A New Kind of Co-Working Space Opens in London

London—like any other city—has seen its fair share of co-working spaces proliferate in the last five years. The capital is now home to Second Home, Soho Works, and no less than 32 branches of WeWork (soon to be 33). Beanbags, biophilia (lots of plants), and slides are just some of the elements designed to help visitors get creative. Yet, to some, these tricks are a distracting headache to actually getting stuff done.

A new contender on the block looks set to challenge all the gimmicks. Mortimer House opened in late November in an Art Deco six-story corner plot in Fitzrovia and offers a calm, good-looking work space—for grown-ups.

It’s the first venture for new business Maslow’s and has been designed by U.S. interiors studio AvroKO—without a slide in sight. "Our client and collaborator [Maslow’s founder, Guy Ivesha] charged us with avoiding the typical tropes and we narrowed in on a more philosophical approach to the age-old question, 'Why do we work, what do we get from it, and what do we need from our surroundings to feel a level of satisfaction and personal fulfillment from our work?'" says AvroKO principal Adam Farmerie. "When you start with these questions, you end up in a very different place than beanbags, hammocks, and ping-pong tables."

The space is sophisticated, laden with natural materials and a crystal-clear layout. On the ground floor is a public-access restaurant with exposed brickwork and rattan bentwood chairs. Then it’s four floors of workspace above, defined by glass dividers, brass task lights, and wooden desks. On the fifth floor is a tropical modernist member’s-club-ish den. The balconies, located on each floor, feature Mediterranean tiling. There are what many would call breakout spaces: but these are simply cozy pairs of Danish armchairs in quiet spots.

The design intervention overall is discreet; thankfully, the team was blessed with a treasure of a building and chose to let it speak for itself. "To make a soulful sense of place, we went to great lengths to uncover and expose original details of this beautiful Art Deco-era building," says fellow principal Greg Bradshaw, citing the marble mosaics, plaster moldings, worn wood floors, concrete columns, and terra-cotta ceilings.

Mortimer House’s layout was dreamed up according to American philosopher Abraham Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ theory. Ivesha and AvroKO followed Maslow’s pyramid philosophical master plan—putting a restaurant on the ground floor to meet the "physiological needs" of the individual; satisfying the desire for "social belonging" with the co-working space on the four floors above; enabling "esteem" in the fifth-floor living space, while the clutter-free event space on the top floor helps self-actualization. Not so much a gimmick but a logical way to organize all the elements—just like a hotel, according to Ivesha.

"I treat Maslow’s and Mortimer House very much as a hospitality platform rather than a traditional co-working space," the designer explains. "The co-working sector is still fragmented but will slowly mature and become more defined. Everything we do is hospitality-focused. We simply replaced bedrooms with beautiful private work studies."

Membership at Mortimer House is tiered: A basic fee gets you out-of-hours access; the "traveler" membership is for people needing a base when in town; and there are also permanent spaces for as many as 24 people. Plans are under way to roll out siblings in New York and Los Angeles.

As for the challenges specific to London, Farmerie admits there were a few: "We had to rejigger our brains to realize that the first floor doesn’t mean the ground floor," he laughs. "We had to learn a new pronunciation of 'aluminum,' and, finally, we learned that if you want to develop any kind of social currency with a construction team, be sure to show up at any meeting with a freshly brewed pot of PG Tips."