Inside Thirdway’s New Home, Designing Culture Into Every Detail with Liam Spencer

0:00We've had some really nice quotes come out of that. It's like, is this actually our office? It's a really nice thing. I've actually seen that on Instagram. I can't believe I work. Yeah, yeah. Like members of staff commenting. And that's so nice, right? But then also from clients, it's just that I think, again, we have landlord clients, we have developer clients, we have occupiers. Some people don't quite understand it at the start. It's like, oh, is this a members club, a hotel, whatever? It's like, that's quite nice. like and it sort of again as we walk around it reveals more as you sort of get into the building which is really cool three years after we've started this podcast we thought it was time to make sure that those lessons and the takeaways from our amazing guests were actually actionable something you can really put into place so we have launched show notes a bi-weekly email get into your inbox and that will give you the key headlines that is indexable findable actionable we can really start to make a difference in creating healthy happy workspaces so the link's below or you can head to stansons.co.uk forward slash space look forward to seeing you sign up welcome another episode of space by stansons this time i'm honestly think i'm going into the nicest space I've ever seen with Liam Spencer the MD of Third Way um so here we are welcome Liam thanks for coming on this tour with us.

1:28I look forward to it. Thank you very much. Oh it's nuts so 224 St John Street. Yeah 224 St John Street. My new home. Yeah why why this building? I think it's um I was reflecting on it a little bit like in terms of where we are as a business or where we've grown into. And I think finding a proper home for Third Way has been an idea for a very long time. But this project came about, I guess, a couple of years ago. We looked at maybe 30, 40 different buildings, different types, obviously for what we are as a business, design and build primarily, but with architecture, furniture, technology, it was important that we could, I guess, house it all together.

2:11And this building was almost in a really interesting state, I think it's really difficult to see right now. So the building itself was a 1950s warehouse, but it had this pretty ugly sort of like 1980s front that had been added on. And it was actually really off-putting. I think for us, we knew from that like 30 or 40, we were looking at Farringdon. We've always kind of been a Farringdon business. We were in St. John's Lane, Bleeding Heart Yard, old street, Morelands. So like this was always, I suppose, our cultural home, if you like. Yeah. But yeah, we dismissed it initially, mainly because of the facade, but also maybe a little bit like off pitch, I guess, initially, like more towards the exit market end.

2:58But then obviously working with Anomaly, our like architects, and sort of like, I guess the bigger vision for it, we realised obviously, if you take that facade out and put something back, that's really contextual actually sits so nicely in its context. Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot of fun. Both buildings either side are listed. We're in a conservation area. You've got like one of my favorite buildings, the Ingersoll factory next door. So actually coming up with a design that fit quite well was quite fun. So the bricks are all handmade English brick, pretty expensive per brick. So standard bricks, probably about 75p or so.

3:38these are about$2.20 per brick. But when we sort of again took the scaffold down and saw it in context, it was absolutely worth it because I think if you used too sharp like persimmon brick, it just wouldn't look right. And what's this like reading, like tiling on the bottom? Yeah, so it's like again an English reconstituted stone. So again, I think the thing for us in the design we'll probably chat about it more as we sort of wander around but we do now probably a balance of about 50 50 between well 50 50 definitely between landlord and tenant which i think is like quite unique in terms of our other competitors and i think of that sort of split half of that is in the west end half of it's in the city city fringe so actually balancing i guess a level of like quality is really important so there's i guess again as we were thinking about the concept like there is a maturity to it yeah it kind of it fits within its context but it could be a building in Mayfair it could be a building in the city it could be all those sort of things and yeah it was quite key that we got that like level of quality right from from the outset so yeah as you walk up from Farrandon like you turn that corner of Seckford Street it's actually quite a unique position to be able to see it like fully like head-on yeah it's like actually quite rare for a building and yeah getting that peak of what's to come in terms of like seeing through the window but also like seeing the roof as well yeah cool let's get inside yeah let's do it yeah how much would you normally advise a client to budget like per square foot on a fit out i think it's that's such a difficult question i think our answer and again i'm being like full politician here is like we'll obviously work two clients budgets and the key thing is like each budget is relevant to its context, right?

5:32Yeah. So as in, for example, one thing we always say is like, we're really unashamedly commercial. So a building in maybe a lower rental area, we don't need to be spending every sort of pound that they've got. It has to be appropriate. But I think at the minute you're seeing that split between, I don't know, 60, 70 pound a foot, but everywhere up to 300, 400 pound a foot for some of the sort of more pioneering businesses at the minute. Yeah, and this would be about? Back in the middle. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. One of the key things we wanted to do was sort of keep this area quite, I suppose, gallery-like.

