sedgemoor district council
sedgemoor district council are located in bridgewater and house their internal departments as well as their public reception in one building. in 2019 the council looked to give their interiors a refurbish to update their environments at the same time as piloting and rolling out new agile ways of working. this included the office spaces, meeting rooms and teapoints.
having seen ukho, the council were keen to implement a similar model of agile working that was bespoke to them allowing more collaboration, better ways to work and increasing wellbeing. the council were adaptive and keen to explore new spaces and furniture that would encourage a better workspace within the existing building.
it was planned that one ‘wing’ of the building would be piloted first to test the new scheme and to roll this out consecutively across the other ‘wings’ allowing us strategic movement of departments. the project went live in january 2020 just before covid changed the way we work which meant that a lot of the work from conception to completion was done in near empty offices and with a very different plan of progrmamme and piloting than we anticipated. covid did allow staff some insight into how to be more adaptive and allowed us more time to work through the stages before staff returned fully in 2022.
Steer Design was the FF&E Consultant working directly for Sedgemoor District Council and in liaison with several contractors to fulfil the project by stages. The interior design was carried out on their existing maintenance contract, steered by the council’s FM key project leaders with Steer Design advice where asked. We worked closely with the FM team to create a new palette that worked with the interior finishes, represented the council while being modern, warm and welcoming. The new palette pulled colour away from the central columns and put warmth into the soft furnishings. We added a lot of timber detailing and soft seating as well as project and agile meeting spaces to encourage more informal gatherings and reflect home comforts more. The teapoints mostly had no natural light so these were brightened and a vinyl print - completely independent of any council design - installed to each creating a less office feel. Height adjustable worktops were also installed. The new spaces are lighter, warmer, more spacious between working spaces and storage was vastly reduced thereby omitting clutter and tall physical barriers.