Reviewing the Proposals

After a long day’s work, each of the eight teams presented its ideas to an expert panel comprising Charlie Green (Co-CEO of The Office Group), Carissa Kilgour (Workplace Innovation Director at Land Securities), Russell Owens (Marketing Director of Zip Water UK) and Neil Usher (workplace consultant and former Workplace Director at Sky).

An invited audience of architects also attended the presentation, and joined discussions on the future of workplace design that continued into the evening.

I was just amazed at how divergent the thinking was. With a brief that could have been interpreted in a really conservative way, the thinking was really off-the-wall, and I loved the fact that all eight takes on it were completely different”

You don’t often have creation without a project in mind, so it was really interesting to see what people came up with staring from first principles: what is the kitchen in the workplace?”

They were thinking about not just now but about the next 10 or 20 years. The response to technology was really interesting and the understanding that workplaces need to evolve”

The charette, conceived and organised by Architecture Today in collaboration with Zip Water UK, would not have been possible without the generous cooperation of King’s Cross developer Argent, workplace contractor BW and the hard-working teams from Feilden Fowles, Grimshaw, Hawkins\Brown, HOK, MAKE, Orms, Piercy & Company and Squire & Partners.