6:12We learned a lot of lessons during the sort of design concept phase from hotels, from restaurants. I think, again, it gets thrown around so easily, doesn't it? like hospitality and design. But I think more from a functional point of view that what we didn't want to do is you walk straight in and there's a reception desk, a receptionist being like, Hey, how are you? Like actually what we learn from hotels and restaurants is there's a bit of breathing space as you walk in, but we'd actually seen something very similar in, um, there's this big sort of ITAV conference in Barcelona every year. And I think it was Samsung had done a thing where they like mirrored around the screen and it just looked really cool.

6:50so actually being able to like customize this screen and have almost this yeah like gallery entrance as you walk in it's been really striking and we can customize it for clients as they visit so if we're hosting for a pitch we can sort of say oh welcome xyz and it's just that like kind of nice i don't know like one handshake as you walk in yeah no it's nice it does give you that breathing run yeah and then you hit into here and it's like to different lighting, to different ambience. I think that's it. I think, again, the key thing here in terms of really deliberate moves, you've hit the nail on the head.

7:29The lighting level is warm. It's inviting. We're really lucky here that we're absolutely flooded by natural light. So you've got everything pouring through from the front, but you've also got a number of areas as we walk around where light comes in from above. And again, to sort of continue that sort of like slight bit of breathing room, pushing the reception desk back. So you've literally, as we're stood here now, no one's in your face, you've got that space, but actually having line of sight to that sort of central stair feature and the sort of reception desk itself was again, a really key deliberate decision.

8:07So we've got this like huge expense of like, open lunch, collaborating, chatting, informal meetings and i don't know what it was i guess that's what it's used for like yeah i think we've always been um we've always been a very like people focused business yeah i think that's evolved a lot over 17 years i don't think we're as shouty or as sweary i mean pete esposito still is but um uh from a kind of like cultural perspective actually showcasing our people is always really important yeah but also in a really honest way and like again maybe it sounds a little bit over the top but like people do use this so like for lunches people work here people meet down here I think again in a we're long past pandemic life now hopefully but actually being able to meet with people in settings that feel really comfortable was really important again fundamental to the brief so yeah this this is almost like so multifunctional we can party in here we can meet we can play we can work what's your favorite space in the building and actually that journey we've just done is pretty impressive yeah so in terms of that first impression you get once you sort of like come through the big doors and you see it i think it's a real we've had some really like nice sort of like quotes come out of that it's like oh is this actually our office it was really a really nice thing i've actually seen that on instagram yeah i believe i work yeah yeah like members of staff commenting and that's so nice right but then also from clients it's just that i think again as we said when we're talking outside there's that balance of we have landlord clients we have developer clients we have occupiers yeah what's quite nice is some people don't quite understand it at the start it's like oh is this a members club a hotel whatever it's like that's quite nice like and it sort of again as we walk around it reveals more as you sort of get into the building which is really cool.

10:00I have always thought of Third Way as quite a university brand, probably like young, sweary, shouty, wild. It was you. And then I actually took a very long time to, well actually coming to this building changed, but then it was when my perception changed. It took me that long. And I know you've been working it for ages, but you still managed to capture um like the heart and the like i don't know like where you started off at you still managed to capture that and i'm liking that like i'm getting that kind of vibe in pieces but it still merges with this kind of beautiful bougie gentleman's club so house vibe yeah quite quite nicely and i would never have imagined putting the two together yeah i'd like look i think you've hit the nail on the head what what's again it's probably too cute in the sense it like lines up perfectly, but like every office move that the business has had align almost with like different phases of the business.

10:59So there was definitely that sort of 2009 starting out of the back of a global financial crisis, quite, we can do this, we can take down the sort of builders in suits, like we're the fun young alternative. It's where the name comes from the third way. So that was a definite like middle finger up periods. There was then almost like, I think Ben describes it as the university years when we were in Bleeding Heart, which was a lot of drink culture, a lot of kind of, I suppose more well-known at that time, like tenant projects, like Hello Fresh, the kind of like big, colorful, bright, shoreditchy projects.

11:40But that also aligned with us at that time taking on a lot more landlord work. And I suppose growing up naturally as a brand. And then the move to Morelands, the last place, that was when we had the architects come in. We had the growth of our bigger contracting elements. So I think you're right. We're very proud of our... And again, it sounds so throwaway, doesn't it? Everyone says that you're very proud of your culture, but I think we've quite naturally matured as a culture. Everyone's got slightly older, fatter, got kids now. But actually capturing some of that is really important. Yeah. So like little bits, like you can see in the tiling down here, we've got a lot of like core values that aren't just things that are in a brochure somewhere, they're from stories.

12:26So the make them dancers in the tile, in our old office, we had that big long central table. And one of our views was we hold this annual party. And if we can get our clients up on that table dancing at the end of the night, they've clicked with us, they get us as a business. So this idea of make them dancers is actually about, do our clients get us? Are we doing the right thing with them? Which is, I don't know. It's nice. It's nice, right? It is. It's nice. It means you're not going to attract everyone always, are you? They say, if you're everyone's cup of tea, you're a mug. So yeah, you've got to have your identity.

