Five Strand - environmental brand design

Headquartered at Five Strand, our brief from this property giant was to create an engaging environment to make collaboration for this 120 strong-team easier and more effective.  With an enormous floor space of an acre to work with, short timescales and limited budget, our strategy was to build a story around the brand and bring the idea to life with new meeting spaces, quirky graphic treatments and the brand's vibrant colour palette.

Every community needs a heart where people meet, celebrate and do business; for this community, we developed the Market Square concept which offers a beautifully furnished, open meeting area with a number of assignation spaces within it.  The space is also used to hold standing meetings and celebrations for the whole team.  Bespoke, sculptural furniture pieces invite a relaxed meeting style and were created with privacy and acoustic management in mind.  The Touchdown area provides even more informal meeting space and meets on-the-go hot desking requirements.

Meeting rooms and vast wall spaces were given attention grabbing and newly relevant impact with the use of simple graphic treatments.  Using smart lighting and 2D and 3D techniques, we brought the whole space together by drawing on inspiration from the brand's retail and leisure business areas.  From the humble barcode to till receipts and quirky visual metaphors, giant retail tags showcase the heroes from the hundreds of commercial properties in the company's portfolio.  Even the open plan kitchen area was given a makeover and we created stunning frames to help celebrate just some of the team's prestigious awards.

The jewel in the crown is The Flagship - the floor's board room overlooking Nelson's Column.  We designed a unique board room table, made from 200 year old, reclaimed teak and installed a fantastic graphic image of the Admiral's uniform.  Elegantly framed photographic images of just a few of the company's properties deck the walls and an antique, nautical telescope allows visitors to come face to face with Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square.

The offices were launched on a grey Monday in January.  The new collaboration spaces, witty graphics and multiple talking points were met with applause and excited prospects of new working opportunities.  The team's new working environment has, understandably, become the envy of everyone in rest of the building.