One Smart’s Place Coworking Offices – London
Thirdway reimagined One Smart’s Place in Covent Garden, London, transforming it into an award-winning coworking space that blends luxurious finishes with flexible design to foster collaboration and creativity.
One Smart’s Place, a visually striking award-winning space in the heart of Covent Garden in London, has been redefined by Thirdway to meet the demand for high-end, multi-functional workspaces. The asset repositioning for client Baumont Real Estate included a full refurbishment of the reception, a CAT A+ fit-out of the ground floor, and the creation of ‘The Press’ business lounge, offering tenants an exceptional and flexible 3,000sq ft working environment.
Thirdway created a space that looked and felt more like an exclusive members club than a commercial office building, to set it apart from other CAT A+ spaces in the West End. Taking their design cues from the wider interiors industry, they sourced premium materials and finishes, incorporating rich tones, textures and bold colours more at home in a hospitality setting than a workspace.
Achieving a ‘best-in-class’ co-working space called for invention as well as function, with the use of visually striking finishes such as tiling and distinct biophilic design throughout. With tones of burgundy and scarlet, alongside luxurious woods seeded throughout, the space is a modern take on commercial fit-outs, stepping away from more conventional and ‘careful’ design choices.
Thirdway’s goal was to elevate and exceed the benchmarks of stand commercial CAT A+ projects. Setting the tone in the reception area, natural tones and materials were used to create a striking welcome to the space, with dark woods, tan and white furniture. The reception desk was covered with Kit Kat Barn Red Tiles, creating an immediate statement on arrival, while the contrast of planting adds a freshness to the space.
In ‘The Press’ Business Lounge and workspace, the design team focused on creating a ‘member’s club’ using premium features, such as the banquette seating upholstered with Colours of Arley bold striped fabric, and herringbone brickwork using Argilla tiles by Solus on the floor. Throughout, warm tones of burgundy and rust were used to unify the design, most evident in the exposed ceiling services sprayed in this colour.
Neither flexibility or function were compromised – the space had to work for both client and occupiers, with a focus on delivering an ideal environment for collaboration and modern working patterns. Flexible meeting spaces with movable partitions were used to increase or decrease the size of the space.
‘The Press’ business lounge was designed for collaboration and informality, with 16 open plan workstations, and private nooks for impromptu and smaller gatherings. These, along with meeting rooms and the business lounge create a modern, mixed-mode working environment.
Design: Thirdway
Design Team: Luke Gillam, Sophie Smith, Jordan Reid
Photography: Peter Ghobrial
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