As one of the world’s leading confectionary and snacking companies, Pladis’ move to a prime west London location required a workplace to showcase their iconic brands helping support them in their vision of bringing ‘happiness to the world with every bite’. Gensler was tasked to create a space for the Pladis Global offices that was focused on their employees in London, England.

With an assortment of settings for all work styles, the project celebrates the joy of making, baking and sharing through a carefully crafted space, helping its people return to work in an agile, flexible and personalised way.

Gensler’s design team was challenged to create a future-ready, feel-good space that celebrates Pladis’ best ingredient – its people. The client embraced the journey by engaging HR to champion wellbeing, through participatory charrettes to help unpack their vision, create goodwill, empower thinking and build strong relationships with all stakeholders.

Designed and delivered during the global pandemic, this experimental project offered an insight into how the future of work could look. Gensler helped guide Pladis through a dramatic shift away from traditional work models. Adding value with our workplace research, data, thought leadership and expertise – distilled over more than 55 years of office design – we created an assorted ‘biscuit tin’ workplace with something for everyone and moments of happiness provided through different flavours, tastes and textures.

People can gather in the ‘heart’ space, a welcoming, warm and convivial bakery-meets-hotel composition with aromas of baked goods and coffee, creating a multi-sensory brand experience. Here the open kitchen, with rolling pin light installations and ovens for baking and biscuit warming, provides a perfect hospitality setting where the products take centre stage and people can connect. A live digital screen links to the bakeries, celebrating the bakers’ key role in the Pladis family, and showing the process behind the products. Moreover, the different Pladis brands are accommodated with a range of customisable spaces, with flexible content and digital screens that can be adapted and used by any group, while the ‘Family Room’ provides a large lounge space that teams can take over.

Inspired by the extensive amount of greenery surrounding the location, the space is filled with biophilia and maximises natural light to promote wellbeing. Maternity and wellness rooms form part of this people-led design approach, which prioritises happiness, health and self-care. The result is a landmark example of agile working which Pladis’ multi-generational workforce has embraced. This isn’t a universal solution, but a custom created space for Pladis’ people to celebrate and flourish in – a space that encourages everyone to create and harvest nourishing ideas and delicious experiences.