PricewaterhouseCoopers' Birmingham Headquarters Wins "Best of the Best" Award at British Council of Offices Awards 2004

October 8 2004

The Birmingham headquarters of PricewaterhouseCoopers won the top award for the British Council for Offices (BCO) Awards ceremony on Tuesday, 5th October 2004, recognizing it as "Best of the Best" out of nearly 100 contestants in the UK.

The office industry's premiere awards, now in their 13th year, were presented at a gala dinner held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London's Park Lane.

PricewaterhouseCoopers- Cornwall Court won the "Best of the Best" award after receiving a national award based on its office fit-out.  It was selected from four national winners that in turn were picked from winners of the regional competitions covering the areas of: South of England and South Wales; London; Midlands and East Anglia; North of England, North Wales and Northern Ireland and Scotland.

In giving the "Best of the Best" award to PricewaterhouseCoopers' HQ at Cornwall Court, Birmingham the judges said: "A 'tired, dark and uninspiring' eighties office block has been reinvented to meet PwC's demand for a 'truly inspirational' workplace which enables flexible working. The result is a sparkling environment full of delight and style, a great stimulation to the staff working in this traditionally creative financial sector.

"The holistic approach incorporating a variety of environments and working practices has produced a distinctive and appealing workplace that has injected new life into a tired building," the judges added.

The judges highlighted the following:

• The atrium has been refocused with the zone next to it used for circulation and temporary workspace on each floor.
• A French café in lively colours and textures at ground level entices the most rigorous of workaholics to linger and debate.
• The use of colours, along with chequerboard patterns on filing cabinets, gives a tremendous sense of orientation in any part of the building as well as an uplifting and optimistic spirit.
• A range of desk systems have been used to match different needs. Service hubs mark key interfaces at the corners.  The old-fashioned hierarchy of enclosed space and rigidly defended territory has been swept away through a variation on use of cellular space called 'reverse hoteling'.  Privacy is there when needed, but offices can be booked out when unoccupied.
• Meeting/conference rooms and touchdown spaces are complemented by an impressive suite controlled by a concierge. This provides services ranging from centralised filing with a sophisticated electronic retrieval system to restaurant bookings, dry cleaning and even storage for dinner jackets. Artwork is successfully incorporated into perimeter screens.

Speaking of the quality of entries this year, David Walters, chairman of the BCO Awards, said:

"The BCO Awards bring together a whole raft of new thinking, from one end of the country to the other.  One of the awards most significant contributions is to inspire creative innovation in the design of the office environment for the future.

"People have overtaken bricks and glass as the prime directive, and the first design demand is now to attract and hold skilled staff. At one extreme that involves exciting, vibrant spaces geared to interactive teams or fast-moving, mobile workers dipping like mayflies into touch-down desks. At the other are calming, informal, 'breakout' areas to relax, chat or work quietly."

Walters said: "As expected, open plan is the favoured option but a considerable number of businesses still want some sort of hierarchical approach. It is a reminder that it is not for us to decide how people should run their businesses - and that buildings have to be flexible enough to work for different occupiers over a lifetime of many decades.

"There is a growing awareness of the green agenda, the value of BREEAM scores and cost-in-use show occupiers are no longer willing to accept things at face value. So it was pleasing to see that most schemes have been built to the BCO specification. Information and communications technology is increasingly high on the agenda. Projects that fail to respond to these changes do so at their peril," he added.

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