Workspace Group approached us to refurbish a former Victorian furniture depository as one of their flagship business hubs. Working through a collaborative design process with the Workspace team, we developed Centro Workshops. A contemporary workplace offering flexible office space for growing start-ups, complete with a café, meeting rooms and modern end of journey facilities.

Prior to Workspace purchasing the building, it was used as a single occupancy office for many years. Historic features had been overclad, and the décor was tired and disconnected from the site’s industrial heritage.

Our brief was to reveal and celebrate the building’s history, create a cohesive visual narrative, open up poorly connected spaces and ensure a versatile set of workspaces for a variety of small businesses and startups.

Key design development points were allowing the existing fabric and layers of history to inform the new design, joinery and furniture that celebrate the process of craft, to make spaces more flexible and connecting into the adjacent building, and a new entrance to mark the arrival point and draw people into the redesigned reception.

In recent years the building’s character has been hidden under decades of unsympathetic internal alterations. Taking inspiration from the building’s furniture depository history to create a cohesive visual narrative, we have stripped back existing finishes to bare walls and only added back in specific joinery and furniture.

Revealing and celebrating the steel columns, perimeter brickwork and encased beams, creating an authentic and characterful palette of materials on each office floor.

The joinery celebrates furniture workshops with use of stacked timber and recycled waste scraps.