Make Architects’ London office, work and office trends – with video clips

How do you get an entire architectural team back to the office full time? And for that matter, how do you help your clients do the same?

One of Make Architects’ four directors, Jason Parker, led a small team on a tour of the studio’s London practice to look at the extensive models on display, the materials library, and the thinking behind the new trends on the way. A suite of video clips captures the tour highlights – but it’s early days for our mini “Grand Designs” ambitions, so go gently on the critiquing!

While much of the world’s commercial property markets wonder how to persuade, entice or, if needed, drag, their staff back to the office, in London Make Architects has an entire program built around fun for its staff.

It helps inform the kind of work it does for its corporate clients who tenant London’s big buildings.

But it’s not just fun that works.

Part of the deal is understanding that vibrant young people who’ve just come out of the London School of Economics, for instance, want to keep feeding their minds feeling like they’re progressing in life.

The studio’s director and co-founder Jason Parker says if people come to the office, they want to go home “feeling enriched, or somehow enlivened.

“So, there will be auditoria, there’ll be open forums, there’ll be lots of discussion. And if we’re going to persuade people to come back into the office, there’s got to be that sense of progression, particularly with younger generations.

“So, you know, if you’re coming out of LSE (London School of Economics), for example, or some of the big universities, there’s this sense that you want to continue with your growth.”

At the company’s 40 Leadenhall project that will provide workspaces for a massive 10,000 people, the design will include “a fantastic community provision” including a library, screening rooms, and forums for talks and collaboration.”

The whole building, he says, is set up to “engender a sense of learning and continued development. So that’s really crucial to workplace.”

It’s all part of the cross fertilisation that’s going on in the built environment – café spaces intersecting with casual workspaces – of which there is a profusion in London – social value and community spaces that consider physical accessibility as well as the needs of people who are neurodiverse and blend these with cultural outcomes.

So, how does the team get its inspiration? And are they all back at work?

Parker draws our attention to the way his team is working, clustered around central columns – some sitting, some standing.

“If you look over there, you can see the way that people are talking, you know if they’re sitting and standing, there’s much more interaction…the way we’re using these petal arrangements around the column.”

They’re working with models and talking to each other, instead of being hidden behind screens, he adds.

“It’s part of kind of how we’re generating ideas,” he says, “a close interaction between what’s on screen and what’s physical. The same with the materials.”

See the video clip for insights on the materials library the studio works with, featuring a “material of the month” to focus attention on alternatives that can be used in design and encourage manufacturers to scale their production. This includes an external use for hemp building products.

For inspiration, workers in general and in the studio have abundant programs and ideas to stimulate their appetite for socialising and going to an office to work.

There’s a “lot of getting out and about, there’s a lot of events, there’s a lot of social [interaction that happens in and around town],” Parker says.

There are programs cater particularly to a “next gen community” for anyone under 35 to encourage them to attend industry events and network with people “in a hospitality environment.”

There’s also a “design safari”, which entails going out to the latest bars and social spaces – hotel tours.

The younger people love it.

“And there’s also lectures in the studio, we have party events in the studio. So, it’s not just somewhere where you come and sit and work.”

So, has it worked? Are all the staff back in the office full time?

Yes, says Parker, and yes, he adds, it’s “quite unusual”.

But it’s “so important to the team culture.”

Was it carrot or stick that did the trick?

“Both, in equal measure,” he laughs, but he’s only half-joking.

And is another noticeable change since COVID, a move to a more domestic-feeling office, “a bit like home, a bit messy?”

Yes, “a little bit messy…it’s not okay.”

Architects being architects, of course not.

But there’s that tangible touch of indulgence required of a modern boss.

Make studio is in a former car park

Parker started the tour of his studio at the front entrance. The office is a former car park, he notes, which is a good indicator of the focus that the company has identified for its future work.

The access ramp is still in place, but it’s now retrofitted with unusual sized steps that seem to be a feature, alongside desks and benches that staff use for lunch and breaks interspersed with models of the studio’s work.

Above what might normally be a glassed atrium is a kind of giant plastic transparent “pillow” to allow light in, but whose shape means it’s self-supporting. This means you can save a lot of money and resources by avoiding strong structural supports normally needed for thick, expensive glass.

The materials library

The next port of call is the clusters of existing and projected buildings – among the portfolio is the interior work that the company completed for Brookfield Place at Wynyard in Sydney.

Then there’s the fascinating materials “library” where architects can touch and feel emerging products and decide if they want to use them, says project architect and head of sustainability Oliver Hall, who joins the group to provide more insights.

Among the materials – which each gets to star as “material of the month” – is a hemp product that can be used for exteriors and cork, each used to stimulate creative uses and help manufacturers scale up their innovations.

A round table briefing on UK legislation and market drivers on embodied carbon, building quality and construction

– video editing by Jason Lin.