Salt and Tar
Re-imagining and transforming an underused space into a large live event and culinary destination.
Category:
Commercial
Location:
Liverpool
Clients Brief
DV8 designs were appointed by Warrington Borough Council to reimagine the existing hospitality space at Birchwood Park Business Park, to create an environment that combines the relaxed ambience of a hotel business lounge, the sociability of a co-working space and an ultra-modern food hall, offering the best of Europe’s food market-style dining. Our brief for the ‘Engine Rooms’ was to create an all-day space where occupiers and visitors can fuel their body and work their mind, whilst promoting collaboration and wellbeing among its 6,000 occupiers on the park.
Objective
Our aim was to redesign the existing scheme to provide a café and food hall style space, of which the ‘break out of solitary working’ is becoming more frequent in the modern era for colleagues to work, typically to share equipment, ideas and host informal meetings.
This meant that we, as designers, were challenged to not only provide sufficient facilities but also to create a more ‘Starbucks-esque’ environment, in which people can move from a bar-height group table to a living room style setting, and then to a desk all within one shift at work.
Approach
DV8 worked closely with the client throughout to gain insight into potential operational issues, which we overcame with a full masterplan and assessment of the site.
Our proposal was to create a central grab and go counter and a ‘street food’ style offering – allowing five stand-alone counter spaces within the main food service run, each with their own branding and identity to aid workers and diner’s decision making. Our approach was to filter the crowds into smaller manageable groups with the help of new clear definitive counter displays and menus. When designing the EngineRooms we had to consider the large amount of footfall in sometimes a condensed period. It was useful to observe the existing space to learn how we would improve the customer journey and be able to facilitate potentially increasing numbers of visitors once the new scheme opened to the public.
Outcome
As Birchwood Park occupiers, our team had the insight to make this exciting new space work in a practical and user-friendly way.
The EngineRooms is the first of its kind in the local vicinity, a place to be inspired and where work-life balance is achievable. The whole idea of co-working is to bring bright, creative people together and let ideas collide. We felt it was fitting to design a colourful palette & playful fabric to create a vibrant and inviting environment with zoned working spaces where a focused strategy session can be easily turned into a social get together.
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