Ingenious office designs deserve full admiration
WORKING from home has become such a frequently discussed item during the pandemic that it now has its own acronym, WFH.
Discussion of it often ignores the fact that working from home is not an option for those who work in factories, warehouses, hospitals and milking sheds.
It only applies to computer-using office workers who are able to work remotely. Politicians and journalists talk and write about it the most, because for them the office is their habitat, and they can practise WFH themselves.
Within office culture there is also a class difference. Highly-paid senior staff with big houses can work efficiently from home. For more menial workers living in small houses or flats with limited space it is more difficult, as I have noted previously in this column.
There have been many advocates, including some writing in this paper, for a migration from working at home back to the office. WFH can be very comfortable if you have the space and resources to do it, and because of Covid-19 many officebased businesses are now making great efforts to demonstrate that their offices are safe and attractive places in which to return to work.
There is an organisation, the International Well Building
Institute, which is dedicated to the promotion of health and wellbeing in workplaces. It awards the WELL Building Standard to buildings which meet its diverse criteria on qualities of air, water, light, nourishment, fitness, comfort and mind. The Standard, when awarded, has to be recertified every three years.
The first WELL Gold award to a building in Birmingham city centre was made last month to the office at 15 Colmore Row occupied by Cundall, the multi-disciplinary engineering consultancy. Its London office was the first in Europe to receive the award, in 2016.
Both office interiors were designed by the architects Studio Ben Allen, a practice not especially known for office design, but which has an inventive approach to design and the use of materials.
In the Birmingham office, timber is used extensively, but without any paints or varnishes which could emit toxic Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Instead, wooden surfaces are left untreated or oiled. Materials policy demonstrates a circular economy – carpets of recycled polyester, ceiling grids of recycled plastic, and instead of air ducts made as normal from aluminium, they are in recycled cardboard.
The WELL standard requires a proportion of workplaces to give the option of sitting or standing to work. The architects have designed desks which can change height at the push of a button, giving staff the choice of position. Each workplace has individual lighting, movement controlled.
Some elements of a healthy working environment, such as daylight and air quality, and the ergonomics of the desk, can be quantified. Others are not measurable, but also contribute to wellbeing, and the WELL standard includes those too.
There is a wall of water falling at the centre of the office, creating relaxing white noise. Birdsong is broadcast quietly through loudspeakers. There are lots of plants of various types. Drawings by the artist Abigail Daker, of buildings in many parts of the world for which Cundall have been consultants, are reproduced at large scale on the walls.
The building, at the corner of Colmore Row and Livery Street, was built in the 1980s, and was not especially notable for sustainable design, which is the field of expertise in which Cundall operates. So this put limits on what Studio Ben Allen could achieve in daylighting and natural ventilation. Windows were not designed to be opened, so filtered fresh air has to be introduced mechanically.
Cundall moved into the building in 2014, occupying the fourth floor. As their staff grew, it became more crowded, and when the fifth floor became available, it was decided to expand to occupy both floors.
A circular hole was cut in the concrete floor, and Studio Ben
Allen designed a spectacular helical staircase connecting the two floors. It is a technical tour de force, and the spectacular focus of the office.
It consists of pieces of birchfaced plywood cut by Computer Numerical Control (CNC), and screwed together. The architects gave their drawings to Cundall and challenged them to engineer it. The result looks fragile and appears to have no visible means of support, but is in reality totally rigid. The precision of the shaping and joining of the pieces of plywood is delightful. I suspect it could only be done with computers.
The dimensions of the staircase are determined by those of a standard plywood sheet – the width is the long dimension of a sheet,
2.44 metres. Apart from screws, the staircase is almost totally free of metal, the exceptions being the small upright steel sections that support the timber handrail, and brass nosings on the stair treads.
The fabricators were Meer End Joinery of Kenilworth, who deserve credit for their part in the process. The parts of the staircase were computer-cut in their workshop, and then assembled there in its entirety, to ensure that it worked, taken apart again, transported to Birmingham and put together a second time.
Cundall’s office looks a very enjoyable place to work, as well as being a healthy environment.
It is ironic that, when I visited two weeks ago, it was almost deserted, with most of the staff continuing to work from home. The water wall was switched off, and no bird sang. The office deserves to be fully occupied and enjoyed for its Gold standard space.
Joe Holyoak is an architect and urban designer based at the Custard Factory in Digbeth