ARC Club is a London co-working space for people wanting to escape working from home

Architect Caro Lundin took a less-is-more approach for the creation of ARC Club, a fuss-free co-working space in east London for those struggling to work from home during the coronavirus pandemic.

It took just six weeks for Lundin and her self-titled studio to complete ARC Club, which takes over a formerly characterless retail unit in the neighbourhood of Homerton.

The co-working space is meant to cater to the growing number of individuals who, according to surveys observed by Lundin, are finding it tricky to efficiently do their job from home during the pandemic due to lack of proper workspaces.

Its "starkly beautiful" interiors have been decked out with a selection of low-cost and durable materials that Lundin felt reflected a climate where co-working is "a necessity and not a nice-to-have".

Designing a more modest space also meant that membership would be cheaper for those interested in working at ARC Club according to the architect.

"Intricate details and indoor gardens are fun, but they come with a big price tag – and they're a lot harder to keep clean," said Lundin, who founded ARC Club alongside Hannah Philp.

"When designing ARC Club, I asked myself 'what do people need to work?' A comfortable seat, natural light, thoughtful acoustics; the physical and emotional space in which to think," she told Dezeen.

"Functional doesn't have to be boring, it's a neutral space that enables the people who visit it to be their best professional selves."

At the centre of ARC Club, which measures just over 232 square metres, are a pair of boxy, sound-proofed pods crafted from birch plywood.

Inside, they accommodate a handful of private meeting rooms, storage cupboards, printers and a kitchenette complete with silver-metal cabinetry.

Lundin chose to house these services inside a pod-style system so that it can be scaled up or down to suit different-sized branches of ARC Club that open in the future.

The pods are surrounded by various work areas. A few of the furnishings, like the birch-ply tables with the arched legs, were made by Lundin's studio while some of the chairs were sourced second hand.

Pops of colour have been introduced to brighten up the space. Heavy orange curtains are used as room dividers, blue cone-shaped pendant lights have been suspended from the ceiling and bands of yellow paint have been made on the concrete structural columns.

Yellow tiles also clad surfaces in the bathrooms.

Further branches of ARC Club co-working spaces are planned to open in 2021.

Like the Homerton location, they will occupy vacant high-street commercial units in popular residential areas so that members can do what Lundin has monikered "WNH" – work near home.

"A neighbourhood workplace like ARC Club allows people to retain the best of what the office has to offer – full functionality, work-life separation and human interaction – without having to get on a bus or a train," Lundin explained.

"In essence, it's an accessible flexible option for a new breed of remote worker who has grown used to scheduling their work around their day, instead of the other way."

The global coronavirus crisis has forced many to re-think offices and the way in which we work.

Interior designer Sevil Peach predicts that, post-pandemic, companies will scrap working in corporate towers and instead opt to have central "hubs" where just a small per cent of staff will gather.

Architecture practice Weston Williamson + Partners also released a series of graphics that illustrated how businesses could create socially-distanced offices. Tips included wrapping screens around desks, having touch-free doors and employing a cook so that employees don't have to use a shared kitchen.

Photography is by Andrew Meredith.

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Cobra Studios' first furniture series takes cues from classical Roman architecture

Brussels-based Cobra Studios has launched its first furniture collection called Solids, featuring a series of geometric tables with chunky legs made from glossy resin.

The Solids collection by Cobra Studios is made up of three tables and a standing lamp that are each named after significant buildings and figures in the Greco-Roman world.

These include Santa Maria dei Clarici, a coffee table named after a church in Rome, Cicero, a dining table that takes its name from Roman statesman and academic Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Priape, a side table named after a god from Greek mythology.

Also included in the inaugural collection is a floor lamp named after Roman emperor Otho.

The light features a cylindrical, glass shade attached to a thin steel body that is supported by three splayed legs, which offers a visual contrast to the thick, columnar forms of the tables.

The lampshade boasts a deep emerald hue, casting a fluorescent green glow that grants "an eighties feeling", and each of the tables are punctuated with legs in similar shades of turquoise, yellow and green.

The table legs each take a different, playful shape, including spheres, zigzags and cylinders, as a modern take on the solid columns found in classical Roman architecture.

Made from epoxy resin, the legs pierce through the soft-white tabletops, which were designed to evoke "a sense of comfort".

"Contradiction is key: hard shapes need to collide with soft touches," said Cobra Studios.

"Each piece is designed to be conceived as a sculptural entity within its environment," the studio continued. "The supporting elements are so present, that they pierce through the table tops, marking the presence of what lays underneath."

"Their presence organises the tables. The top that used to be an element of priority, becomes merely a connecting piece. This ancillary function is emphasised by the matt, chalk finish."

