PPL are the UK licensing company for recorded music (their joint venture company PPL PRS are also sponsors of The Office section of www.makeadifference.media). Representing over 140,000 performers and recording rightsholders, PPL’s new workplace in the heart of Soho, designed and built by Peldon Rose, spans 10,000 sq ft of creative office interior design.
With a focus on providing a welcome workspace to inspire, with agile and collaborative spaces for employees – alongside musical design details that nod to the music industry – the workplace is both functional and charming and the perfect place to continue to drive PPL’s success. Build time was 18 weeks.
Agile spaces and acoustic considerations
Floors three and four make up PPL’s working floors, where employees will spend the majority of their working day. To accommodate the diverse needs and preferences of individuals, the floors are characterised by different areas for private, focused, or collaborative work. Carefully selected fabrics and the use of furniture such as focus booths and high touch down tables operate as permeable dividers to harmonise energy levels and optimise acoustics between different zones. This was an important part of the brief.
Breakout areas have comfortable sofas facing large white-boards inset into acoustic glass dividers, allowing ad-hoc creativity to flow. A “collaboration spine” runs through the centre of the floorplate – a linear collection of agile and cooperative working spaces for open meetings.
The area is given character with punchy modulus flooring and mint-green painted joinery ceilings and partitions. Soft upholstery and special acoustic dividers which absorb sound five times more than standard sheer curtain fabric all help integrate this higher-energy zone into an office that still proves productive and functional.
Circling the collaboration spine is a belt of oak vinyl and fixed open-plan desking, placed perpendicular to windows to maximise exposure to natural light. Visual cues that resonate with PPL’s identity are visible, with soundbars printed on walls, and other musical motifs featured throughout the space.
Adaptable office interior design
A large canteen area on the fifth floor enables the company to come together to socialise, rest, collaborate, and soak up the benefits of the many windows that line the floor’s periphery, flooding the space with natural light.
The use of biophilia, raw materials, and a neutral colour scheme accented with pops of colour from canteen chairs, feeds into a playful yet relaxed atmosphere. PPL’s office is inclusive and accessible throughout, including in the kitchen with a new ramp and sinks installed with space for a wheelchair to pull up underneath.
Adjacent to the canteen area is the company boardroom. Notable for its leaf-printed wallpaper and its glass folding walls, the room has the ability to open into the canteen area to create one large space for all-company meetings, seminars or events. Foldable and moveable furniture means the space can flex day to day to fit the needs of the company.
Sustainability accomplishments
Peldon Rose were tasked to reuse existing features and furnishings where possible in line with an environmentally conscious design approach. To this end, the internal doors have been vinyl wrapped in a sophisticated black, much of the existing furniture has been reupholstered, and the old desking kept. This is a cost-effect design approach. Material procurement followed a similar mindset, with products carefully selected, starting from the way their raw materials are extracted, to manufacturing, transportation, and end of life.
PPL now enjoy a working space that is welcoming to employees and optimised to accommodate different styles of working and work tasks.
About the author
Alice Bamber is Marketing and Communications Executive with Peldon Rose – a leading London provider of office design and build expertise. Its team of workplace strategists and specialists create workplaces that deliver business value, while providing exceptional everyday experiences for the people who use them. Through a bespoke end-to-end service, Peldon Rose rapidly gains an understanding of business needs, and then designs and delivers industry-leading solutions. Throughout the process, the team provide a consistently uplifting experience for clients and their people. They achieve this by sparking joy, enabling purpose, inspiring belief and building connections through the spaces and relationships created every day.
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