Faber HQ

After 94 years in London’s Bloomsbury, publishing house Faber & Faber relocated to Hatton Garden, only the fourth move in its rich history. Designed by Piercy&Company's dedicated interiors team, the move to a new headquarters provided a unique opportunity to reframe Faber's identity and establish a more collaborative and communal work environment. The new workplace needed to balance experiential and playful notes with pragmatic spatial design to support productive, concentrated work, while also providing a home for Faber's wider community of authors and readers. With this dynamic mix between events and writing programmes and the quiet, sustained concentration of the editing process, Piercy&Company saw the need for a workspace that would flex in response to the varying demands.

Taking its cue from the company's tenet that Faber is a family "united but not uniform", the design incorporates two classrooms, a large reception and showcase lounge - with secret door - an event space as well as access to several newly landscaped outdoor spaces. Spread across 13,000 sqft over four floors of the award-winning Art Deco building - The Bindery - the design reflects the colourful content of human activity as well as the huge array of books, which are as vital to the publishers fabric as the building itself. A total of 600 linear metres of shelving in a plain formaldehyde-free MDF board run throughout public-facing and workspace environments, defining the space. The decision to use MDF with its natural warm tone, reminiscent of browned book pages, became a key characteristic of the design, tying the floors together.

This rigorous bookshelf ‘framework’ allows the space to be filled with life and individual expression while also giving order to the space. Perhaps the jewel of the project is the reception space and its adjacent Academy classroom. With tall windows onto Hatton Garden, the space feels open and welcoming, a living showcase for Faber and its education programme. A sliding partition opens for public events while, in its closed position, creates a comfortable daylit room for aspiring authors. The front of the space houses an elegant lounge area and a warm welcome to visitors as well as a view in to the company. A monumental wall of books invites visitors to browse and to take in the breadth of the Faber catalogue. Red vertical accents on this hero shelf reference book spines, while the reception desk design took hand-binding of books as an inspiration for its threaded leather ribbon detail. A secret door leads to a back of house refreshment area, a tongue-in-cheek nod to historic libraries.