13:06And I just love that you've kept that, but grown up and lost it, which is nice. And I think that's important. And I think what's really nice, like, again, as we sort of like look around, Caitlin, who's our creative director, sort of led her creative team. So all the artwork is produced by ourselves and it's all, it's those core values. So the company you want your kids to work for, drive it like you stole it, all these sort of things that are ingrained within our business, actually represented within it in a very honest, but like quite playful way, which is nice. And just like little touches, like slightly over the top, but reminding ourselves who we are.

13:43And that's cool. We inherited these amazing, so the building, like I said, was a 50s warehouse. The footprint at ground floor is the full site and then the building steps in. So from originally a manufacturing point of view, there was a lot of like top light, which was great. Yeah. And so we sort of opened them up, replaced all the windows throughout, but actually just having natural light is so nice. Yeah. Oh, so good. And who actually led the design? You said Caitlin did the artwork. Did you actually manage the design and the whole process of the day? We had a core team of people made up from Anomaly, people made up from Third Way, the kind of technical services teams, I guess ITAV.

14:26Yeah, there was definitely kind of a few people. A lady called OJ, who's gone back to New Zealand now, which is a bit of a shame. she actually never got to see it open. Amy Martin, who again, from an anomaly perspective, has been here for ages, but then throughout the kind of third-way teams, multiple people like contributing towards design. Yeah, I guess that was the point in which if they were arguing about things, I might cut through some of the decision-making. What was the biggest argument? Biggest argument? I think in a really nice way, like in design and build, there's like there has to be that healthy conflict between the commercial managers and the designers.

15:02And I think at times, as we were sort of uncovering stuff on site, it was really easy to try and just change things. And the amount of sort of site meetings I'd walk into where either OJ or Amy or someone had sort of suggested they didn't like something that had been installed. And in their mind, it would be quite an easy thing to change. And Paul and Joe, from a kind of commercial and delivery perspective, were pretty furious about that. but I think that's the thing with your own project, right? It's almost a never ending. Yeah. Is it easier to design for yourself or design for an actual end client?

15:39Oh, end client, 100%. This is a great example, right? It's very representative of who we are as a business almost in one room. So you've got, again, it's by no means a new idea. I don't think there are any new ideas. But actually just having that little bit of theater that both doors sort of like close up. So when - This feels really nice, by the way. It's like heavy, but smooth. So just putting it out there. Yeah. But actually, as we bring clients in again, just playing into that little bit of theatre that you've got this moment, you can sort of, yeah, effectively just appears as sort of like a joinery, sort of like big cupboard, but it reveals something again, quite beautiful, but fun.

16:24And you've got the sliding steel doors that add that like extra layer of, you know, come in and that. Welcome to my career. Yeah. And then in here, I think we talk about showroom a lot. And again, if we, if we talk about the design principle, the key thing that this had to do was not be a really terrible, like patchwork of lots and lots of ideas. And probably again, if we're learning lessons from it, it was at the start, we were throwing so many different ideas into the pot. Things were starting to just become a bit fickle, silly at times. So we actually took a step back and tried to almost draw that thread through the whole thing.

17:07There's a lot of recurrence of the kind of oxide red color, just again to almost tie everything together. But that sort of maturity in the design paired with a bit of personality and fun. So again, this room is perfect. often our clients will say to us what a meeting room particularly boardrooms like without light so like if they're in the center of a plant so we lent into that here so no natural light in here I guess borrowed from outside but leaning into those darker finishes that kind of like warm light very textural but again having a bit of playful like I love that burl as a finish is back I think it's back.

17:49I love this I love this gap yeah it just makes if it was joined the table would feel so heavy yeah and it just feels lighter more more breathing room it's just so I love that design feature such a small thing I love it. Andrea who did um most of the furniture on this project she's unbelievable in terms of specification and again that's the beauty of working here you're surrounded by like so many incredibly talented people so if you had like another million pounds to spend what would you do what would we do what did you take out that you couldn't afford i think um do you know what like we so we've been in here like a little over a month and a half yeah i think we're still finding our feet in some operational stuff yeah which we knew we were going to do.

18:39So a lot of that was baked into the design. I don't think there's anything that stands out as like, I would absolutely do that. I think there's probably some areas where if we had a bit more time rather than money, maybe some of the detailing we might think about a little longer. But again, like it's always that thing, some of the impurities sometimes show the nicest bits, right? Where it's like, particularly with MEP coordination that's always really hard in a building like this you can see structurally there's a lot of solid kind of like down stands yeah that we couldn't go through so we worked really hard to try and make it as free of MEP as possible but there are those moments where you just have to have it have to have air you have to have cool air yeah particularly at the minute what i want to say here is that they took two and a half years planning this space and it was right in two and a half years, Liam.

