NBBJ is the international architectural practice behind some of the world’s most innovative workplaces, but how does it stay ahead of the curve and what lies in store for the future of building design? Emily Wright reports. Portrait by Will Bremridge
The first thing that hits you when you walk into NBBJ Design’s London headquarters is the Miles Davis.
The jazz has been turned up to such a volume that it fills the entire atrium. And it is only on approaching the main reception desk that is becomes apparent that the security guards sitting behind it are humming along in almost perfect harmony. They stop for as long as it takes to check in a visitor and show them to the lifts before gleefully launching back into their duet as the elevator doors close.
The experience is akin to a musical decompression chamber – erasing all memory of the bustling streets of east London and the roar of Old Street traffic. And if there is a company in the world where this sort of welcome is entirely in keeping with the overarching ethos, it’s NBBJ.
The architectural practice charged with delivering Google’s new 1.2m sq ft Bay View campus in Silicon Valley, California, is widely considered to be one of the most visionary in the world. A 700-strong company split across 10 global offices, NBBJ is the designer behind the iconic Amazon and Samsung HQ buildings – both located in the practice’s hometown of Seattle, Washington. The firm also has a reputation for delivering designs for the healthcare and science sectors so innovative they border on the futuristic.
So what does it take to be so consistently forward-thinking? And what could be next on the horizon for global property design? Here NBBJ’s London partner David Lewis and principals Rebecca Mortimore and Jane McElroy reveal what it is that they believe sets them apart from the rest.
Bold ideas
When it comes to homing in on some of NBBJ’s boldest ideas, the London office is a good place to start. Set up 15 years ago, the team was the driving force behind designs for the world’s first shadowless building released this spring. That and a novel approach to improving the London Underground – replacing the Circle Line with a high-speed travelator.
The origins of these grand plans do not always come solely from the architects themselves. And this, says Lewis, is the key to the group’s success.
“We are very well placed to advise developers on what their client is likely to want out of a building based on the end user.” says Lewis. “Whether that is patients in a hospital or the workforce at Google. Why? Because of the number of people we have working for us who are not architects.”
This is a strategy used across the whole company. People from outside the design profession are hired full-time to help the architects understand how to create buildings that best meet the tenants’ needs and, as a result, keep developers happy. From anthropologists who advise on human behavioural patterns to medical staff who can help with the creation of new hospital buildings based on personal experience, Lewis says this external insight is crucial to knowing what will and will not work.
“We use research – particularly from our scientists and doctors who advise in human behaviour – to establish new ideas,” he says. “It is these people who inform the way we think.”
And he adds that the practice also uses young people from the tech companies it regularly works with as sounding boards to get an idea of upcoming future trends.
“Developers need to target end users much more specifically. When so many of these are millennials, especially when it comes to offices, our interaction with tech companies like Google and Amazon, where there are a lot of young people to talk to, is very useful. That level of access to young people working at these particular companies is valuable,” says Lewis. “And it means we can pass on their thoughts on what they want from a building in an ideal world to clients across the portfolio.”
Appliance of science
This go-between role does not stop there. NBBJ is known for delivering some of the world’s most high-tech, complex science schemes, including the expansion of the Wellcome Trust Sanger facility in Cambridge. Principal Rebecca Mortimore says liaising between developer and tenant is a particularly important element of this portfolio, not least because it is always adapting.
It may be one of the UK’s fastest burgeoning sectors, but as robotics and big data push the field towards a more computerised system, science is changing fast – along with the buildings required to support it.
“Once upon a time, science facilities would be 40% workspace and the rest being more of the wet lab areas and benches,” says Mortimore. “Now wet labs are diminishing and what these facilities look like is more of an enhanced office space.”
Whether this is making the sector more attractive to traditional commercial developers is difficult to call, but Mortimore is noticing more interest from companies with less experience in running or developing science parks and facilities. And this, she says, is where the advisory role is so important.
“It does seem that there are more developers who would like to get more involved in science and health research facilities,” she says. “It is an exciting, growing trend. But while they know all about money, buildings, sites and how it will all work from a delivery perspective, they don’t always know about the science or understand how best to communicate with the tenant. Equally, scientists can be incredible experts in their field but know absolutely nothing about bricks and mortar. Part of our role is acting as a bridge so we can interpret the science, with help from our non-architectural staff, to work out exactly how the tenant wants that building to perform.”
Healthcare challenge
While NBBJ has made some of its biggest headlines thanks to high-profile HQ designs and the new breed of science facilities, 50% of the group’s portfolio across the globe is made up of healthcare assets.
With the NHS under financial pressure and increasingly high patient expectations, now is a particularly interesting time for the sector in the UK.
“The patient experience is so important,” says principal Jane McElroy. “People are living longer and the NHS is really being challenged.”
And she is well aware that her suggestion for a solution is a controversial one. “I know people are wary of the public and private sectors working together when it comes to healthcare. But it seems as though the NHS should be focusing on doing what it does best – providing that healthcare. Maybe it is not so good at managing its estate, so that is where the private sector can come in and be very supportive,” she says.
“If the NHS does not have the skills to identify excess space that can be disposed of to realise some extra capital to reinvest, then why not have someone else oversee all that?”
McElroy points to the new £429m Royal Liverpool Hospital currently under construction as a case in
point. A PFI scheme with building company Carillion on board as contractor and investor, the public private partnership will result in a new, 650-bed hospital. But with a difference – every bed will
be in a single en suite room.
Cost-wise, she points out that as bed space only makes up 30% of the entire hospital, even a 10% increase will only be 10% of 30%, which is arguably a small price to pay for privacy and a significantly improved patient experience.
And in true NBBJ style, it offers clients something extra, ingenious and a little bit unusual when it comes to the completion of a healthcare building. “We hire actors to pretend to be patients for a week before the hospital opens properly,” says Lewis. “They are briefed on how to behave so medical staff can get used to the new building and equipment before the real patients arrive.”
Future trends
As for future trends, Lewis is happy to raise some points he thinks developers would do well to keep in mind. “Visibility to promote interaction’” he says. “How do you get people together? In an office, a hospital, a science facility? Our research has revealed that people are more likely to engage with others around them if they can actually see them. So buildings need to be designed with that in mind.
“And sitting is the new smoking. We must design spaces where people have to get up and move around. Put the kitchen at one end of the office and the printer at the other.”
He adds: “Getting people moving also gets them thinking. There is a statistic I heard recently which is that when we are four years old we have around 2,100 brain synapses an hour. When you get to my age that has dropped to about one a week. That shows just how much you have to create points of interest to jolt the brain into action.”
Perhaps that explains the presence of those security guard jazz singers in reception. A guaranteed point of interest – and brain synapse – for each and every person as they enter building. And, for that matter, when they leave. Because the last thing that hits you when you walk out of NBBJ’s London HQ is the Miles Davis.
