Feilden Fowles is the architect of the new London headquarters of watch brand Uniform Wares. The project is a refurbishment of ground floor offices located on the border of Shoreditch, London’s technology hub, and the historic watchmaking and design district of Clerkenwell.
A collaboration between Edmund Fowles, co-founder of Feilden Fowles, and his brother Oliver Fowles, co-founder of Uniform Wares, the new headquarters is a spatial representation of the working culture and product narrative of the Uniform Wares brand.
‘A fundamental part of the Uniform Wares brand is collaboration, and our established personal relationship with Feilden Fowles meant that we were able to work very closely with them to create a space that was not only a pleasure to work in, but one that described our brand, its products and working culture,’ says Uniform Wares co-founder, Patrick Bek.
Envisioned as a precise, yet organically flowing space, the Uniform Wares headquarters incorporates the company’s design studio, showroom and a fully-equipped watch prototyping and assembly workshop.
The street-level, glazed frontage is a literal and metaphorical window into the Uniform Wares brand. A clear perspective of the showroom leads through to the fully-glazed workshop, allowing street-level onlookers and showroom visitors a view onto the activity of the watchmaking craft and beyond to the design and development studio.
Edmund Fowles, Partner, Feilden Fowles said:
‘The design and fabrication of the space emulates the hallmarks of a fine watch in its combination of natural and highly engineered materials and processes, some warm, others cold to the touch, such as machined solid aluminium ironmongery, glass installed with an imperceptible frame alongside precise graphical striations CNC routed into a large timber pivoting door.’
Prior to the build, London-based design studio Manoeuvre overhauled the Uniform Wares brand identity, emphasising the quiet luxury of the brand and its appeal to both men and women. In response, Feilden Fowles took these key brand elements and reflected them in the choice of the monochromatic materials palette, which also provides a clean and efficient environment reminiscent of Uniform Wares’ assembly facility in Switzerland.
