Excite

First Partnership has this month completed the 1860m2 UK headquarters for Excite Web portal. The new design comes two and a half years after the consultancy designed the company’s previous London premises.

One of Excite’s priorities was having everyone on the same floor in an open-plan, often nomadic working environment. The space has to cope with an expansion in staff numbers of up to 30 per cent over two years.

They were also keen that the offices should avoid formulaic corporate environments and instead express some aspect of the Excite personality. Situated on the second floor, the offices are planned around a large reception area incorporating games and recreation areas, which will be used as extra desk space when it is needed.

Workstations and a café are situated around the perimetre and delineated from circulation routes with glazed, half-height, custom-made partitioning. The production team is positioned close to screened-off spare space which they are expected to gradually expand into and fill.

There is subtle branding in the reception area – the Excite logo appears on a translucent screen, and there is another screen with a loop of Excite’s Top Ten websites.

‘They don’t have to drum home too much who they are, but its nice to express things subtlely,’ says First Partnership’s Peter Champion. Elsewhere, the group has introduced a new colour palette of yellow, green and grey, with Dalsouple rubber flooring leading off from the reception, and a red and yellow chequer-board rubber floor in the café.