Block @ Melville

Block is a dynamic new office hub located in the Grade I Listed Melville Building, a former naval warehouse located in the Royal William Yard. Offering a fresh and flexible new way of working in our post pandemic world, Block includes open plan co-working spaces and glazed incubation style offices, alongside a café and cocktail bar and even a members gym.

Our brief was to design an array of inspiring spaces ready for a new office community with a new way of working. Within the historic warehouse our design creates a wide range of environments for working, meeting and socialising, from the hive of dedicated glazed offices, to tiny plywood meeting booths, and the more informal soft seating break out areas. The glazed office frontages are designed to retain the sense of the building’s historic use and visual connection, with stonework and cast iron columns retaining pride of place. New materials are a simple monochrome palette to contrast the raw historic textures of the floorboards and the stonework.

The Block Café and Cocktail Bar is located in the former office quarters of Melville, where historic Georgian timber panelling and cornicing providing a stunning back drop. We worked with Block to create a flexible space with an range of environments including two cocktail bars, a boardroom and hot desking areas. The black and marble bar areas have been carefully inserted into the historic rooms, along with bespoke birch plywood joinery. We kept lighting and furniture to a simple palette, with the darker colours designed to contrast against the beautiful bare plaster walls.