As working days lose their cut-off times, a holistic approach to work/life balance couldn’t be more important. Originally, members’ clubs like Shoreditch House led the way, with an all-under-one-roof offer appealing to digital nomads (#UJLoves express facials from Cowshed Spa for lunch breaks). Now, new work spaces are evolving too, bringing wellbeing into the mix (check out Rise by We, by WeWork, next time you’re in Manhattan). Who’s getting the balance right? Here are three of our favourites.
Brand new to Fitzrovia, Mortimer House’s communal spaces are designed to feel lived in, and open fires make it hard to resist sitting down and finishing off those last emails. But the spaces have been designed mindfully too. The six storey art deco building also offers a meditation room, pilates, gym and a kitchen table meeting room.
Fora opened its first space in Clerkenwell in February, and has seven more locations planned by 2020. The focus is on offering a hotel style service for their members, where every aspect of design has been considered to encourage productivity – they’re even working with MIT to monitor their space and how it can improve. Stevie Parle’s Palatino will sort any hunger pangs, and the workspaces are open plan, with concierge, room service, gym and wellbeing studio, as well as yoga, personal training and massages.
Neon, midcentury furniture, the studio location for 1966 film Blow Up… step into Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton’s latest Second Home, at Holland Park, and it’s easy to see how these spaces foster a community and collaboration: people want to spend time here. Businesses based at Second Home grow 10 per cent faster than the national average, so something’s working. In Holland Park, the focus is on natural light, the members-only photography studio, and weekly wellbeing activities including yoga, meditation and boot camps.
So when the working day is done, you can make time for some head space too.
Photo: Rise By We, WeWork
