University Staff Workplace Refurbishment for Birmingham City University
This project was a shell and core fit out to relocate over 500 of the University’s Professional Services staff to Birmingham city centre into a four storey (plus basement) building. The departments included Estates, Campus Management Services, HR, Finance, IT, Learning and Library Resources, and Academic Services. We needed to bring together seven distinct departments with different working needs into one shared building without it feeling fragmented. We also needed to balance a huge stakeholder group (500+ staff across 7 departments) with a coherent, unified design outcome.
The Challenge
Our Response
There was a substantial period of stakeholder consultation with each department participating in a numerous design sessions with us. In addition to this, representatives from all departments participated in a furniture showroom day in Clerkenwell, London to view furniture options and try them out. The resulting design principles:= included hot desking on every floor, feature kitchens per floor to drive socialising and extensive breakout spaces for informal work.
The Outcome
500 + staff were successfully relocated with needs of each department met. The resulting design took new ways of working for University staff to another level with each floor having an element of hot desking. Each floor has a feature kitchen area to promote staff socialising as well as an extensive selection of breakout spaces to use for informal working and team meetings. The ground floor housed a staff only café area as well as only four formal meeting rooms for the whole building due to the variety of breakout spaces on each floor.
"The space* studio has been working for the University in the capacity of architects and interior designers since 2003 and continues to work with us to the present day in and on-going relationship. We often get them involved in the trickier projects that need an innovative, design led, yet realistic approach, typically within a very demanding timeframe.
The range of projects they have completed for us include major interior refurbishments of teaching accommodation, fit out work, signage design and implementation, and an OFSTED compliant nursery. This range of projects is testament to their ability, flexibility and attitude to working in partnership with the Estates Department and or other consultants."
