Launching with London Design District at the Greenwich Peninsula this month, Bureau is the capital's newest workspace offering. Balanced between office architecture and members’ club, Bureau has landed to provide post-pandemic respite to the city’s tired creative workforce – a step away from both traditional office space and working-from-home set-ups, and a clearly defined concept that stands apart from co-working space peers.
With interiors designed by architect Roz Barr, this creative club is the latest evolution in its genre – a ‘hybrid third space’, combining the freedom and flexibility of home working, with the focused structure, support, and sociability provided by the office environment, its creators explain.
Barr’s ideas on what constitutes the perfect modern workspace were already in development, as the architect gathered notes from past, pre-pandemic projects, such as Selfridges’ creative studios. But with Bureau and the pandemic, everything sped up. The architect told us back in February, when we previewed Bureau’s space: ‘With Selfridges it wasn’t about fitting in desks for everyone, it was about creating a studio culture, pin-up areas, places for informal meetings, places you could take your laptop and work in peace. There were freelancers coming in and out, working on particular projects. All that experience fed into Bureau.’
The space is also conceived as an elegant, sophisticated environment that mixes pale tones and natural materials – bold colours exist but are refined and measured, while attention to detail and a craft led approach ensure quality of design. Both hotdesking and fixed desk options are available, placing flexibility at the heart of the concept. Meanwhile, measures are taken to ensure Covid safety and avoid overcrowding – this is, after all, a project developed almost in its entirety during a pandemic.
Bureau is set in an HNNA-designed building a few steps away from the North Greenwich station, and right in the heart of London’s newest, and vibrant, creative hub – the Design District, consisting of 16 buildings for work and play. The club is a key piece in the puzzle for the District, which promises to become a playground for creatives, offering opportunities to work, connect and cross-polinate.
‘We want Bureau to be the Design District in microcosm – somewhere that nurtures a diverse and dynamic creative community, giving freelancers a space to grow their businesses, connect across disciplines, build networks and advance their careers,’ says the Design District’s director Helen Arvanitakis.
Bureau hosts Design District Creates
In that spirit, and kicking open its doors to non-members too, Bureau is about to host a design-debate extravaganza: part of the inaugural Design District Creates series of events and curated by the District and Wallpaper’s very own contributing editor Nick Compton. Launching on 15 September and lasting for a month, there is no better excuse to visit this fast-evolving part of London.
INFORMATION
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Café Kitsuné x Iittala bring Nordic clarity to the coffee ritualFinnish design house Iittala unites its modernist aesthetic with Café Kitsuné’s refined simplicity for a new mug collection, available in four colours
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Tiffany & Co’s artist mentorship at Frieze London puts creative exchange centre stageAt Frieze London 2025, Tiffany & Co partners with the fair’s Artist-to-Artist initiative, expanding its reach and reaffirming the value of mentorship within the global art community
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'They're like my friends:’ Max Lamb exhibits a decade of chairs in a former church hallThe British designer’s new London show, ‘Exercises in Seating' (until 2 November 2025), brings together over 30 diverse works in a circle of connection
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Join us on a first look inside Regent’s View, the revamped canalside gasholder project in LondonRegent's View, the RSHP-designed development for St William, situated on a former gasholder site on a canal in east London, has just completed its first phase
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The Royal College of Art has announced plans for renewal of its Kensington campusThe Royal College of Art project, led by Witherford Watson Mann Architects, includes the revitalisation of the Darwin Building and more, in the hopes of establishing an open and future-facing place of creativity
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Ursula K Le Guin’s maps of imaginary worlds are charted in a new exhibitionUrsula K Le Guin, the late American author, best known for her science fiction novels, is celebrated in a new exhibition at the Architectural Association in London, charting her whimsical maps, which bring her fantasy worlds alive
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Power Hall’s glow-up shines light on science and innovation in ManchesterPower Hall at The Science and Industry Museum in Manchester was given a spruce-up by Carmody Groarke, showcasing the past and future of machines, engineering and sustainable architecture
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Celebrate the angular joys of 'Brutal Scotland', a new book from Simon Phipps'Brutal Scotland' chronicles one country’s relationship with concrete; is brutalism an architectural bogeyman or a monument to a lost era of aspirational community design?
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Max Creasy on the future of architectural photography and a shift to the ‘snapshot’A show of photographer Max Creasy’s work opens at the AA in London, asking a key question: where is contemporary architectural photography heading?
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Tour this immaculately composed Islington house for an art collector who loves entertainingAn Islington house by Emil Eve Architects, on coveted Thornhill Road, combines warm minimalism and some expert spatial planning
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Inside the Apple House, the sustainable centrepiece of Tom Stuart-Smith's gardening EdenThe mission? To explore and celebrate the ways in which nature can impact well-being
