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Align: Mendeley Office

Located in London’s Tech City, Align designed an office space for a technology company, prioritising staff’s ergonomic needs and enabling them to work at their optimum level.

Align have completed a 1900 sqm suite of offices that respond to a complex technical brief, at the same time as prioritising staff’s ergonomic needs, for technology company Mendeley. The offices are located in the landmark AlphaBeta development in Finsbury Square, part of London’s Tech City.

The brief revolved around enabling staff to work at their optimum level, especially when coding. This meant planning for single working, working in pairs and also in both smaller and larger groups with maximum flexibility and variety, meaning staff can work seated or standing and are able to collaborate with varying degrees of privacy in sealed-off spaces, semi-private spaces or open meeting areas.

Concentration and stimulation needed to be carefully balanced in a dynamic, hard-working environment where the human and ergonomic needs of staff were to be respected at all times.

The project also requested specific areas where consumers could come in to test new software and be observed in the process, as well as a range of break-out spaces, ranging from the relaxing to the very chilled indeed in order to off-set the intensity of the programming work. A central gathering space was also requested for the whole company to be able to come together in one place.