WHEN THE OFFICE BECOMES PART GALLERY, PART RECORD SLEEVE
Island Records and EMI have unveiled their redesigned shared headquarters in King’s Cross, London, developed over 18 months by spatial design studio Interesting Projects together with Studio Eye, the labels’ in-house creative team. Conceived somewhere between a workplace and an exhibition, the new interior brings more than 70 historic and newly commissioned artworks, photographs and pieces of ephemera into the everyday life of the office, with works by Annie Leibovitz, Thierry Noir, Jeremy Deller, Corbin Shaw and Anton Corbijn appearing throughout the space.
Set within the Pancras Square development, the headquarters translates the histories of two rather different record labels into a shared architectural language without flattening their identities. Island, founded by Chris Blackwell in Jamaica in 1959, and EMI, established in London in 1931, together carry a catalogue that stretches from Bob Marley and The Beatles to Grace Jones, U2, Elton John, Amy Winehouse and Taylor Swift. Rather than consigning that history to a few framed records in reception, the design lets it spill across walls, furniture, artworks and circulation spaces.
color and material shape the identity of the shared London workspace | images by Kensington Leverne
COLOUR-CODING TWO MUSICAL LEGACIES
Colour does much of the heavy lifting. Island’s signature Pantone 109C yellow is joined by Pantone 671C pink, referring to the label’s progressive and folk period between 1967 and 1970. EMI takes a more recognisably British route, although not quite the souvenir-shop version: red, white and Yves Klein blue loosely dismantle the colours of the Union Jack. The palettes extend through colour-matched ALPI wood joinery, stainless-steel wall elements and bespoke artwork frames, turning branding into something closer to a material system.
The art collection works in much the same way, threading musical history through the architecture rather than separating it into a dedicated gallery. In the Island Records area, British Jamaican sign-painter Jorge Jacobs has produced a hand-painted mural originating from Jamaica’s Nurse Signs collective. Elsewhere, archival and contemporary material sits beside commissioned works, building a visual record of the labels’ shifting cultural worlds while keeping the workplace firmly in the present.
the redesigned headquarters brings art, music and workplace design together under one roof
A LISTENING ROOM, A KIOSK, AND VERY LITTLE CORPORATE GREY
At the centre of the headquarters, an immersive listening room is equipped with bespoke RN1 and M210 studio monitors by British hi-fi manufacturer TPI Aerospace and anchored by a work from Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller. Island’s breakout area has its own custom High-Output sound system, while a purpose-built kiosk displays artist merchandise and streetwear collaborations with names including Aries Arise, Always Do… and Corteiz. Gallery, record shop and office begin to overlap — apparently nobody told the fit-out it had to choose just one.
Interesting Projects describes the headquarters as a ‘spatial archive’, using exhibition-making and curatorial thinking to frame almost a century of musical production while leaving room for whatever comes next. Together with Studio Eye, the studio has treated art, sound, colour and material as active parts of the workplace rather than decoration applied once the desks were installed. The result is an office built around the mythology of Island and EMI, but also around the people still producing it: less corporate backdrop, more inhabited cultural catalogue.
artworks are integrated throughout the headquarters rather than treated as decoration
the interiors blur the boundaries between office, gallery and cultural space