Binary Consultants were growing and looking for a new office in Harrogate, they chose Victoria Avenue, but needed a design and build company to help transform its dated interior. They had very few visitors, so the breakout and kitchen were to be predominately designed for employee comfort. The team often work long hours on projects, adjusting their working hours to global time zones and needed a cosy breakout and entertainment area to get away from their desks. The rest of the office needed to be functional yet high spec, with a central meeting room for video conferencing. A solution had to be found for both the consultants and developers to project and write information on the walls near their work areas plus manage their storage to reduce office clutter.

The design scheme was very much about textures and the quality of the finishes. The entrance had a different feel from the main office. Black mesh ceiling tiles were used with feature lighting to differentiate the area. The break area wasn’t to look like a conventional office kitchen. We designed the kitchen to include bespoke wooden fronts, corian tops, wooden wall cladding and shelves so it looked more like a bar. Ceramic tiles where used on the entrance wall and a bespoke media wall was created to separate the space from the main office. The breakout seating was selected to support multiple uses from meeting to relaxing, gaming, and watching movies. A meeting room was added to the centre of the scheme, with double glazing on both sides for visibility across the office. Its wooden clad façade is stunning, a true hub of the office and is filled with technology from a wide angled camera for virtual meetings, media screen and controls for lighting and heating. This area was placed here in order to create a natural break (and noise barrier) between the sales teams and the developers. The design included hidden projectors in the ceilings to project onto whiteboard scrum walls in both the sales and developer areas. The developer’s whiteboard wall was constructed from bespoke sliding doors, hiding the comms cabinet and a large amount of storage behind it. The choice of desking was paramount to the Binary work ethos. All the desks are sit/stand to allow for different work styles, and the pedestals have cushions on them to aid impromptu meetings at the desk. White desks were selected to compliment the dark flooring and wooden panels on the boardroom exterior. Also, as part of the project, full smart building control was installed to control the climate, ventilation, lighting, blinds, audio, video and security. The offices respond automatically to the occupants and time of day to minimise energy usage and provide a consistently comfortable working environment. Everything can be controlled using voice commands or the 10” in-wall touch screens mounted throughout the offices.