Based in Brussels, Cobra Studios was recently founded by architect Kenny Decommer and designer Hugues Delaunay.

Decommer and Delaunay are not the only designers to create geometric forms from resin. Canadian designer Martha Sturdy made a series of stools, wall decorations, a table and stackable shelves from the material, coloured in bold, primary hues.

Other creatives have paired resin with more unconventional materials, like Korean designer Oh Geon, who used mixed resin with leftover sawdust from a woodworking studio to create a blocky stool.

Photography is by Jeroen Verrecht.

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Annabelle Tugby Architects transforms old workshop into its own rustic studio

Annabelle Tugby Architects has created its own design studio by renovating and extending a semi-derelict joinery workshop in a cow field in Cheshire, UK.

Located in the village of Styal, the self-designed studio was built as Annabelle Tugby Architects outgrew its previous office and required a larger space into which it could expand.

Rather than building from scratch, the studio adopted a more eco-friendly approach of refurbishing an old rustic building with "character and texture" and adding a small timber frame extension.

"The previous office was just down the road but as the size of the practice increased we sought a beautiful old building nearby to renovate and grow into," explained Tom Overbury of Annabelle Tugby Architects.

"We were keen to work with a building which had character and texture. We are also very conscious of the need to adapt and reuse buildings wherever possible rather than simply demolishing them," he told Dezeen.

"The setting of the new building, surrounded by a field of beautiful longhorn cows and calves makes it a beautiful place to work year-round."

Now complete, the original gabled building serves as the studio's main drawing space, chosen for its spacious interior with a high ceiling.

The office's ancillary spaces, such as the kitchen, meeting room and toilet, are therefore contained within the new timber extension that is single-storey and flat-roofed.

"The decision was made quite early on to leave the main drawing space as a whole volume and have a single storey extension adjacent to it," explained Overbury. "It felt worthwhile to preserve this volume."

Externally, the workshop's original white render finish has been updated and overclad with white-washed bricks, while the extension is finished in contrasting large, black timber panels.

These materials were chosen to pay homage to local vernacular, but to also visually exaggerate the differences in scale and form of the two buildings.

"As a village Styal has a selection of beautiful historic black and white properties, generally black timber and white painted brick or render," explained Overbury.

"From the outset we sought to respect this context with whitewashed brick to the main workshop space and larger format black timber cladding chosen to complement this on the single-storey extension."

Inside the main studio space, the existing timber doors on the front elevation of the workshop have been restored and refitted for use as the studio's model display area.

To maximise natural light, a full-length skylight has been added to the ridge of the roof while glazing to the rear opens out and frames views of the surrounding field.

The interior finishes are designed for warmth and tactility, dominated by natural lime plaster and lime-ash wood boards.

Furniture and cabinetry throughout was also made from wood, designed by the studio and crafted by a local steel fabricator and joiner. This includes a joiner's bench in the meeting room that nods to the building's former use.

"The interior finishes were chosen with a view to creating a warm and sensitive place to spend a day working," explained Orbury.

"We sought to avoid soulless plasterboard altogether and used natural lime plaster and limed ash veneered boards."

Annabelle Tugby Architects' studio is complete with an air source heat pump, which is the office's sole heat source and was chosen as a sustainable alternative to a traditional combination boiler.

Other rural, self-designed studios on Dezeen include David Guambo's stilted workspace in Ecuador that has a straw roof and John-Paul Philippe's refurbished barn in Connecticut that doubles as his home.

Photography is by Annabelle Tugby Architects.

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Corporate Stock Footage Is Edited Into an Absurdly Chaotic Music Video for BRONSON

Heading into the office mid- or post-pandemic looks a lot different than a few months ago, but hopefully, no one’s workplace resembles the turbulent situation that unfolds at Bronson Inc. in “Keep Moving.” The absurd video opens with typical depictions of corporate life: A woman’s heels clack on the sidewalk, a man looks forward in a (cheesily) determined manner, and employees swipe their badges to enter the building. Soon, though, the mundane scene morphs into complete mayhem. Workers are swept up like a tidal wave before gushing through a television screen. They’re thrown down escalators and battered with a barrage of office equipment and electronics. For every seemingly simple phone swipe or walk down the hallway, havoc ensues.

Directed by the Swedish collective StyleWar in collaboration with production company Smuggler, the music video accompanies BRONSON ’s newly released track “Keep Moving.” The short is comprised of stock footage that’s manipulated and layered with CGI  to create the frenzied office nightmare, according to a statement. For more of Smuggler’s comical projects, head to Vimeo.

 

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