Commercial · Reference design C-05
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Modular offices you commission once and then work in every day — daylit down the length, quiet where it needs to be, and set out on a structural bay you can count.
Decision Rooms
Four decisions that shape the working day
Open or cellular
How much of the long floor stays open
The structural bay runs the length of this building and the plan is free inside it. Keep the floor open and everybody gets the long daylight and the depth; close parts of it into rooms and you gain quiet, at the loss of the view down the length. Most organisations want both, in a ratio only they know. Fix that ratio before the linings are drawn.
Open and cellular can be shown as two plans on one frame, so the same building appears both ways and the people who will work in it argue the difference out. Nothing structural moves between them. Only the linings, the doors and the services do, and all three are still on paper at the point you are choosing.
The entrance
A recessed portal, or a canopy that comes out to meet you
The entrance can be cut back into the elevation, so the door sits in shadow and the building reads as one clean plane, or pushed forward under the roof as a covered porch you arrive into. The first is quieter and suits a discreet corporate front. The second suits a building where visitors are dropped off in rain. Decide which arrival you want.
Screen or open
What happens to the flank that takes the afternoon
One long flank gets the afternoon sun and something has to answer it. Vertical fins standing clear of the glass cut the low glare while keeping the daylight and the view; a perforated screen does more of both; a solid panel bay does most of all and gives you a wall. This is the decision your staff will notice first, and the one they will mention.
The second phase
Whether the building is drawn to grow along its own line
This building extends along the bay line, not upward, and extending it later is straightforward only if it was drawn for that at the start. A phase-two extension needs its end bay left ready, its services sized for the whole, and its ground kept clear. None of that is dear now. All of it is dear once the landscaping is in.
A building drawn for a second phase keeps one end bay ready to open, sizes the incoming services for the whole thing and leaves the ground beyond it unplanted and undrained. A building drawn without one is simpler today. Both are legitimate. What is not is assuming an extension will be easy later, because the end wall is the part that decides.
Arrival along the long elevation
You arrive along the length of the building rather than at its end, which is deliberate: the long elevation is the one that explains it. A single storey runs level under one roof plane, glazing and solid panel alternating on a regular beat, and the roof steps forward once, over the entrance, so there is no question about where to go.
Stop at the entrance and look up. The roof plane is thin at its edge and lined underneath in wood-tone anodised aluminium, lit, so the soffit reads warm against a grey monsoon sky and against a hard March one. Below it the doors sit in a frame of the same depth as the panel bays, so the entrance belongs to the elevation rather than interrupting it.
Walk past and the beat is countable. Panel joint, mullion, panel joint, mullion, the whole length. That regularity is not a stylistic choice; it is the frame showing through, and it is what tells anyone standing on the paving that this building was manufactured to a drawing rather than improvised on the plot. Planting runs in a low bed along the base.
Walk the bay line
Stand at the bay line and the construction is legible without a drawing. Steel members carry the roof and the floor loads. Manufactured panels bolt back to it and close on an even dry joint with a shadow gap. Nothing on the envelope was cast, laid or plastered on your plot, and there is no mortar line to find.
The glazing is full-height in slim frames on the same beat as the panels, so the vertical rhythm never breaks as you walk. Where the wall closes, it closes on a joint rather than halfway across a panel. It is a small discipline and it is the difference between a manufactured building and one that merely uses manufactured parts.
The screening on the afternoon flank is a dry-fixed element in its own frame, standing clear of the glass so air moves behind it and so a broken unit can be replaced without touching the glazing. Fins are wood-tone anodised aluminium; perforated screens are a manufactured panel. Neither timber nor bamboo appears anywhere outside.
Inside the working floor
Reception is inside the door and facing it, with the floor visible beyond rather than hidden behind a wall. A visitor sees where they are going before they are told, and your staff see the door. Seating is off to one side and away from the desk, so a waiting client is not sitting inside somebody else’s telephone call for a quarter of an hour.
Past reception the floor runs long. Desks sit across the depth rather than along it, so nobody is more than a short walk from a window and the light comes across a screen instead of behind it. The ceiling is flat and set out on the frame line, with the lighting, the ventilation grilles and the service outlets all landing on that same grid.
The rooms that shut sit against the solid flank, where windows would be fighting the sun anyway. Meeting rooms, the offices that need a door, the room where difficult conversations happen. Putting them there does two useful things at once: it gives the open floor the glazed side to itself, and it puts a lining between the desks and the afternoon heat.
The reception desk under the entrance soffit, and the floor beyond it
C01
A fin screen meets the glazing head; the panel bay meets the base
The workplace fit-out
Inside, the fit-out is what you actually see: partitions meeting the ceiling grid square, power and data rising where the desks are, and a service zone running with the frame rather than across it. Someone setting out from a panel joint arrives at the number the drawing gives, because both came off one line.
Surfaces are chosen for a building cleaned daily and repaired occasionally. Hard floor through the circulation, acoustic lining where the rooms are grouped, and a wall behind reception that takes an identity without the building changing colour for it. Interior colours follow the assigned exterior family, warmed, with stone and joinery of the interior’s own.
Look along the ceiling and the whole coordination shows in one view: the grid running with the bay, the partition heads landing on it, the lighting in line and the grilles in line with the lighting. Where a partition lands mid-bay instead, you see it immediately — a mullion in the wrong place and a junction that never quite closes.
The buyer’s folio
The workplace folio
Written for the person who will sign the commission and then walk this floor every morning. Four chapters: what the building looks like from outside, what the working day is like inside it, how it is made, and what reaches you ahead of any order.
01The long elevationWhat the building looks like from the approach, and why the bay you can count is the point of it.
