Last night at the BCO NextGen Awards Dinner, Futurecity Project Manager Jennifer Barnes and her team 88MPH won the NextGen ideas competition by the British Council for Offices (BCO).

The competition asked multidisciplinary teams of young architects, designers, engineers, developers, agents and other professionals and consultants to consider ‘the office of 2035: what it will look like, and how it will support the way we will work’. Three teams were shortlisted out of 34 submissions.

88mph

Jennifer Barnes – Curator and Project Manager, Futurecity

Laura Hannigan – Engineer, Associate, AKTII

Annabel Koeck – Project Architect, Grimshaw

Amelia Maxwell – Finance and Commercial Manager, Lendlease

88mph propose ‘The Dynamo’, an adaptive reuse of an existing terrace of Victorian housing in London as the headquarters for a major energy company. The concept retains the existing façades and incorporates reconfigurable interior space, service cores plugged into the back of the building as an ‘energy backpack’, and facilities including a rooftop garden with staff allotments, a performance space and a meditation garden. The design responds to a future with increased transport connectivity across the UK: the company’s facilities are accordingly dispersed more widely throughout the country, but they retain a physical presence in the capital that is flexible and open to future changes.