Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett
This 50,000sq ft new facility of within CityPoint building, City of London, was built over 5 floors and provides both office accommodation as well as high-end hospitality and meeting suites. The refurbishment finished and is in used since 2020.
ROLE
Interior designer and Technical support from Concept stage through to Construction detailing.
YEAR
Designed 2019
Opened first floor in 2020 Finished in 2023
DESIGN CONCEPT
A key part of the client’s brief was to create a homely feel to the office with warm touch of nature. We proposed a layout plan that allows an organic movement between office spaces and open areas. A central design feature is the wooden slatted wall and ceiling that wrapped around the core, creating the sense of unity and continuity throughout the floor, as well as giving the softness of nature to the space.
THE RIBBON LAYOUT
The long corridor around the central core is designed to encourage relaxation with low ambient lighting and darker tone of material, in contrast to area towards the facade, which is where most activity happens (first image above).
Wrapping around the facade are offices, tea point and collaboration spaces (left). These spaces are bright and vibrant with ample natural light, task lighting and also decorative lighting. Bright base materials, with neutral accent colours and metal elements in furniture and joinery, are carefully selected to encourage activities and conversations.
OFFICE LAYOUT
The office layout works into modules to fit in between the building facade mullions.
There are Associate office modules and Partner office modules alternated along the core. The associates’ assistants are located at the open space to the corridor, which gives strategic breathing room for the long core by shifting the glaze panelling towards the facade. This is in response to the client’s brief to improve the knowledge sharing and ‘on-the-job’ learning for more junior employees.
PARTNER OFFICES
The partner offices need to be highly efficient to accommodate the long hours working style of partners. Large quantity of storage space is aesthetically integrated into the bespoke joinery furniture unit, which also provides comfortable space for guests and lounging purpose.
We work closely with Kvadrat textile and Knoll furniture to completely design every detail of our office furniture design to the highest standard.
MEETING ROOMS
The meeting room is located in between two partner offices as a shared space, with acoustical curtain to provide necessary privacy.
This can also be an extra lounge space for the law firm partners to use when needed.
COMMON SPACES
The reception desk which is located in the centre area of the floor, nearest to the lift core, embraces the grand views over City of London (above).
The event space located on the top floor, with a long bar and support kitchen at the back, provides generous and flexible facilities, for any type of event, from daily lunch, sport bar, to company parties or just casual meetings (above and bottom left).
Three meeting rooms with folding sliding walls allow the flexibility to turn into one big long room that can maximise the amount of people to join in comfortably (left).
All images credit to Knoll London and Gardiner.com