Macmillan Science, Education & Publishers

Consulting advice and guidance delivers contemporary new campus environment for Macmillan in the prestigious Regent Quarter at London King’s Cross. A revolutionary workplace transformation, using IT and AV to put collaborative working at the heart of the business.

Technologies & Innovations

Intelligent MERs, podcast and media technology, auditorium technology, digital signage, wayfinding, intelligent meeting rooms and room booking.

The Client

Macmillan Science and Education and Macmillan Publishers are divisions of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a family-owned company headquartered in Germany and one of the leading media companies in the world. The group has over 5,700 employees in over 50 markets. Macmillan Science and Education pushes the frontiers of learning and discovery by providing the best and most innovative technology solutions to students, teachers and researchers. It places their needs at the centre of all its does and shares their passion for transforming lives around the world. Macmillan Publishers is a global trade book publishing company with prominent imprints around the world. Macmillan publishes a broad range of award-winning books for children and adults in all categories and formats.

The Team

Capita, Broadway Malyan

Macmillan Group communications director Joyce Lorigan said:

“Central to our thinking is that people work better together when they know each other. The way we are designing the buildings in our new campus and how we fit them out is all about closer collaboration across the division. This doesn’t just mean more meeting rooms but a wider variety of spaces to grab a coffee with a colleague, or capture ideas on a whiteboard with your team or even share new thinking with the whole business, in our Stables events space. This will all be underpinned by collaborative technology—a social intranet, instant messenger and great AV facilities.”

The campus development incorporates four new buildings in the historic Regent Quarter area, adjacent to the eastern side of Kings Cross station.

This is in addition to the buildings that Macmillan already occupies in Crinan Street and New Wharf Road. At the heart of the Campus sits a Grade II listed “Stables” building. Built in the 1890s for the London General Omnibus Company, Macmillan wanted to conserve this piece of architectural history and convert it into a highly specification 4,000 sq ft conference centre, with a capacity of 300 for internal and external events.

There is a cafe in the courtyard alongside the Stables and two inter-connected office buildings – the Glasshouse and the Printworks – providing a combined total of 74,000. For the design, procurement and implementation; Cordless project managed the IT Physical Infrastructure and Audio Visual workstreams for the Campus development, ensuring that the IT and AV dovetailed neatly with the project portfolio of activity within the construction programme.

The development of Macmillan’s new campus home at King’s Cross has been years in the planning and the Client is delighted that its vision of a collaborative, inspiring working environment has become a reality.

The nature of having a relocation project with a number of different component parts added a layer of complexity through which Cordless provided supported to design and deliver a pioneering IT and AV solution  – for today and the future.