As Featured in Property Week
July 19, 2013
19 July 2013
Californian tech firm’s offices are both contextual and random. Sarah Townsend reports
It is no secret that the burgeoning technology, media and communications (TMT) sector favours quirky warehouse space over dull, grey offices – put like that, who doesn’t?
But one California-based technology company has taken this to a whole new level. Real-time data provider Splunk was so disappointed not to find a suitable warehouse on moving to London this year, it commissioned a graffiti artist to make a shiny modern office look like one.
Shortly before Christmas, Splunk moved from Maidenhead and appointed workplace specialist Morgan Lovell to redesign its new UK headquarters. The office is on the seventh floor of 3 Sheldon Square, which was the first phase of the Paddington Central scheme developed by a joint venture between Aviva Investors, Berkeley Group, Development Securities and Equitable Life Assurance Society (now Insight Investment).
All of Splunk’s other 11 worldwide offices are unorthodox, creative spaces mainly in former industrial warehouses. The company wanted its Paddington office to have a similar look and feel, as well as referencing the local area.
So Morgan Lovell commissioned a graffiti artist to decorate the office – echoing the walls by the tracks at Paddington station – and used cunning graphics that resemble distressed brickwork and peeling paint. The ceiling has been raised to create the airiness of a warehouse and the walls remodelled to look like old railway arches.
There is also a nod to British popular culture, with a Doctor Who TARDIS in one room and a British Pullman train carriage for meetings and phone calls. Smaller rooms are accessed through “homely” front doors that line one side of the office, which has been designed to look like a residential street.
Shaun Baker, head of design at Morgan Lovell, says: “Our brief was to give the Sheldon Place office the same sense of fun and character as Splunk’s other global offices. The ‘railway arches’ are lined with corrugated iron, and random objects we found during the refurbishment — spoons, shillings, an army badge — have been framed and hung on walls.”
Splunk is the latest in a growing band of TMT occupiers moving to Paddington Central, which also houses cloud-computing firm Trend Micro and i2i Events Group.
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