Sustainable Office Design

Beautiful Sustainable Affordable Offices

Stunning office design that doesn’t cost the earth

Attractive & uplifting
Productive
Healthy
Low Carbon
Budget-friendly

Discuss your office with one of our designers

From the international prize-winning Cardiff HQ for Public Health Wales, to the UK Green Building Council’s record-breaking low carbon refurbishment, to the Chartered Institute of Wastes Management circular economy fit-out, we have provided innovative ideas and designs to create leading sustainable workspaces across the UK.

We have reinvented the interior design and furnishing process to be easier and cheaper for clients, with substantially lower environmental impact.

Our designs are based on science, including using ergonomics to maximise space efficiency, selecting plants that remove air pollutants, and choosing furnishings with the biggest GHG emission savings.

The resulting offices are beautiful in every way – attractive, productive, healthy, socially responsible, environmentally sustainable – and half the cost of traditional alternatives.

We call this the Science of Beautiful Offices.

Sustainable office design considerations

Net Zero Carbon

Furniture redeployment
Circular flooring
Recycled fitout elements
Efficient lighting & HVAC

Well-being

Ergonomics
COVID safety
Plants for air quality
Biophilia

Productivity

Workflows
Collaboration
Zoning
Noise management

Efficiency

Agile working
Video meetings
Space utilisation
Capacity optimisation

Designing differently

We reject prevailing interior design and furnishing practices as wasteful and damaging, needlessly driving up costs, greenhouse gas emissions and landfill.

We are different in 3 major ways:

1. Drastic carbon reductions

46% of the GHG emissions over the entire lifetime of an office building are furnishings, including furniture (30%), flooring (6%) and electricals (5%). We work to reduce this by 80% – reducing the footprint of the entire building over its lifetime by 37%.

Furniture, at 30% of the GHG emissions of an average building, is a particular focus, which we address using the Circular Economy.

We even have our own division that remanufactures office furniture – so we understand which of your existing furniture can be cost-effectively remanufactured to as-new condition (including resizing, reupholstering and refinishing).

We also design for future lives of furnishings – to avoid waste and save money for clients.

Source: Treloar, GJ. Et al, 1999, Embodied energy analysis of fixtures, fittings and furniture in office buildings, Facilities, Volume 17, Number 11, pp. 403-409 (Accessed on 14 June 2019 at https://www.academia.edu/18481731/Embodied_energy_analysis_of_fixtures_fittings_and_furniture_in_office_buildings)

2. Social value creation

We source wonderful products from worthy Social Enterprises like the Merthyr Tydfil Institute for the Blind and Greenstream Flooring. Trades are sourced locally to projects, as are installation staff from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Our projects to date have provided over 6,500 hours of Living Wage employment and training to long term unemployed and disabled installation staff.

3. Partnering

The construction industry used to be just like interior design and fit-out sector is now – adversarial with heavy contracts which suppliers gamed to gouge clients.

Then some contractors discovered that everyone is better off working together as partners – investing time and money together to ensure projects are successful. For clients this saved money and paperwork; for suppliers this led to fair treatment and repeat business.

So we partner with clients and other designers, investing time (at our expense) to create inspiring, sustainable, value-for-money offices. Here is what we typically do:

Meet to discuss the design requirements (no charge)
Review existing furnishings to see what can be remanufactured (at no cost)
Provide free sustainable design input
Create layouts and mood boards (if needed, depending on who is in the design team)
Calculate a furnishings schedule and budget and work with you to value engineer it
Match prices to ensure the best value for money (we have a Price Match Guarantee on a like-for-like basis)
Agree the details, including colours, fabrics and finishes
Deliver and install with care
Collect the furniture when it is no longer required, saving disposal costs and remanufacturing it for further lives

We provide sustainability support for Architects and Designers, helping them to reduce the environmental footprint and cost of their designs.

If needed, we can help with building works, including walls, ceilings, heating, electrics, kitchens and IT.

Benefits of our approach

The benefits of this partnering approach to design and furnishing are:

Lower cost – avoided design costs, furniture cost savings, avoided furniture disposal costs
Easier – all of the expertise you need right from the start of the design, no preparation of tender documents, no tender assessment committees
Faster – rapid design development and value engineering with parallel processing of long lead-time items
Avoided waste – furniture is remanufactured when no longer needed

Get in touch to discuss your office

Award-winning team

Our approach requires a range of expert skills. So our multi-award-winning team includes Engineers, Interior Designers, Architects, Product Designers and a PhD in Sustainable Buildings. Meet the team.