Colin is leaving Spacelab

After seven very successful years, Colin MacGadie is leaving Spacelab to pursue a new challenge.

Colin has been an important and integral member of the team over the last seven years, joining the company at its early stages and helping us grow the business into what it has become today.

Everyone at Spacelab will be sad to see him leave, but we would like to take this opportunity to wish him the very best in his future career, knowing that he’s never too far away!

As of June 1st, if you need to contact us regarding any previous or on-going projects that Colin has been involved with, please contact Shelley Hanks (Office Manager) in the first instance, and she will direct your enquiry to the right person. Shelley can be contacted on 020 7033 3450.

Nathan Lonsdale & Andrew Budgen

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BCO Regional Awards 2012

From left to right:

Stephen Pearson - General Counsel (Virgin Money)

Christine Myers - Senior Designer (Spacelab)

Nathan Lonsdale - Partner (Spacelab)

Pritti Majithia - Property Manager (Virgin Money)

Mark Jones -

Nigel Rees - Head of Environment (Virgin Money)

Marian Hamilton - Associate (RSP Consulting Engineers)

Rab Denholm - Mechanical Engineer (RSP Consulting Engineers)

Andrew Budgen - Partner (Spacelab)

Robin Lonsdale - Director (Spacelab)

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Highgate House in The Times Magazine

The Super Side Return

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Highgate House in The Times

Highgate House, designed and lived-in by Andrew Budgen (founding partner of Spacelab) will be in 'The Style' section of The Times on Easter Saturday, April 7th.

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RKCR/Y&R 1 year on

One year on from our re-design at RKCR, our post-occupancy study has revealed positive changes in the way people are now using their workspace. RKCR wanted to increase collaboration within the agency and we found that overall interaction levels are now the highest we have found in any business we have studied at 38%. More than half of these are informal chance encounters in and around workstations or on the move. The rest are interactions taking place in the new flexible alternative meeting spaces that have been provided. This works out to be a 53% increase in the numbers of people talking to each other in spaces, away from the desk, specifically designed for this purpose.

In the words of Damon Collins (RKCR Executive Creative Director during the project):

The new environment made staff proud to work there and clients enjoy being there.

Did it help make the work better?

Who knows?

Yes, it's true that soon after the office was finished the agency won a couple of BAFTAs, its first D&AD pencils, became the most awarded agency in the country and reached the top of the new business league.

But hey, that was probably just a coincidence.

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Work begins on site . . . . .

Construction has started on site on Spacelab's latest project in Shoreditch, East London. Due for completion in January 2013 the new build development consists of 4000sq ft of commercial office space and 14 luxury apartments over 4 floors. Sensitive planning restrictions due to the proximity and heights of neighbouring buildings has informed the form and massing of the scheme and its relationship to the streetscape. Organised around a central core, the ground floor podium level is treated in blue/grey engineering brick with protruding white render 'cubes' housing the apartments to the upper levels.

more images: click here

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More planning success!

Spacelab have achieved planning permission for a new mixed use development in a sensitive high street location in Camberley, Surrey. The scheme compromises a ground floor commercial unit of 4000sq ft with 1 and 2 bed apartments above, and 2 new 3 bed houses. The design was informed by the local historical vernacular in terms of material, mass and form and addresses the corner street scene between commercial high street and suburban housing with setback reveals, full height windows and tapering brickwork. The scheme is expected to start on site in March 2012 and will be completed in December 2012.

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Space Syntax Symposium 8

Kerstin has just returned from Santiago, Chile, where she was presenting a research paper produced in collaboration with Spacelab at the Space Syntax Symposium 8.

Titled, "The Generative Building." we have made a full copy available on our website, see papers, or download. Here's a very brief extract to help explain the thinking behind the paper;

"a building that acts generatively allows new relationships, new ideas, new products and new knowledge to emerge by maximising random encounters between people."

We're strong believers in the benefits of random encounter in the workplace, and the resulting transfer of knowledge between staff. This paper allows us to further understand and assess the impact of space on the people that use it.

Follow Kerstin on twitter: @KerstinSailer or have a look at her blog: Space and Organisation

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Sneak Preview

We're nearing Phase 1 completion on a 3 Phase programme refurbishment in Central London. At 50,000sqft it's good to finally see it all coming together. With a further 10 weeks worth of construction to go we'll be sure to keep you posted with some more sneak previews ahead of completion.

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Media Network of the Year 2011

Maxus have been awarded Campaign Media Network of the Year for 2011, which having witnessed their growth and development in the last 12 months comes as no surprise to us at Spacelab. We launched our newly designed website with a profile of their London office, which has since become one of our most popular and viewed projects. You can see more here.

