Coffey | Interiors

Beautiful, high performing interiors inside buildings with a past.

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A note for Kinrise

Kilian, it was a real pleasure to spend an hour in your building in Leeds. Walking through it, one thing was obvious. You already understand the thing we care about most, that the most loved workplaces are almost always the ones with a story, given new life rather than knocked down and started again.

When you asked whether we do interiors, I think I undersold us. So here it is, properly.

We have always designed beautiful interiors. For more than twenty years, the spaces inside our buildings, the lobbies, the receptions, the stairs and the places people actually move through every day, have been considered as carefully as the architecture around them. For commercial clients like British Land and U+I, that has meant taking tired heritage and post war buildings and turning them into workplaces that tenants choose, stay in, and talk about. Exactly the work you do at Kinrise, restoring iconic but unloved buildings into spaces people genuinely want to be in.

This is a quick look at two of those, and a little of everything else we have made along the way.

Phil

Case study, workspace retrofit

10 Exchange Square

A 1990s commercial building at Broadgate, reworked from the inside out for British Land. Rather than demolish, we retrofitted, keeping the structure and completely transforming the experience.

At the heart of it is a new ground floor. A warm, curved timber lobby gives the building a generous, unmistakable welcome, wrapping reception, lounge and arrival into one calm space. A new entrance opens the building to cyclists and pedestrians, with end of trip facilities that make the daily commute genuinely better. The material palette is tactile and quietly sustainable, and it has gone on to set the benchmark for British Land's other refurbishments.

The project achieved BREEAM Outstanding, was recognised at the BCO Awards, and shortlisted at the AJ Retrofit Awards and the New London Awards.

Client
British Land
Location
Broadgate, London
Size
92,085 sq ft
Scope
Commercial retrofit
Performance
BREEAM Outstanding
Completed
2022

"The innovative material palette, with sustainability at its heart, enhances the building and has set benchmarks for our other refurbishment projects."

Kieran McSwiggan, Development Manager, British Land

Case study, heritage workspace

Howick Place

A clever, crafted retrofit of a Victorian industrial building in central London, turned into a flexible contemporary headquarters for the developer U+I.

We kept everything worth keeping, the cast iron columns, the timber, the raw industrial character, and layered a modern workplace around it. Open studios, a sculptural central stair, generous breakout spaces and quiet corners, all sitting comfortably inside the bones of the original building. It is exactly the kind of building you work with at Kinrise, and proof that real heritage and a genuinely modern way of working belong together.

Client
U+I
Location
Victoria, London
Size
30,000 sq ft
Scope
Victorian industrial retrofit
Use
Headquarters workspace
Recognition
BCO Awards

Other schemes

A few more interiors

Workspace and home, new and old. The common thread is light, materials you want to touch, and interiors made to be lived in, not just looked at.

Let's talk

I would love to do for one of your buildings what we did at Exchange Square and Howick Place.

If you will have us, I think we could make something special together, whether that is in Leeds or wherever Kinrise is heading next. No hard sell. Just two people who care about old buildings, having a proper conversation about what is possible. Drop me a line any time.

Phil Coffey

phil@coffeyarchitects.com
+44 (0)20 7549 2141
Coffey Architects, 104-110 Goswell Road, London EC1V 7DH