British With a Twist: Saatchi & Saatchi by Jump Studios

An open reception concept at the new London headquarters of Saatchi & Saatchi, a global communications and creative advertising agency. Photography: courtesy of Jump Studios

Taking the best of a client company’s history and previous space and injecting it into a new one can breathe new life into the attitudes of employees while providing them a sense of home.

Saatchi & Saatchi, one of the oldest and most established global communications and creative advertising agencies in the world, selected architecture and interiors firm Jump Studios to design its new home, situated in the heart of London’s legal district on a large corner site at 40 Chancery Lane.

After more than 40 years at its former offices at 80 Charlotte Street in Fitzrovia, Saatchi & Saatchi was looking to bring the spirited sense of home at 80 Charlotte Street into the design of its new workspace, a 100,000 square foot, seven story blank canvas. Jump Studios won the project with its “British with a twist” theme underpinning the design approach.

The open reception concept features a café.

“In our pitch, we talked about British artists who have similar spirit,” said project architect Andre Nave. “It’s not ever day that a client allows you to use Rachel Whiteread’s Ghost House, Grayson Parry pottery and Paul Smith suits as inspiration for their headquarters. And the fact that we were trying to wave their culture to them really pleased them.”

Entering through a landscaped courtyard, employees and guests will walk the same stone steps from the 80 Charlotte Street entrance and see the famous Saatchi & Saatchi motto, “Nothing is Impossible,” an exploding statement in large steel letters affixed to a fifth floor entertainment terrace. Inside, the original “Nothing is Impossible” motto located at the old office was brought to the new building, on view in the reception.

Café

Once inside, employees and guests encounter the heart of the design: an open reception concept intended to feel less like a formal reception and more like the middle of the bustling agency itself.

“Saatchi & Saatchi wanted guests to feel as if they are stepping directly into the agency, not a holding reception before the real thing,” noted Mr. Nave, in the project description. “They were keen to subvert the traditional office in multiple ways like this.”

The new reception is casual, collaborative, open and quirky, a social hub inviting visitors to blend with employees as soon as they arrive.

The Pregnant Man pub, an in-house pub carried over from the old Saatchi & Saatchi office and re-opened to the public on the ground level of the new location

In addition to a café bar, Jump Studios found space in the reception to re-open Saatchi & Saatchi’s in-house Charlotte Street pub, The Pregnant Man, named after the agency’s celebrated 1970 campaign for the Family Planning Association.

“The pub was one of the most challenging aspects of the design, because they wanted a coffee bar in the reception as well,” said Mr. Nave. “We needed to make sure the placement of the two areas made

The Pregnant Man pub

sense and worked well together.”

In its former Charlotte Street location, The Pregnant Man was open only to Saatchi & Saatchi employees and clients. At the new Chancery Lane location, Jump Studios extended its open reception concept to the new Pregnant Man pub, making it entirely open to the public.

The ground floor also holds a main stair and a dreamy, large- scale lighting design by renowned industrial designer Ingo Mauer suspended from the first floor ceiling. Reflective steel tiles cover a void, and the lighting can adapt to changing conditions by changing to lower or higher positions.

“There were three openings in the floor plate, and we knew we wanted to do a stair on one,” noted Mr. Nave. “For the other two, we wanted something creative and different.”

On the working floors above the ground level reception, Jump Studios conceived of a “living room” space for employees at the center of each floor, filled with flexible seating and common areas. Around 570 employees are then situated in open plan neighborhoods, in teams of two or four, with just six or seven executives in enclosed offices.

Jump Studios worked closely with Belgian furniture design company Bulo to create bespoke desks and shelving units for workstations, designed within a modular system and featuring writable and pin-able panels for brainstorming and collaborative work. The design team also developed bespoke pink leather booths, “encased in pre-cast concrete and walnut tables aside data and power connection points,” to give employees flexible collaborative space on each floor.

The “British with a twist” motif inspired workplace aesthetics, in everything from bespoke herringbone Bolon flooring in the boardroom to wainscot paneling upholstered in houndstooth cloth lining office walls.

Boardroom with bespoke herringbone bolon flooring

Jump Studios focused its use of colors, materials and patterns, bespoke lighting, furniture, flooring and finishes, to catch attention and provoke reaction, and to distinguish neighboring areas for certain activities without the need for partitioning.

 

“There’s a bit of a mad-man concept to it, with the color palette, and furnishings,” noted Mr. Nave. “There’s mid-century and modern, Danish furniture and British furniture.”

One uncommon design challenge Jump Studios had to solve for was the use of lighting in conjunction with how the ceiling was designed. The ceiling was built to serve as a coolant for the spaces below, designed much like a heated flooring system, but the opposite; the ceiling chills the air.

Suspended from the second floor ceiling, reflective steel
tiles cover the void, and lighting can adapt to changing conditions by
changing to lower or higher positions.

“There was a lot of coordination in making the lighting work with this very unique ceiling,” said Mr. Nave. “Any change we made to the programming meant we had to refigure the lighting to accommodate this ceiling.”

“Jump Studios’ work also extended to the neighboring Tooks Court, a 19th century building that was retained as part of Derwent London’s re-development at 40 Chancery Lane,” noted the project description.

Jump Studios helped maintain and extend an existing façade over the two buildings, creating an atrium. The Tooks Court building will be the new home of Fallon London, a creative agency owned by Publicis Groupe, owner of Saatchi & Saatchi.

The Saatchi & Saatchi project embodies the meaning of creating a sense of home in a new place, well executed and dashingly British to boot.