Fora Reading Coworking

Located within the lower three floors of the recently refurbished Thames Tower, the completion of Fora Reading marks the expansion of Fora’s coworking brand outside of London. At Fora Reading, we took Fora’s brief of blending premium hotel-style service with innovative technology, and applied their approach of crafting coherent-to-read, easy-to-inhabit and intuitive-to-use spaces.

A distinctive red steel stair links to a lounge on the first floor that overlooks the main building reception with a core wall that is lit to display curated pieces of art, orientating the approach to offices and open desks. Two lounges and kitchens on the second floor offer views out over the city and neighbouring square and provide informal collaborative and breakout space to the office floor.

Careful consideration of adjacencies of use and acoustic compatibility of different space uses guided the layout - noisy, social spaces are distanced from quiet focussed places. Throughout the design process, the focus always came back to the individual’s experience and their ability to move to suit their specific task. With productivity a key pillar to Fora’s ethos, the overall acoustic performance of spaces was a crucial aspect of the design. Danish fabric curtains and ceiling rafts with sound masking technologies create a range of acoustic characteristics throughout the space ranging from more lively lounges through to hushed phone booths.