N Brown: Manchester

Location: Griffin House, Manchester

Sector: Retail/ Consumer Goods, Financial

Project Value: £420k

Scope of Works: Design > Contracting > Audiovisual

The Brief

The move to Griffin House heralded an important cultural shift for N Brown Plc as a business. The new CEO was determined to bring people across the organization together to work in a more open and collaborative manner. This was currently extremely difficult with the maze of offices spread across 14 floors in 2 buildings. Claremont was appointed as Interior Designer for Griffin House with two footplates of 32,000 sq ft and one slightly less at 27,000 sq ft. The scheme also included two car park decks. The new computer room with stand-by generator and UPS was the first phase of the works to allow the client to run their systems in parallel to meet the demands of the programme.

The Solution

An open plan environment was designed with neighbourhoods to give the space scale. The 4m high ceiling allowed us to retain external vistas, with glass partitioning and lighting providing impact. Open top glass ‘pods’ were designed to allow managers privacy yet retaining visibility. The number of meeting spaces increased by 20, with additional informal spaces with integrated AV solutions. Breakout areas and hub services are available on each floor. Extended ventilation and comfort cooling systems, new lighting and power and data were all included within the scheme.

The Result

The organic layout encourages communication, collaboration and the flow of ideas: the teams are now on 3 floors instead of 14. The design ethos included a strong desire to expose the products to the staff and to literally put the products at the centre of the business. The merchandising floor displays the products –mainly garments and home furnishing items - alongside the teams. Communication has improved enormously, and a number of processes have been rationalised.

The scheme won the BCO award for the North West in 2004.

Related downloads

'To boldly go' (FMX) (PDF, 1.1MB)