Everything about the way this building is made is aimed at a permanent workplace rather than a temporary one. It is glazed floor to ceiling where people sit, it has a designed entrance and real welfare accommodation, and its surfaces are chosen to survive being cleaned every morning. Anyone comparing it to a hired unit is comparing two different purchases.
The beat you can count is the frame showing through.
Being one storey is a decision with consequences worth stating plainly. You get daylight from both sides of the floor, no lift, no stair core and level access throughout, and a single-storey fire strategy is your consultant’s to write. You give up the compactness of a tall building on a small plot. On a campus or an industrial estate, that trade is usually the right way round.
Anyone comparing this to a hired unit is comparing two different purchases.
IN SHORT — One storey, one long bay line, glass where the desks are and panel where the rooms are.
02Inside the working floorReception, the open length, the rooms that shut, welfare, and the daylight everybody actually gets.
Welfare belongs in the plan rather than in what is left of it. A pantry with a sink and somewhere to sit, washrooms with a step-free approach and turning space, a room that locks, and a place to put a coat and a helmet. These are the parts of an office that get noticed only when they are wrong, which is why they are settled early here.
Light across a screen, not behind it.
Quiet is a plan problem before it is a specification problem. The rooms that need it are grouped, the pantry and the printers are kept off the open floor, and the service door is at the far end from reception. Layer build-ups and glazing specification are settled with your consultant against your site, and we publish no sound-reduction figure of our own.
Accessibility runs through the whole plan rather than sitting in one paragraph of it. A level route from the parking to the door, a flush threshold, corridor and door widths that a chair can use, turning space in the washroom, and a reception counter with a low section. On a single-storey building all of that is straightforward, which is one of the better arguments for building one.
The parts of an office that get noticed only when they are wrong are settled early here.
IN SHORT — A long daylit floor, the closed rooms on the solid flank, and welfare that was planned rather than left over.
03What it is made of, and how it lands on your siteThe frame, the panels, the screens and the services — and what happens on a plot that is already occupied.
Coordination has a boundary and this page states it. We set out the routes, the risers, the terminations and the openings for power, data, ventilation, drainage and fire services. The systems themselves, their sizing and their certification are your consultant’s, quoted separately, and signed off by a licensed professional who has your site in front of them.
Where the wall closes, it closes on a joint.
Many of these go up on plots that are already working — an operating factory, a campus with staff on it, a yard with lorries. That changes the sequence rather than the building: deliveries are staged, the frame goes up in one closed area, and the noisy work is grouped. Say at the start if your site stays occupied, because the programme is written around it.
A building that blurs the coordination line is a building nobody can approve.
IN SHORT — A steel frame you can count, screwed panels, screens that come off — and a stated boundary on the services.
04What you receive before you commitWhere this design stands, the drawings that follow, the figures we will not publish, and what today’s first page leaves out.
What the design studies share is the single storey, the long bay line, the alternation of glazed and solid, and a deep roof that carries the entrance. What they do not agree on is the roof form, and the entrance and the treatment of the afternoon flank are open decisions on this page rather than settled ones. No colour is named, because the palette family arrives with the design.
The end wall is the part that decides whether you can extend later.
On the ground, the manufacturing group’s published record is sixty to ninety days, narrowed per project in the quotation, and it is worth being exact about what that covers. It is time on your ground, after the base is out. It is not the design period, the approvals or the fit-out. Anybody quoting it as the whole programme is quoting it wrongly.
What you will not find here is a fire rating, a thermal value, a sound-reduction figure, a seismic category or a structural capacity put forward as ours. Those belong to whichever licensed professional holds your site and your brief, and to the systems your consultant specifies. Nor is there a price, a rate or an indicative figure, since every building is quoted against its plot.
Naming a sheet before it exists puts a document in your head we cannot put in your hand.
Search for this today and you get supplier product pages alongside articles explaining why building this way is a good idea. Both are useful and neither is what a company choosing its own head office actually needs. What is missing is one place that carries the plan, the elevation, the section and the coordination boundary together, which is what this page exists to become.
IN SHORT — A shared form, a family assigned with the design, sheets after it — and every figure we cannot stand behind left out.
What a facilities lead asks before signing
Is this a permanent building or a temporary one?
Permanent, and it is designed and detailed as one. Steel frame, manufactured panel envelope, full-height glazing, real welfare accommodation and surfaces chosen to survive daily cleaning. It is engineered off site because that is a cleaner and more predictable way to build, not because the result is meant to be moved on afterwards.
How many people can work in it?
That is set by your plan, not by ours, and it moves with how much of the floor you keep open. The building gives you one clear bay line with the depth to take desks across it and the rooms against the solid flank. Bring your occupancy figure and your working style, and the layout is drawn to them.
Who is responsible for the services, fire strategy and approvals?
Your consultants, and the boundary is stated rather than blurred. We set out routes, risers, terminations and openings for power, data, ventilation, drainage and fire services. Sizing, specification, certification and the approvals themselves sit with a licensed professional on your side, quoted separately. That division is what makes the design approvable at all.
Can we extend it later?
Along the bay line, yes, and it is straightforward only if it was drawn for at the start. Phase two needs an end bay left ready, incoming services sized for the whole building, and the ground beyond kept clear of drainage and planting. Decide it in decision four rather than discovering it after the landscaping contractor has finished.
Our site stays in use. Can you build while we are working?
Usually. The sequence shifts, not the building. Deliveries are staged instead of dumped, assembly is confined to one closed area, and the noisier work is grouped into agreed windows. Tell us at enquiry stage that the site remains occupied, because the programme and the delivery schedule are written around that from the beginning.
What can our architect look at before we commit?
The ground all five studies stand on, together with the four decisions above. A thirteen-sheet set is raised once a design is chosen, and nothing in it has been drawn, so there is no folder to send. Saying that is more use to you than a list of sheet titles nobody can produce.