Description
In 1995, the company Boots The Chemists decided to concentrate its entire administrative staff in one place. The necessary extension project was intended to act as a catalyst for transformation of the corporate culture. The headquarters with its new building are located in Beeston, just south of Nottingham, where Boots has had its head office since 1968.
In an exemplary integral planning process, an experienced team was put together, consisting of DEGW, the architects and management consultants, with Boots as the Clients, Mace as the site managers and the engineering by Roger Preston. In a two-stage process, the new building was first erected and then the original headquarters, called D90 (1968; erected by Skidmore, Owings & Merill), was completely renovated. This flat, square glass pavilion with brown steel supports is not only a modern classic, but also Great Britain’s first open-plan office. At the time adjudged to be innovative, thirty years later the building did not provide adequate space for contemporary working methods, nor could it accommodate the entire staff.
A series of employee questionnaires and staff counselling sessions were important components in the planning process. Right from the start they were carried out with the aim of coordinating staff requirements and introducing the new methods of working. The weekly workshops, in which the whole planning team took part, were crucial to the success of the project. Together, the team developed a customised office building, based on a series of principles that appeared simple, yet nonetheless had a profound effect on the programme and the design. Among these principles were the introduction of team structures and the implementation of the latest information and communication technologies. In conjunction, they promote communication between departments and staff mobility. Staff can now shift from one project to another or from one environment to another – they are freed from their dependency on paper and filing systems and can therefore be integrated in projects in the field. The effects of the programme are discernible in the increase in the number of potential meeting places – an important factor in facilitating teamwork – and here in particular, rooms and areas that promote chance encounters across teams and departments. Another effect is dispensing as far as possible with personal workspaces that would encourage working in isolation.
The new building is formally subordinate to its neighbouring predecessor, although the new rectangular box appears to be less successful in its proportions. A new entrance pavilion serves as a connecting element and is part of an internal ‘street’ that links the two parts of the building and unites the company. This ‘street’ opens out over the length of the new building into an atrium with a cafe and restaurant, shops, ATMs and lifts. In accordance with the plug-and-work principle, these areas are integrated into the work environment. For example, there are connections to the corporate data network from the tables in the café, so that any member of staff with a laptop can work from there as well. Three smaller additional atriums are intended to stimulate neighbourhood functions and enlarge the building surfaces so that all employees can benefit from the natural light and the view. The workplace strategy is developed as a collection of twenty ‘neighbourhoods’ on three levels, evincing an autonomous mixture of six different work layouts, from small desks for individuals and quiet cell-like offices for private conversations or concentrated work, through spacious common meeting areas to touch-down desks. The ‘hubs,’ each used by two neighbourhoods, are centrally located. All the office technology is situated here, as well as the kitchens and staff lounges.
Working conditions were to be equally good in both buildings. For the SOM building, this meant a whole series of measures both organisational and architectonic, and relative to climate control. Unwieldy room-in-room systems were dispensed with in order to achieve more spaciousness. Only the cell-like offices along the window frontage were retained as meeting rooms. Twelve hundred people now work in the building designed in 1968 for fewer than one thousand employees. Air-conditioning, lighting and information systems and communication media have been upgraded to meet today’s requirements and to cope with the higher concentration of employees. A new suspended ceiling and a raised floor installation was necessary to ensure flexible data connection of all work areas in the open-plan office. A continuous raised floor would, however, have destroyed the external appearance of the building, which is marked by the thin floorslabs. Due to aesthetic considerations and the need to adhere to historical protection requirements, a circulation area without a raised floor was provided along the storey-height glazing. The brown tones of the original colour scheme were also retained. By contrast, in DEGW’s new building, there is a mixture of cheerful yellows, reds and blues. As for the rest, the choice of materials for walls, room dividers, doors and ceilings is identical in both buildings and the detailing similarly minimalist.
As is usual in contemporary office concepts, the building offers employees a variety of communal and individual work environments. The very deep ground plan with its flexible interior layout that is naturally lit by atriums sets the company headquarters apart from other projects. It is not least an energy-saving building due to its compactness. Even though its proportions do not achieve quite the calibre of its predecessor, it is all the same a sort of prototype because the needs of its occupants, their modes of working and their comfort requirements have all been carefully coordinated. Going through the building, one finds neither doors nor private offices. The building is conceived as a gigantic room for a team of 2,300 employees.
Drawings
Photos
The modernized old building by SOM (left) and the adjoining new building by DEGW (right)
Interior view
Originally published in: Rainer Hascher, Simone Jeska, Birgit Klauck, Office Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2002.