19:33And then he's saying he wouldn't have spent more money. He would have spent more time. I think that's really interesting because so often we're like, oh, we need a new office like in six months or a year. And like, no, it's not. You need a new office in three years. The forecasting that goes into this is nuts. So really interesting that Liam would say that about their own space. So like, I like that point. Yeah. So I guess these rooms are in almost contrast to the boardroom. So again, we inherited the amazing sort of openings from the sort of 50s factory itself. So this is almost like the flip of what the point we were trying to make in the boardroom by leaning into the dark.

20:14This is very light, it's very, again, tonal, textural. You can see that sort of like recurring thread. But these rooms are great for finishes meetings. Again, because you're flooded with natural light, you can actually see the real colour. Are you seeing a different level of spec, like showing how different budgets will deliver different looks and feels, right? Yeah, and again, I think the point as we walk around a bit more, naturally, we've put a bit more of our own budget into these spaces. The finishing in here, again, the recurrence of burl, the carpet, these are all a steel glazing system, whereas we've got aluminium on other floors, just to sort of show the different effect.

20:59But actually, there's nothing in here that is stupid or silly or frivolous. The finish is, it's kind of lime wash paints, it's acoustic panels, it's commercial grade walls. It's just, I think, again, what we try to do in every room is things are just nicely put together. That was quite, again, a big part of the brief for ourselves. So as we look at some of the toilets as we go around, a lot of the tiling in there is available in Clerkenwell at X, Y, or Z in terms of it's not a stupid price point, it's just nicely put together. Yeah, I think proper creativity isn't just about money, is it? Yeah.

21:41It's about... And I think that's, thinking about your question about what would we do with another million pounds, probably not a lot. Yeah. Not a lot of difference. It's a great answer. These are the ladies' toilets. are so oh it's such a lovely I love the red oxide you've got going through that yeah I know it's quite it's quite faddy it's a bit on trend at the minute but I think again if we think about those key brief drivers for us one of them was timeless and I think it's not used in a way which it will annoy us it's just almost picking up a bit of personality throughout and at the end of the day if we really wanted to recolor that it's not like we've lent so hard into it that we've got astroturf everywhere or fake grass or i also tell you think it gives it some character because if it was black you don't have that same thread going through like how you've got it on the um profiles or the lights and the doors and then you've got you say you've got different doors but frame finishes yeah like you don't really read the different finishes because you've got the same color no i think that's it and i think a lot of warm wood i think that's like a key thing yeah Right, we're going into the gym.

22:55This space is... I'll let you decide. We work directly with Black Box, the gym manufacturers, to work out what we wanted as a business. There's like 200 of us in here. I suppose at median age, probably somewhere mid-30s, early 40s. and actually quite like a fit company. And I think this, I suppose, like I was saying before, this was a former loading bay. The rear was just a shutter. So like a roller shutter. We replaced that with the glazing to bring natural light in. And then, yeah, worked with the gym providers to almost build up what worked for us. So we've got the kind of functional racks with the cables.

23:46So like a lot of stuff can be done on there. we've got Hirox kind of CrossFit style kit as well. But I think the real like beauty of it is, and again this sounds so over the top, people are using it, even in the six weeks we've been here it's that ability before work there's like a real nice, I suppose popular time, lunch time, but actually in those bits where people have an hour between meetings, you're not having to spend 30 minutes getting to your gym, 15 minutes getting changed, half an hour on a workout that you feel guilty for. It's like actually being able to come down, use it, shower, you've got towel service here, get back to your desk and actually be a bit more focused.

24:29It's really nice. That's lovely. Let's walk through. What's behind the curtains? Nothing. They're purely aesthetic. You can blame Amy Martin for them. It is actually nice how it just softens it, makes it a little bit less. I think from an acoustic point of view, one of our big concerns was that people feel comfortable using the gym. Signage is nice. Yeah. Again, Caitlin. Just pointing that out. I love nice signage. I just think it's great for neurodiversity and that sort of thing, but it's always just nice. Yeah. And I think actually, again, Kate's really good at this. It's like not just splashing it everywhere.

25:09I think some buildings you walk into and it's just signage after sign after sign. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, no, it's just like it's not overloading the mind, but yeah, them dancers that's pointing out again. Yeah. I find it simply fascinating how physical space can totally change how we think, feel and behave meaning it can pause distractions it can connect us it can mean we do our very best work and that's where Stansons steps in this show is created by Stansons who design make and install curtains and acoustics to create the perfect environment for people to flourish and do their very best work you've got a project on we know how it feels reach out and we'll start to talk Thank you.