Angela Joseph of alinea consulting with Chris Turner (Cundall), Andrew McMillan (SpaceInvader) and Jason Burton (Hatch Analytics) entered the BCO NextGen Workplace Competition which posed the question “The office of 2035: what will it look like and how will it support the way we will work?”
The team, FUTURE HACS, designed a new “Node” for CoLAB, a business which has built on the success of past decades of co-working. The location of the site – an existing car park in Manchester – was chosen as the aim was to repurpose existing buildings, especially those made redundant by contemporary technology and industry. The key elements of the design were flexibility, sustainability and community. The Node was visualised as: a community asset, hub for work, leisure and education, with a visible eco-conscience. The design responded to a change in people’s mindsets from transport to technology and well-being, and addresses all of these matters.
The winners were 88mph with their proposal, ‘The Dynamo’, an adaptive reuse of an existing terrace of Victorian housing in London as the headquarters for a major energy company. The design responded to a future with increased transport connectivity across the UK: the company’s facilities were accordingly dispersed more widely throughout the country, but retained a physical presence in the capital that was flexible and open to future changes.
The various concepts are on display at the “Future of Workplace” Competition Exhibition at the Gallery at Foyles, Level 5, 107 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EB until the 21st March, 2018.
