Financial Services Company, London

Workplace

⥤ Overview

A striking, contemporary and elegant new workspace for a private equity firm, based in a six-storey building just off Trafalgar Square. The project specifically related to the redesign of its 7,500 sq ft first floor space, home to the firm’s support staff, including the finance, HR, marketing/communications and IT teams. The scheme had to be delivered in three phases, with staff moving round to allow normal working to continue throughout.

⥤ Brief

A flowing and open floorplan was a key part of the brief, as well as the inclusion of three closed meeting spaces; private offices for the company’s finance partner and HR head; open collaboration spaces and a kitchenette/tea-point area. Further aspects of the brief were to incorporate plenty of fresh, green planting and to reference the company’s branding colourway through bold splashes of colour. Finally, the brief asked for British suppliers and products to be used wherever possible.

⥤ Challenges

The building has a Grade I-listed façade and a new-build structure directly behind that and has links to a famous eighteenth-century portrait and landscape painter. One element of the brief was to introduce some connection to the painter, but without creating anything pastiche. align suggested a graphic route, using some of the painter’s works in the form of floor-to-ceiling matt translucent film, applied to the glass walls of the three meeting rooms and the partner’s office.