Peldon Rose has developed a new office space for Office Space in Town’s new serviced office located at Waterloo in London.

Peldon Rose’s long-term client Giles Fuchs is the chairman and owner of Office Space in Town – the boutique serviced office provider, whom we have completed two highly acclaimed projects for in the past 36 months (within Euston Tower and 20 Little Britain). Giles challenged Peldon Rose to create a serviced office which has never been seen before. In simple terms, he told Peldon Rose to let our imagination run wild as long as they met two main business objectives for this new office: The first objective was to attract the media and tech start-ups flocking to the area with the quirkiest, most interesting serviced office in Waterloo. And secondly, the objective was to reach 47% capacity within a year of opening.

Giles’ brief was simple; to maximise the net usable space within 2-6 Boundary Row in order to create:

• Meeting spaces on the ground floor
• Traditional open plan and semi cellular on the upper floors
• Free client engagement space (highly unusual in this serviced office sector, when you pay for everything)
• Premium kitchens and lunch areas
• Delivering a hotel 5 star environment for a low cost operators budget
• Creating an environment that will attract and retain media technology clients whilst not alienating traditional occupiers
• Desk space for 427 people

2-6 Boundary Row required a big idea, so we went for a walk around Southwark to discover its rich, social and architectural history. With the fresh brief in hand, we went on ‘our ramble’ around Waterloo and Southwark and came across the Mad Hatter Hotel. With a little more digging, we discovered that the local Southwark area was once the industrial epicenter for hat-making. But the glue used in the process traditionally contained mercury, which affected the minds of the craftsmen, confusing their speech and distorting their vision. This lead to the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’. The Mad Hatter Hotel nearby is a lasting tribute to this aspect of London’s industrial heritage. And thus the seed was sown.

In developing this Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland concept, Peldon Rose designers worked closely with Giles and his team. The only way Peldon Rose would pull it off was by making it a watertight concept, getting into every single detail, and making our clients’ working lives as slick and stress-free as possible. And it paid off, because getting office space at @Waterloo is like gold dust. The design concept chosen was a twist on the famous Lewis Carroll fable of Alice. Alice takes us to a magical world where we have been shrunk. It’s a fantastical place where the White Rabbit gazes down on you in beautiful white negative space.

The facsimile of Alice is beautifully implemented through the ground floor and is designed to tactically position @Waterloo as a permanent destination for any company looking for serviced offices. When creating serviced offices the business proposition is preeminent. It’s all about the occupancy level – just like a hotel and after just three months up and running after the project was completed, Office Space in Town’s office was 100% full.

Design: Peldon Rose
Photography: Matthew Beedle

via Office Snapshots