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Michaelides & Bednash
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Michaelides & Bednash, London
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The seemingly singular response of a table around which this young organisation meets provides an iconic place to work, grow and develop media strategies. The design used a modest furniture budget to create a radical working environment in an Art Deco daylight factory in central London. At the time of the brief the seven-strong media strategists desired an office which could accommodate up to 25 people. Their brief liberated us from the simply functional and purely visual – neither a conventional office nor a fashionable design would do. The resulting space is organised around a single 15m long bespoke table, serviced for laptops and telephones. As a counterpoint to this there are retreats, similar to carrels found in libraries, which offer partial privacy. Two private enclosures (otherwise meeting rooms) suggest confidential work and discussion. Concrete, wood, glass, steel, plaster and cement board are used; their abstract simplicity emphasises the materiality, proportions, natural colour, tone and texture of the components. |
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The approach to space owes much to installation art, but is applicable to home or workplace. Here the standard office solution has metamorphosed into a social forum and 'resource centre'. 'Typology' is superseded by universality. A psychological map of space, which offers a sensitivity to difference rather than iron-fist homogeneity, has replaced the generic workstation of the speculative office. It is quite clear that the office asks of its users many different tasks. The space speaks of this. Michaelides & Bednash's office was chosen as just one of twenty international case studies in Francis Duffy's The New Office (1997). The project was shortlisted for the D+AD Silver Award 1996 and was published in the Architects' Journal (29 Feb 1996). |
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