Make yourself at home with Needspace

At Needspace, we aim to give our clients affordable and flexible workspaces that work for them. We want them to really feel ‘at home’ in our buildings, so we allow clients to customise their workspaces as much as they want, so that they’re perfect for their business and employee needs.

“Our goal was to use our office move as an opportunity to set a sustainable example, embracing a circular approach which focuses on reusing materials to minimise waste, embodied carbon and operational energy and to create a space that promotes wellbeing”,
Anna Lisa McSweeney, Head of Sustainability UK, White Arkitekter.

Exemplar for the circular-economy

In 2023, the London arm of leading Scandinavian architecture firm White Arkitekter relocated from Shoreditch to Needspace Clerkenwell, at 77 Bastwick Street, after signing a 5-year lease.

The firm had seen potential in the ground and lower ground floors of the building, (4,500 sq. ft of space), to create an office space that would work well for their business and promote employee well-being.

Laura Davies, Project Lead, Associate at White Arkitekter, said: “One of the main appeals of the space was the two distinct floors/areas, which could allow different ways of working. This gave us a choice of spaces, which could be adapted to reflect the changing workplace, which was something we wanted out of our office space.

The offer by Needspace to be able to design the space ourselves was very appealing too. This allowed us to use the office as a way to showcase our own work and design skills, as well as provide an opportunity to set a sustainable example for office fit out.

We saw it as an opportunity to breath some life back into a 1960’s office space with some quite straightforward moves. By doing things such as removing the cladding on the columns and fitting new flooring throughout, the space was transformed quite quickly, to meet our needs”.

White Arkitekter were keen to customise the space using a circular-economy approach for the fit-out, and to be an exemplar in sustainability. The firm were mindful of the significant negative impact the built environment and commercial building sectors have on the environment, and were committed to creating a sustainable, energy-efficient refurbishment model. This meant reducing waste and re-using furniture and materials as much as possible, and minimising embodied carbon and energy.

Saving costs – and the planet …

The whole process, (from tender to completion of work on-site), took five months. While this took longer than a typical office fit out using all new materials, the savings were significant in other ways:

80% of furniture was re-used and refurbished, making it a model for sustainability.
£80k (40%) was saved on costs – much less than a typical, new office fit-out.
Approx. 7 tonnes of CO2 emissions were saved on furniture alone.

“The Needspace team were very easy to work with and supportive of our design ambition. We needed to store a large amount of second-hand office furniture in the space whilst they carried out the works, which will have made their job much harder – they were very accommodating about this”,
Laura Davies, White Arkitekter.

Before

Impressive space transformation ….

The firm were able to see the potential of the two lower ground floors at Bastwick Street, and the transformation achieved was simply stunning. Their wide experience of retrofit projects helped them to identify and use the characteristics of the existing space to best advantage, for example, creating cosy spaces for meeting and relaxing on the ground level where daylight levels are lower.

After

Here’s what else was done

Existing elements re-used, including the raised floor, floor boxes, ventilation grilles and ceiling panels.
Space maximised and material use minimised, including by removing existing cladding to reveal concrete columns.
80% of furniture in the new office space was re-used and refurbished. Some came from the firm’s previous office; some was creatively sourced from other businesses where it was no longer needed.
Worked with existing suppliers to help source unwanted materials from other projects, such as surplus panels for partitioning between meeting rooms.
Existing ventilation system re-commissioned and adapted, to draw fresh air from the roof into the new workspaces.
LED lighting introduced, to reduce operational energy demand and costs.

Where new materials were required, the firm used sustainably sourced, natural materials as much as possible.

(Photos by Paul Riddle)

‘We experienced first-hand the challenges of designing for re-use; namely the time intensity of procuring such material and uncertainty in lead times and quality. Establishing trusted relationships across the supply chain were invaluable to the process and balancing the aesthetic of re-use with a long-lasting professional workplace presented another challenge”,
Laura Davies. White Arkitekter

If you’d like to find out more about our flexible, affordable, customisable workspaces, please do get in touch.

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