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Seasons Greetings

It’s been a busy year for Spacelab, we’ve successfully completed over 20 projects in 2011 with more in progress for completion early 2012, and somehow managed to squeeze in the launch of our new website. As we look forward to further growth and success in 2012, we’d like to thank all our clients and partners for their continued support over the last 12 months. It’s the vision of our clients and the hard work of the project teams that allow Spacelab the opportunity to offer the innovative design solutions we’ve become known for. From the entire team at Spacelab, we hope you enjoy a break over the festive period, and we look forward to catching up in the New Year

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ASOS.com London

Spacelab have been appointed by the global online fashion and beauty retailer ASOS.com to design and fit out their new offices in London. The vision is to create a place where people want to be, and where they can innovate together whilst continuing to play an integral part of the ASOS success story. See more about our approach to workplace design here.

ASOS has websites targeting the UK, USA, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Australia and also ships to over 190 other countries from its central distribution centre in the UK.

Aimed at fashion forward 16-34 year olds, ASOS attracts over 13.6 million unique visitors a month and as of 30 September 2011 had 6.3 million registered users and 3.7 million active customers from 160 countries.

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Sneak Preview

Here's a sneak preview from a project currently on site in West London for an award winning Advertising Agency.

Having followed on from a successful workplace consultancy project, we have high ambitions for this project and for the impact the design and re-organisation will have on the culture and continued success of the business. In-depth analysis, including observation studies, social network analysis, and depth-map planning played a huge part developing the client brief and re-assessing the design against the aims and objectives of the business. Housed within an old warehouse, we have maximised the efficiency of the planning as well as creating a diverse mix of spaces both integrated and segregated from the open plan workspaces. Look out for more updates to follow as the project progresses.

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10 of the world's coolest offices

Our project for Good Technology in London has been included in the MSN Top 10 Coolest Offices Worldwide. We were up against some stiff competition to make it onto the shortlist along with the likes of Facebook in California and Banhof in Stockholm. See more here: MSN Top 10 Coolest Offices Worldwide

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Silicon Roundabout

This weeks Campaign magazine runs a feature on the cluster of established and start-up Creative Agencies located around the Old Street / Shoreditch triangle, and in particular the Tea Building. Our office has been at the heart of this area for the last 5 years with a window onto Boundary Street and the ever changing landscape of E2. I agree with Anne Cassidy when she says "The energy in the area is palpable". I've lived and worked in this area for over 10 years, and in the last 12 months the effect of this micro industry on the streetscape has been at it's most evident.

The 'Tech City Map' being created by Charles Armstrong to show the interdependency of it's community of companies sounds interesting, but what of the impact and dependency outside of it's own community? The new coffee shops, restaraunts, art galleries, clothes shops, fashion houses, vintage furniture shorooms etc that have all popped up as a result of the 'energy' and sense of community also rely on these new and established businesses. I'd be more interested to see how the success of this creative community has spread, helped change the local environment and local economy.

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2010 Archive Spacelab_mac

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2010 Archive Spacelab_mac

This image featured on my blog long before we appointed Manual Creative to design our website. Edits by Edit is a series of 13 screen-printed limited edition numbered posters, each one representing a musical genre. In the spirit of graphic detox, designers were given a strict brief that they could only use one element and one typeface. The series is the launch project of Edit. a studio set up by New York- and London-based designer Nitzan Hermon, and is the moniker under which he does all of his creative work.

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2010 Archive Spacelab_mac

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Luther

The new series of Luther begins on BBC1 this evening. Keep an eye out for some familiar faces and the Spacelab office at 33 Boundary Street, which was used for a murder scene in one of the episodes.

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Spacelab_mac

At the beginning of 2010 I decided to try and keep a visual reference blog over the course of the year. With the launch of our new blog within this site I can now continue to keep an eye out for projects, objects and media that I find of interest, along with the rest of the team at Spacelab. To kick of our collaborative resource for ideas and items of interest I'll be posting 1 image from each page of my blog from 2010. If you get a moment, you can see everything here, Spacelab_mac.

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News Archive

Launching our new website has forced us to review practice output over the last 9 years. We've been digitising our Press see (Press/Case Studies) and are now working through the publications some of our more high profile projects have featured in. Over the next few weeks we'll be adding these to the site and using our blog / news to re-present some of our legacy before we reach our landmark 10 years in practice.

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New ways of working?

UNStudio's Hybrid Chair/Table Shows How People Work Today.

New hybrid furniture solution from Prooff that caters to new modes for working and communicating for the more modern workplace.

See more images at:  fastcodesign

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