Nova Building, UK

Michael Grubb Studio was appointed by Amigo Loans to create the commercial lighting environment for their new headquarters – the Nova Building.

Our brief was to ignore convention of the traditional office lighting scheme and illuminate the building’s hot-desking workstations; meeting rooms; boardrooms; café-restaurant area; social breakout spaces and an in-house massage room.

The lighting scheme was designed to be ‘honest’ and free flowing to remove any sense of hierarchy between the various spaces. Additional lighting was added around the walls to provide balance and to emphasise the tone and texture of the raw stone finish.

An intimate lighting scheme was introduced to the café-restaurant areas to promote staff engagement. Additional lighting was added to the performance space and the graphic information boards.

“It is a brave lighting designer who uses that much-maligned student standby, the paper globe, as the staple fitting in an office lighting scheme. But new ways of working are demanding different ways of designing and lighting the workspace, and Michael Grubb Studio’s scheme responds creatively and practically to the client’s brief.

Paper globes are clearly an exceptional response to a particular client brief and environment, but there is a basic principle here. So much in the office environment is about prescription and conforming to norms rather than providing a solution that dares to be different while fulfilling the specific requirements, environment and needs of the people that work there”. – Jill Entwistle, Editor of the Society of Light & Lighting