Area, Windsor

Having called their Surrey campus home for over two decades, Area – one of Europe’s most progressive and successful workplace design and fit out specialists – were driven by the opportunity to unite their people and create a new environment where their team felt proud to come to work. The newly redeveloped Windsor Two building would become the perfect new home. Complementing the internal structure of the existing built environment, Area’s interior design scheme explores the possibility of wellbeing, sustainability and volumes of space in a dynamic new layout across one open-plan working floor.

The Objective

As experts in creating bespoke workplace environments for their clients, Area approached this project by applying the same methodology, teaming up with 360 Workplace to facilitate employee engagement exercises, occupancy studies, surveys and workshops – to better understand challenges and pain points- informing a data-led concept with wellbeing and sustainability at the core.

With the Windsor Two building already achieving BREEAM Excellent, the Area team were keen to demonstrate their commitment to wellbeing and sustainability further, also ensuring they made considered design choices as well as achieving other core certifications such as Fitwel, Ska and AirRated’s AirScore™.

The Outcome

Area achieved a Gold AirScore™ certification, demonstrating that their space is an excellent example of a workplace providing and maintaining excellent indoor air quality for their employees.

Performing well across AirScore’s key fundamental parameters, the building performed particularly well across PM2.5 levels, with the building’s filtration system demonstrating a high level of control over the incoming air and indoor activity having little impact on internal dust concentrations. This suggested that particulate matter was well controlled across their different workspaces.

Effective ventilation and temperature regulation also contributed to good scores across the CO2 and temperature parameters, indicating that workspaces are well-optimised for comfort, wellbeing and productivity.

As the AirScore™ certification also aligns with other common building accreditations, Area were able to use the data and findings from AirRated’s study and additional formaldehyde samples to achieve a 2 Start Fitwel Accreditation.

The Benefits

Achieving an AirScore has not only proven the high quality of indoor air within their Windsor HQ but has also provided occupants with a greater understanding of the indoor environment.

By working with AirRated’s team of environmental scientists and undertaking a three-week on-site study, the Area team has been able to better understand how indoor air quality can be improved, managed and maintained going forward. Their certification results indicate that their design considerations and specification choices have provided their team with a workspace that delivers a consistently healthy and productive space to work.

Area are also undertaking lunch and learn sessions to educate their team on the fundamentals of IAQ and other environmental accreditations, how they apply to their work environment and how they can better support their clients in creating healthy, productive spaces.

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Following this project, we also worked together with Area to create a best practice guide on designing for better air quality in commercial buildings to help you optimise your own IAQ when looking for a new location or designing your new space.

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