SpaceInvader / Stopford House, Stockport

3 October 2023

SpaceInvader / Stopford House, Stockport

Stockport Council’s newly revitalised building has adopted a forward-thinking approach to future-proof the building’s operations

Project Info

Interior design: SpaceInvader www.spaceinvaderdesign.co.uk
Client: Stockport Council
Size: 6,735 sq m
Completion: January 2023

Words by Emily Martin

Images by SG Photography

MANCHESTER-BASED designers SpaceInvader have completed its refurbishment of Stopford House for Stockport Council; a Brutalist-style, six-storey building purpose-built in 1975, and a key asset in Stockport Council’s workplace estate. The building features concrete external panelling that matches the council’s Neo-Wren Town Hall building directly opposite, and after assessing its then and ongoing fitness for purpose, SpaceInvader’s brief was to create a new generation workplace to support hybrid working, enhance the culture of the council and embrace the council’s sustainability strategy. The brief also included a strong emphasis on flexibility, so that departments could move with ease throughout the building and work within differing ratios of focused and collaborative working to suit their specific needs. The new scheme has not only transformed the space, but also how staff work.

SpaceInvader has incorporated feedback from Stockport Council’s workers at every level, ensuring a healthy working environment for all

‘A major upgrade to the building was needed,’ comments John Williams, founder of SpaceInvader, ‘to provide a future-facing workplace for the council’s own team, as well as the best possible spaces and services for the community the council serves. But it was a real joy to be able to celebrate this building’s beautiful existing brutalist architecture and seek every possible way of re-using the building’s fabric with a less-is-more, circular economy approach, adding interventions only where necessary.’

SpaceInvader has incorporated feedback from Stockport Council’s workers at every level, ensuring a healthy working environment for all

SpaceInvader kicked off the project by conducting workshops and engaging with council workers at every level. It delivered a full workplace strategy, enabling the council to adopt a hybrid way of working and, thanks to a reduced footplate, to vacate other elements of real estate for release to alternative, public facing council services, including liberating space on the ground floor to house CAMHS – a dedicated children and adolescent mental health service.

The new workplace strategy then informed the design and fit-out of the space, whilst firmly embracing sustainable principles. The building was stripped back to reveal key architectural features, like original concrete and brick and exposing services and the ceiling to uncover the building’s architectural features, whilst improvements were made operationally to make the building more sustainable. To future-proof the space, SpaceInvader saw the potential for areas of the building to be sub-let.

SpaceInvader has incorporated feedback from Stockport Council’s workers at every level, ensuring a healthy working environment for all

The new range of work settings provided to council workers encourages movement through the day rather than sticking to a fixed desk, with a series of room zones to suit different work needs. Work clusters alternate from collaborative to focused with ‘spill over’ areas between and an existing Faith Room has also been refurbished to support colleagues practising their faith during the working day. A cycle store and showers have been added to encourage colleagues to save fuel and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

The Brutalist structure not only boasts sectionable meeting and social spaces for employees, but it also benefits from copious amounts of natural light due to its large windows

The interior colour palette draws inspiration from the Stockport landscape, as well as art and textiles. The design team looked for inspiration from LS Lowry’s paintings of Stockport during the height of its textile industry and similarities were drawn from the muted grey backdrops of the paintings, similar to the concrete base build of Stopford House, with pops of terracotta, teal and yellow finishes adding another layer to the Stockport-inspired red brick palette. The resulting scheme is a workplace full of texture, pattern and textile that creates a connected experience for its users.

The Brutalist structure not only boasts sectionable meeting and social spaces for employees, but it also benefits from copious amounts of natural light due to its large windows

Williams comments: ‘The interiors concept was driven by the building and surrounding site and took inspiration from Stockport’s textile history, in particular the contrasts between soft, woven textiles and the built up, hard environment of the factories that produced it. The relationship between Stopford House’s Brutalist building and the unique patterns and repetition this has to offer was also explored, feeding into the “Textile Towns” concept with a unified relationship created between patterns found in this type of architecture and the patterns found in woven textiles.’

The Brutalist structure not only boasts sectionable meeting and social spaces for employees, but it also benefits from copious amounts of natural light due to its large windows

One of the building’s great qualities is its abundance of daylight due to its narrow floorplate, with existing windows in their recognisably Brutalist style. Refurbishment included a greater number of openable windows to allow users to control their environment with ease. SpaceInvader also replicated the design of the windows as a design language in other areas of the scheme, including in a pattern based on the shapes of the frames and the building’s facade, which has been used for manifestations in the meeting rooms.

The interior colour palette draws from the city of Stockport itself

Two meeting or training rooms are on each floor, with flexible furniture to accommodate multi-use facility and different employee needs day to day. Each floor also has a social lunch area to encourage further interaction and collaboration and to offer a place for coffee or lunch with colleagues. Pockets of communal space are dispersed throughout to support the council’s goals for increasing employees working together.

As well as reusing selected furniture from Senator, informed choices led to the prioritisation of more sustainable products such as Shaw Contract carpets which was specified for its carbon neutral manufacturing, Tarkett for its product recycling initiatives, and acoustic screens made from post-consumer PET bottles. Signage and wayfinding were carefully developed within the design team, using key elements from the interior design concept, as well as applying the council’s branding guidelines where appropriate. From a building longevity point of view, these were deliberately not too heavily branded to allow scope for potential future letting of one or more floors. Graphic patterns were developed for the meeting room and external glazing manifestations, whilst directional signage, alongside an icon suite was developed for wayfinding. Accessibility-awareness also included reviewing fonts for easy legibility and consideration of differences between text and background to ensure sufficient contrast for vision-impaired users.

Collaborative and confidential work environments are only a short walk away for most staff

‘The Stopford House project was the result of an extensive process, from providing a business case for refurbishment, to a full workplace strategy engaging with all colleagues in the space, to the design and fit out of the building and consideration of the future,’ concludes Williams. ‘The timing of the briefing period during the unprecedented times of Covid-19 helped create a unique proposition and pushed the client further than might otherwise have been possible, with a forward-thinking approach that has definitely paid off. We are confident that the thorough amount of research undertaken at the outset makes the resulting space the ideal solution for Stockport Council, and are extremely pleased that we were able to justify the argument for refurbishing the existing building rather than building anew from both a sustainable and historical point of view.’

Key Suppliers

Lighting

Tyson Lighting www.tysonlighting.com

Chiara Lighting www.chiaralighting.com

Flooring

Shaw Contract www.shawcontract.com

Egger www.egger.com

Tarkett www.tarkett.co.uk

Furniture

Senator www.thesentatorgroup.com

Mobili www.mobili.co.uk

NaughtOne www.naughtone.com