Per Contra range by Milliken Carpets, along with a woven tile from Karndean.

The kitchen and breakout areas feature DooWop pendant lights from Louis Poulsen in varying shades of blue and white, plus a white and multi-tonal blue colourway throughout the space, with petrol and navy blue storage bordering the kitchen area, along with two colours of splashback blue tiling.

“Sited just beyond the kitchen is anew flexible, touchdown area, created for the first time for Eden McCallum, where the company’s consultants can drop in easily to work,” explained Gurvinder. There are two touchdown tables: one is a high-level Frovi and one a lower-level Frovi Relic table with an olive-green Fenix top with fingerprint repelling finish and a black base, so that it stays matt and clean. These are both located between the touchdown area and the host desks, giving consultants and staff another private discreet landing place. These are Haven seated wrap-around pods by Senator.

“We are really pleased with the way the space has worked out,” said Nick Brown, Managing Partner for Eden McCallum. “We have to accommodate a wide range of working styles and team structures and the layout and feel of the office does this well.”

 

Albioncourt Ltd

Albioncourt is a UK manufacturer of lampshades and luminaires, supplying the commercial, hospitality, retail and education sectors. We work closely with lighting designers turning design concepts into finished products.

We carry a range of stock materials sourced from specialist converters across Europe. For bespoke design we usually work with clients’ own materials and offer in-house wide format printing direct to materials, enabling graphics to be incorporated.

Based in Dorset, we have been in operation since 1993. In that time we have worked on a vast number of projects and our shades can be found in offices, shops, hotels, bars and restaurants across the UK. One of our more large scale projects was Sainsbury’s Digital Hub in Holborn, London.

For the Eden McCallum Offices, we were contacted by align to produce two pendant drums that can be found suspended over a seating unit. We turned this order round in 3 days, including delivery to site.

We keep a relatively high stock level of component parts and materials and pride ourselves in the ability to turn most orders around, with a high level of quality control, within 10 days. We are proud to be a UK manufacturer, to retain our customer base and to keep our long serving, experienced, staff.

To find out more, please visit www.albioncourt.co.uk.

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Roma Publications