- Area: 45000 m²
- Year: 2016
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Photographs:Hufton+Crow
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Manufacturers: Innovation Glass
Text description provided by the architects. Sky Central was designed to challenge conventional ideas of workspace; embracing and evolving the simplicity of the industrial shed, to define a new model for the industries fast-paced and evolving future.
The vision reflects the workings of the organisation with a campus connected by the assets that drive the Sky business forward: creativity and people. AL_A along with PLP and Hassell brought this vision to life with naturally lit, overlapping voids within deep floor plates to create high levels of visual connectivity.
Sky Group CEO, Jeremy Darroch said: “Our culture and our people are fundamental to Sky’s sustained success. Our people want to do their best and be their best, and we want to support them in doing so, creating an inclusive and creative workplace that facilitates the flow of brilliant ideas and creativity.”
Open and flexible spaces are designed in clusters of neighbourhoods to accommodate a new type of creative industry, where the traditional distinctions between creative, technical, production and corporate have been broken down. These have been replaced with an interwoven, fluid workspace that can be utilized by all of Sky Central’s different expertise and needs.
Ho-Yin Ng, Director at AL_A said:’ “Sky is proud of its beginnings on an industrial business park on the fringes of central London. AL_A worked with Sky to re-imagine a simple ‘shed’ typology as a means of bringing the broadcaster’s activities and people together under one roof in a series of modern and people-centric workplaces on its campus in Osterley.”
The architecture boasts a large triple height central atrium above the bustling 100-metre long Sky Street that runs the entire width of the ground floor. Sky Street acts as a connector for the whole building, bringing together touchdown workspaces as well as informal working elements alongside amenities ranging from restaurants and cafes to a supermarket and a 200-seat cinema. The whole building is a new holistic, inclusive way of working and living, as Director at AL_A, Ho-Yin Ng said it is “defining a new model for the industry’s fast-paced and evolving future”.
