If awards are anything to go by, the fit-out for Lloyds’ first ever Shanghai office is one of the best in the city. Having been recognised by APIDA, AIA Hong Kong and US-based Contract Magazine, RFP looks back at the elements that made the project a success.
“People assume we’re old and fogeyish,” laments Ian Faragher, Managing Director, Lloyds Reinsurance Company (China). The mere mention of the venerable Lloyds of London, a 320 year old Great British institution, is enough to conjure up images of oak paneling, dark leather and tobacco smoke. This however, could not be further from the reality. While Lloyds, which should be more accurately described as a market than a company, does trace it’s origins to Edward Lloyd’s Coffee House in 1688, it has consistently demonstrated a commitment to innovation and this is reflected in particular by the choices it makes for its corporate interiors.
The prime example is the Richard Rogers designed global headquarters, built in the 1980’s, which one of London’s defining landmarks and is widely accredited with revolutionising the perception of what a major office building should be. For many years, Lloyd’s China home had been a representative office in Beijing, but when a reinsurance license was issued to Lloyds the hunt for a new Shanghai home could begin.
Unique
“At the time, space was really at a premium, there was very little choice,” Faragher concedes, noting that there was strong encouragement from the Shanghai government to locate themselves in Pudong. While transportation wasn’t going to be a problem, one of the key criteria for Lloyds was to find a “unique” space that could be transformed to reflect the nature of the insurer. “We didn’t know how we could define unique but we knew we’d know when we saw it,” he says.
Having seen a dozen or so orthodox commercial buildings in Pudong, however, the team was beginning to talk about settling for “normal” when a call came from their real estate consultants, Colliers International. The top floor of the Azia building was available, a space with high ceilings and an open rooftop area. “I smiled when I saw it and said, this is going to be a real challenge for the designers,” says Faragher.
Not only was the space an issue, but similar to many organisations coming into the China market, outlining the exact requirements was nearly impossible. “The traditional approach of saying how many managers we were going to have or how many workstations we wanted just didn’t work for us. We just didn’t know,” admits Faragher. This meant that the brief necessitated an ultra flexible design, one that was modular and worked with, rather then against, the constraints of the building.
Lloyds spoke to a number of design firms, and narrowed it down to three before plumping for MMoser Associates’ proposal. “Interestingly the three proposals were all about the same price, we didn’t want to spend huge amounts of money,” reveals Faragher, “but I thought the MMoser one worked really well with the building structure.”
Simple design 
There were three main threads in the underlying concept behind the design team’s approach, says Ziggy Bautista, Designer, MMoser Associates. “The first was the seamless integration of Lloyd’s brand ethos “constant originality” with Shanghai’s past present and future,” he reveals. This was done by breaking down the walls and positioning the syndication area and working compartments in the centre of space, thus allowing everybody to enjoy the 360-degree city view.
The second aspect was the concept of a workspace where design itself seems to disappear. Instead of over complicated desking systems with layers of cabinets and trays, and gaudy furnishings in common areas, a minimalist approach was taken. Simple clean lines both within workspaces and in public areas abound, with dashes of primary colours seen in the Verner Panton Heart Cone Chairs places along the corridor, or “sky lounge”, that runs along the perimeter of the office. This minimalist approach also underpinned the third design thread, creating a paper and clutter free office.
Paper-free technology
“We focused on delivering a workspace that was uncluttered and achieved both transparency and simplicity,” explains Kennes Colarossi, Associate Director, MMoser Associates. She continues that, besides the problems posed by the unorthodox space, the biggest challenge facing the design team was the concealment of the technology that underpins Lloyds business. “We achieved a genuinely minimalist office,” she says, “by hiding all the wiring and AV equipment inside walls and floors.”
This strategy even continued to the conference rooms, where the top-end PC is located under the carpeting. Controlling the various electronics is a special touchscreen control panel which operates everything from the curtains to the wifi system. This simple, user friendly approach is mirrored in the overall design approach, which created an office environment whose simplicity and transparency mimic the way Lloyd’s and its underwriters manage risk.
Benefits and challenges
“Our business is really people business, and that means that an office of this nature, one that’s all open, is perfect,” says Faragher. In line with this dedication to openness, there are no internal doors within the office, something that the team jokingly referred to as a money-saver during the project discussion phases. “The money was spent on the IT side of things. We wanted to have a completely paperless trading environment” says Faragher.
One downside of the clean lines, is the tricky issue of cable management, says Faragher. “We’ve found that when you go with glass walls and tables rather than desks you’ve really got to pay attention to wire management,” he explains. “We have struggled with that, you would think that major furniture manufacturers would give a lot more thought to wire management.”
Recognising the brand
Based on awards alone, Lloyds has managed to achieve one of the best small offices in the world. The design has achieved plaudits from as far away as New York, and all the project stakeholders express their delight with the final product. For Nileema Allerston, Brand and Marketing Manager, Lloyds, “The Shanghai office was a very symbolic delivery for Lloyds worldwide.” She praises the designers ability to keep the brand at the heart of the design, adding that the fit-out “Is both strikingly modern without being gimmicky and manages to retail an elegance that should bestow a 300 year old brand.”
