Introducing Our New Home at Britannia Street

After 25 years at our High Holborn office, we have relocated to a new space on Britannia Street, in the heart of Central London. Our new office is the site of the former Gagosian Gallery, which operated as an art space for nearly 20 years.

The new office offers an open-plan and accessible workspace, with breakout booths, meeting rooms and communal areas to encourage collaboration and creativity amongst our immensely talented staff. The new design also incorporates our dolphin logo, a motif that has strong ties to the history of the company. On display in the foyer is a handpainted mosaic featuring the classic dolphin cartouche, that moved with us from our Bloomsbury Street office to High Holborn and now at Britannia Street.

We sat down with CEO and Publisher Sophy Thompson to discuss this exciting new chapter and her favourite elements of the new office.

Thames & Hudson (T&H): So, Sophy, can you tell us what you’re excited about with this new space?

Sophy Thompson (ST): We’re thrilled to be here. The new office is incredibly exciting in many ways. You’ll see the whole idea of the office plan was to keep something open, light, transparent, which I think will reflect the culture of the company as well. But what’s brilliant about the space is it that it has its own natural zones.

There are very few doors in the space overall., most things are fluid and people can walk between the spaces, but we’ve managed to zone it, so design has a corner, we have a wonderful kitchen, we have an area for finance and legal. Everyone has their own mini village, but together all of the villages interconnect and we’ve got this wonderful central boulevard and communal space which we can use for author activities, for events, for staff meetings. So, it’s a space which has been designed in order to enable communication among the staff.

T&H: And what’s the response been like so far?

ST: I think the first responses to the new office have been brilliant. We’ve had authors coming in, designers, artists, photographers, and their first reaction is that it’s wonderful that we’re able to show all of our books.

Somebody commented to me… it’s not just a working space, it’s a space that really works. You get this sense of activity going on in at T&H, which has always been true, but wasn’t as visible in our old offices. If you’re an author coming in, you can immediately understand who’s doing what and how many talented people it takes to make a great book and sell them and market them and distribute them – that all becomes apparent in this more open space.

Actually, it’s quite considerably smaller than High Holborn but it doesn’t feel smaller. It feels more generous. And it’s got this wonderful high ceiling as well. So, I think that contributes to the fact that despite everyone’s working more-or-less in open space, they don’t seem to be disturbed by the people around them, that it’s both busy but quiet, and it’s a nice balance. But I think that works as well. Busy but focused.

T&H: It used to be a gallery too, which feels quite appropriate since so many of our books are so art focused.

ST: So the Gagosian Gallery took it on and did a wonderful conversion. They brought to the space all their expertise, which means that it has absolutely beautiful lighting, beautiful windows, beautiful skylights, and we were therefore really privileged to work with a space that had been thought through by people who understand volume and light.

And also as Thames & Hudson, we are obviously very attracted to the idea of the continuity being between a space that was invented, really, or redesigned to hold art and a space that is now busy and full of people making beautiful books about art and the arts more broadly. So there’s a really lovely legacy there.

And the location itself. We’re just five minutes south of King’s Cross and St Pancras, and it’s very much the beating heart of London. It means that people can come to us from all around the city very easily, from around the UK, and they can also just jump off the Eurostar and be with us within 10 minutes.

T&H: Do you have a favourite part of the office yet?

ST: I love the entrance, actually, walking into this office. The building is very handsome on the outside, and seeing the dolphins, the wordmark, these lovely lights in the entrance and this beautiful display of books when I walk in, I feel very proud. I think what an amazing job people do here at T&H making these books. I’ve seen visitors waiting here and they look incredibly happy just browsing through the books and the catalogue. Every morning I walk in, and I think this is amazing. It’s lovely to be here. And then as soon as you go and get a coffee or walk down the corridors, there are people everywhere and it always feels lively and buzzy. I think we’ve got that right.

T&H: How have you found it being able to be so close to everyone because you were a bit more separate in an office before. Are you enjoying that now?

ST: Absolutely, I think one of the key things about the space is its openness. There’s a constant to and fro, not in a disruptive way, but in a sensible way. For myself, like everyone else, just talking to people as you make a cup of coffee, as you walk around the kitchen, as you come in, as you look at the books, as people circulate through the meeting rooms… That flow of information and that general line of communication are vital to staff well-being, and   to efficiency, also, of how people get things done.

Several people have said to me already, ‘I’ve saved so many emails just by chatting.’ It’s a habit which somehow got a bit lost in COVID. When we all moved on to screens, that became the only mode of communication for quite a long time. So, when we moved back into our old offices, we perhaps never picked up the habit of office chat or office gossip – but this space will allow us to re-establish those less formal bonds again. So that’s very exciting for everyone and for myself.

T&H: Was it a long process to decide that now was the time to move into a new space, or find where we wanted to go?

ST: Well, it was a long process, because it was a complicated one. We had a wonderful office, very generous in terms of central London space, just by Covent Garden, which is a rare thing. We had considered at length whether or not we should refurbish that space, but it became clear to us that the landlord had plans ultimately to pull the building down and to build something bigger, and we didn’t feel that environmentally, ethically, financially, it made sense to reinvest in a space which could have disappeared within quite a short period of time.

We were immensely lucky that this particular space was available at the right time. We did look at a few others, but everyone fell in love with Britannia Street. As soon as we walked in and saw the mezzanine, which had been put into the space by the architects, we thought Editorial.

Editors sometimes need quiet time to look at their manuscripts and when they’re editing, but they also want their own books around them. Previously, they’d been separated on different floors, but we felt that, really, it’s a community, and that the commissioning editors would really benefit from having that dialogue, just knowing who’s there, having a quick chat as they passed each other’s desks.

The mezzanine has this little bridge over to the other part of the mezzanine. And it seemed logical that that is where production should go. Design are just down the stairs, and they’ve got a distinct space to themselves, but everybody’s in proximity, and I think that just that little bridge between the two mezzanines is a really lovely symbol of the back and forth between the expertise of the editors and the work that they’re doing on the interiors of the book, and then the genius and production of making it into the physical object.

A lot of how we make books is about creativity, not only in the idea of the subject of the book, but it’s also in how you put that together, what physical object that will become – that loop between production and design and editorial is essential. Having people talking to each other more openly, seeing where everyone is having a chat by the coffee machine. ‘Oh, we could do this. We could do that.’ It’s about creative stimulation as well.

T&H: It does feel a lot more connected

ST: It does. And everybody loves the fact that the books are visible everywhere, and particularly the entrance displays. Obviously, it’s the beating heart of what the company does.

I’ve also had comments on the old tiles. We took the original doorstep from Bloomsbury Street, which then travelled with us to High Holborn and was hanging in the staircase there, and it’s now hanging in the entrance. And the palette of these beautiful hand painted tiles has been taken through the design of the office, so there’s a beautiful coherence there.

I’ve had a few people going, ‘Oh, I love the dolphins on the floor!’ We’ve got a very strong sense of identity through the books, through the wordmark on the windows, through the logo itself. You know you’re at Thames & Hudson when you walk through the door.