Black Kite Offices

Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher

BLACK KITE OFFICES

Bureau De Change Architects

LEAD ARCHITECT
Billy Mavropoulos

MANUFACTURERS
Clayworks, Forbo

CONTRACTORS
Aw Spaces

AREA
1000 M²

YEAR
2022

LOCATION
London, United Kingdom

CATEGORY
Mixed Use Architecture, Offices Interiors

Text description provided by architect.

Bureau de Change have completed a creative studio for Black Kite, an independent visual effects and design studio in East London, curating a series of intersecting and carved-out cylinders.

Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher
Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher

These configure a sequence of spaces with varying degrees of privacy; informed by the heritage of the site’s industrial past.

The client’s brief called for a specific working environment; production and visual effects suites that are isolated from external sources of light and sound.

Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher
Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher

Bureau de Change responded to these conditions by devising a spatial strategy conceptualised from the site’s industrial past as an Engineers and Iron Foundry.

Geometrical forms of traditional iron kilns reprise themselves in the proposal as a composition of dispersed intersecting circles, mapped across the grid system established by the existing columns.

Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher
Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher

Each volume contains a rectangular void, accommodating and enclosing the production, editing, and colour suites in a controlled private environment. Smaller cylinders intersect the private working space to create transitioning thresholds.

The undulating external surface forged from the intersections was excavated at intervals, creating carved-out spaces within the volumes.

These cavities function as semi-private break out spaces, each correlating to their respective enclosed working suite; creating a duality of space within a singular volume, separated by a lone wall.

Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher
Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher
Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher

The interior of the cut-outs is finished with natural clay plaster, juxtaposing the sharper textures of cylinders with warm and rough surfaces.

The placement of each excavation allows for a natural transition between the enclosed working areas, semi-private breakout cavities, and the central open plan working space.

The kitchen inhabiting one of the cavities is cladded in stainless steel to reflect light and act as a distinct centrepiece of the room by the entrance becoming the social core of the office.

Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher
Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher

Handmade glazed ceramic tiles circumnavigate the curved recycled plastic countertop.

Carefully curated furniture was selected to activate the space and create a homely and comfortable atmosphere, placed among the cavities and the negative spaces formed between the volumes.

Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher
Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher

The proposed layout offers access to a gradating degree of porosity and permeability work-space environments, incorporating and catering to preferential cultures, values, and behaviours of people.

The spaces are not separated into different sectors but are connected seamlessly into one plan, offering a sense of discovery through the layers of spaces.

Black Kite Offices
© Gilbert McCarragher