Advent Underwriting, London

2 May 2011

Advent Underwriting, London

Insurance underwriters have never looked so on-trend as with this new office interior where a black and white canvas has shots of colour from furniture pieces

Details

Client: Advent Underwriting
Design: Artillery Architecture and Interior Design
Size: 2,100 sq m
Completion time: Five months

Project Details

Insurance companies have a reputation for favouring traditionally corporate design in their offices – usually incorporating plenty of walnut panelling and leather. But as Alexander MacKay of Artillery Architecture and Interior Design explains: ‘There’s a growing trend for insurance companies to be more experimental with the presentation of their workplaces.’

This was the case with Artillery’s recent project for insurance firm Advent Underwriting, when it moved to a more spacious office within Minster Court in the City of London.

‘Advent was moving to a larger space in the same building, with the aim that its new office would see it through 10 years of growth,’ says MacKay, ‘and the company wanted the interior to convey its ethos as a forward-thinking, honest and transparent firm – one that was open to experimenting with unusual modern materials.’

At its new office Advent is able to provide facilities for insurance brokers to meet to do business. This takes place in a ‘brokers’ lounge’, which Artillery designed as a welcoming and versatile space. Three ‘brokers’ pods’ – small meeting areas furnished with tables and chairs by Arper and partially enclosed with perpendicular rods made of translucent PVC – provide a space for private meetings, while loose furniture arranged around the space provides a relaxed setting for more open discussions.

Artillery kept most of the walls and ceilings white, using the furniture to add touches of colour: a shade of orange used in the company’s logo, for example, has been replicated in the upholstery of some of the Arper Catifa 80 lounge chairs and in the inside of the pendant light shades of the brokers’ pods.

The reception is perhaps the most modernlooking area of the office, and the least like the office of a typical insurance underwriter’s. Here, Artillery used Super Sign Aura lights by Prolicht to create a design detail on the ceiling.

Branding in the reception area is subtle, featuring a single discreet Advent logo on the wall behind the reception desk. The orange of the company’s logo has once again been used to inject a shot of colour into an otherwise neutral scheme, this time on a feature wall incorporating several plasma screens. The wall is made of a plasterboard framework faced with colour-backed glass.

‘The entire space is a black and white canvas injected with bold colour,’ explains MacKay. This is perhaps most apparent in the staff cafeteria where the designers chose a black and white checked floor of marmoleum tiles from Forbo Flooring and canopy ceiling panels by Armstrong.

‘The spaces between the ceiling panels are in shadow, so they appear black against the white of the ceiling panels,’ says MacKay. Chairs and Previous page, small meeting areas are partially enclosed with a curtain made of PVC rods. This page, a plasma screen feature wall is in the lobby, in the cafeteria the black and white canvas of the interiors has a shot of colour from banquette seating upholstered in a corporate blue PROJECT 2 tables by K+N International continue the black and white theme. This time colour comes from a wall of banquettes upholstered in a shade of blue, again used in the company’s logo.

According to MacKay, the success of the project lies in the way it caters for the needs of its client, providing a versatile workplace with plenty of contemporary design features. ‘The design choices represent the trend for insurance companies that like to be more experimental with the design of their offices, as well as a need to be more service-oriented in a highly competitive market,’ he says.