BEAM TEAM

London’s tallest mass-timber office building, the first new-build project from workspace specialist The Office Group, is underpinned by a sustainable ethos

The recently completed Black & White Building, in London's Shoreditch, can lay claim to many boasts. Built by The Office Group (TOG), it is currently the tallest masstimber office building in central London, as well as the first workspace development that TOG has built entirely from scratch, and its most sustainable offering yet.

Founded in 2003, design-led workspace specialist TOG is about to head into its third decade shaking up the world of office development. Over the years, founders and co-CEOs Olly Olsen and Charlie Green have kicked off a quiet revolution, rolling out one location after another, leading the charge on flexible workspace and hybrid working models (for context, WeWork was founded in 2010). As a result, TOG now manages more than 50 buildings across the UK and Germany, where almost 20,000 users populate its outposts through a range of membership and enterprise programmes. And this latest adventure brings it full circle back to east London's Rivington Street, right opposite its oldest operational venue and one-time headquarters.

The seven-storey Black & White Building replaces an older TOG venue on the same site, a namesake building (painted black and white) that was in urgent need of an update to meet current needs. Unfortunately, the existing structure wouldn't accommodate a retrofit and expansion, and Olsen and Green felt that building from scratch should not mean compromising on sustainability.