O2 Headquarters in Slough, United Kingdom

October 31, 2010 Category: Education, Public Buildings

That located in Slough, United Kingdom, O2 Headquarters, was designed by Nicholas Hare Architects were commissioned by SEGRO to design a 10,000 sq m headquarters building for O2 / Telefonica. The new building was intended to form the keystone of O2’s plans to consolidate staff from a number of buildings onto a single campus site in the Slough Trading Estate. The new building needed to allow for a link to the 1980s SEGRO building already occupied by O2, but also to be able to stand on its own as a long-term option.

The O2 brief required the largest possible floorplate. The office space is arranged in a U shape around a four-storey atrium which is aligned with the central axis of the old building, parallel to Bath road. (The new link and the internal fit-out have been commissioned by O2 and designed by others.) The front corner of the new building has been cut off to expose the entrance to the atrium and present an angled facade to those travelling westwards.

The cantilevered roof above the set-back glazing of the top floor adds a dynamic feature to the Bath Road streetscape. O2’s operational requirements dictated a four-pipe fan-coil solution but both structure and envelope were designed to allow for retrofitting of passive cooling.

O2 Headquarters design by Nicholas Hare Architects LLP