IT, AV and Smart Building consultancy for Zaha Hadid Architects HQ relocation

IT, AV & Smart Building Consultancy creates amenity-rich hub for new ways of working underpinned with live data insights on utilisation.

The Team

BW Workplace Experts, Goddard Consulting, DSA Engineering, Erco Lighting, proAV

The Project

IT, AV and Smart Building consultancy for Zaha Hadid Architects HQ London relocation.

The Technologies

Structured Cabling System; wireless video conferencing; building-wide AV over IP and digital signage; wireless presentation; Unified Communications; Smart Building App; room and desk booking; wayfinding; smart sensors; live occupancy and utilisation data.

The Client

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) is a British architecture and design firm. It works at all scales and in all sectors, creating transformative cultural, corporate, residential and other spaces that work in synchronicity with their surroundings. The business has a deep commitment to a collective research culture that enables multi-disciplinary teams from around the world to work collaboratively.

Following Government guidelines in 2020, ZHA transitioned to working from home, ensuring continuity in work, wellbeing and personal development. To support ZHA post Covid and with the transition back to the workplace, a hybrid operating environment was key.

Coupled with an ongoing period of record growth, the business wanted to offer its teams more options in how they work, highlighting the primary role of its studio as a place for meaningful collaboration and interaction.

ZHA decided to relocate its London HQ from a grade II-listed Victorian former school building at 10 Bowling Green Lane to premises at 101 Goswell Road, linked to Compton Courtyard.
ZHA had occupied 101 Goswell Road plus adjacent space at Compton Court since 2012 and intended to reconfigure the conjoined spaces to create a modern, flexible, healthy and supportive hub. Four floors would be office and collaboration space, with the other levels dedicated to the reception, a basement robotics and modelling lab and a roof terrace.

The new HQ would help establish environments promoting wellness for its 400 employees enabling new and agile ways of working for spaces, layouts, fitouts, systems and operations. The number of seats would be 200, so the workplace and services within it had to be digitally controllable, convenient and intuitive to use, supporting proactive business decision making.

Cordless was engaged to provide AV, IT Physical Infrastructure, Smart Building Consultancy, and Project Management for the refurbishment project.

Cordless designed and oversaw the implementation of a resilient Structured Cabling System, combined with collaborative AV and Smart Workplace technology to create a digitally supportive, flexible and experiential workplace. Technology supports provision of a commute-worthy hub – with real-time visibility of and ease of access to people and resources.

With peak utilisation running with now 50% of the workforce in the workplace at any time, collaboration, conferencing and Unified communication technology was carefully designed to help facilitate meeting/presence equity, journey planning and team scheduling.

Smart sensors measure resource utilisation, using overhead, optical and desk sensors with PIR motion detection.

The digital employee experience and combination of Smart Building technology is important to ZHA, since they understand the importance of delivering primary conveniences to occupiers of a space within their own architectural designs.

ZHA also wanted a deeper understanding of their own workplace behaviours and utilisation to help drive better space modelling for their clients.

The Smart Building data and reporting about the workplace will allow ZHA to work in the most effective way possible, by empowering the workforce to be able to access resources and bring teams of people together as required.

ZHA has now tripled its formal and social meeting spaces and built a creative lab on the lower floors with dedicated space for design research, digital fabrication and exhibitions.

Connected to 101 Goswell Road by a common courtyard, the new studios within Compton Courtyard bring together all ZHA’s London employees.

The transformation of Goswell Road building and the adjacent Compton Courtyard Studio has enabled ZHA to evolve to new and agile ways of working, halving the person-to-desk ratio and empowering its teams, whilst futureproofing the business as it continues to grow. Ongoing live occupancy data from the Smart Building technology will continue to inform ZHA’s current and future real estate strategy.

The project also established strong working relationships between ZHA and its ongoing technology partners.

The success of data collection and analysis in these workspaces was evidenced by the joint presentation between ZHA and MAPIQ of their success story at the WORKTECH London conference.

Photo credit: Gavriil Papadiotis: www.gavriilux.com