Social whirls: design of advertising offices overlooking the Thames in London expresses vitality and humour and draws on the river's luminance - Claydon Heeley Jones Mason building by Ushida Findlay - Brief Article

Ushida Findlay's offices for an advertising agency are scattered about four floors of a 1980s speculative building next to Battersea Bridge in south London. Of little architectural merit, it had the advantages of overlooking the Thames and Chelsea shore, and-of being open to great quantities of daylight admitted through continuous perimeter glazing.

Like other agencies of its kind, Claydon Heeley Jones Mason works informally, with teams able to shrink or expand according to the size of the account and relying on lively face to face encounters to spur creativity. Conventional arrangements of office furniture and meeting rooms were felt by the client to be inappropriate and it quickly became clear to the architects that staff preferred to 'perch on window cills, lie on tables, crouch on the floor -- anything rather than sit at tables in orderly fashion'. At the same time, because its premises within the building had been acquired piecemeal and were dispersed, the agency wanted a clear and identifiable image.

Since the budget was tight, the practice opted for cheap materials like PVC, mild steel, rubber and laminated MDF using them with wit, and with light and colour, to create mood and a consistent image. Oppression in the big horizontal rooms was relieved by cutting swathes through suspended ceilings to expose services and introduce a vertical dimension; and the practice's design of playful furniture responds to the way the agency works and uplifts the spirits. The main unifying element is blue rubber flooring that catching the light forms a continuous reflective plane on each of the four floors. Separate areas are furnished with amoebically inspired desks with indentations for three people; put together to form clusters, they accommodate larger groups. On the fourth floor, a meeting room enclosed by filmy plastic sheeting, patterned and coloured, contains an asymmetric meeting table; and here and there, throughout the offices, are low seating enclosures for impromptu gatherings.

Ushida Findlay's playfulness, expressed lightly and elegantly, has been given full rein in design of the reception on the first floor. Visible to passers-by on the bridge, the room is threaded by flowing steel ribbons coloured orange and silver which delineate zones -- cafe, reception and waiting. When horizontal and studded with movable plastic pads, like brilliant jellies, they become seats; and when vertical, become supports for monitors.

COPYRIGHT 2002 EMAP Architecture
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group