Friends with benefits

It’s been an eventful 12 months for Graphical House with some significant changes occurring. We found ourselves in an untenable workplace situation that put us in the fortunate position of being able to re-evaluate what we wanted and needed from a studio.

After this we spent a little time in a modern workspace conversion in the city’s business district, there are loads of these in Glasgow, many of them standing half empty with sky-high rents the venture capitalist owners don’t want to devalue. You don’t realise until you spend a little time in this area just how empty it is. There isn’t the sense that it’s run down because it isn’t, it’s just empty. It’s not obvious at first but if you look up, no one lives there. Hardly anyone works there. Decimated by the pandemic? Or simply decisions from the past manifesting in the present. It’s hard to say, it’s probably a little of both but there are people better qualified than me to decide. 

In a way that space suited us well with its semi-industrial aesthetics. It was quiet, easy to heat and comfortable. There was no direct sunlight so we could actually see our screens, but the view was of a not very nice wall and it just felt too isolated and quiet, an island. Not really us.

Ideally not somewhere with the same feel as Peter Saville’s infamous and semi-controversial ‘This is not a brothel’ sticker (more on that here) that has been the traditional/clichéd setting for companies like ours for years. Somewhere with the potential to have less of an environmental impact but also easy to get to. And somewhere we’d be proud to bring our clients. Enter Collective Architecture.

We’ve known Collective for years, some of us for a very long time indeed. We have worked together on many occasions, always a really enjoyable and rewarding process. Recently they bought a floor of Albert Chambers (a building not a victorian gentleman) on Bath Street in Glasgow, just off Buchanan Street the city’s still bustling retail centre. They have been kind enough to invite us to share this space with them, giving us our own area at one end of the squared off horse shoe shaped floor. The entire space has been around 60–70% refurbished so far (with ambitions to complete the rest before too long) and to an extremely high standard. Everything has been considered in that way that great architects do. Meeting and ‘town hall’ event and social areas filled with light and beautiful, tactile materials. Technology, art, music and a properly good coffee machine. All things that we also value and appreciate.

Beyond the tangible, the culture also fits. Open, friendly and social. Eating together, shared playlists, meetings at the coffee machine. You’ll always find us in the kitchen at parties. Last week we joined Collective for Burns night. What was really remarkable was the diversity of their team. Readings and performances in Turkish, Malaysian, Ukrainian, Gaelic, old Scots and Northern English. Greek Classics, Bob Dylan, John Lenon and John Cooper Clark alongside Burns. This is something to be admired.

When we left our old studio we were worried that we’d lose our identity. In many ways it had become a big part of who we were as a company. Of course, like many Design Consultancies, our brand – or at least our attitude – is mostly visible in the work we produce for others, but even so, how you feel about your direct environment has a massive impact in both the obvious but also more subtle ways.

Now it feels like we’ve found a new home, one that aligns with our values but is maybe more than we had imagined, because it has been imagined by people who are expert in imagining spaces. There is a valuable lesson in there somewhere.