In this episode of Workspace Unwired BCO chief executive Samantha McClary talks with architect Julian de Metz about why he loves “crawling all over buildings”, why great workplace design is fundamentally about human experience rather than technical compliance and why we need to sometimes ditch the digital and be more analogue.
De Metz is co-founder of dMFK, an architectural practice he founded with university friends Paul Forbes and Ben Knight, and is incredibly passionate about creating human-centred workspaces, that have culture at their heart.
Bringing existing buildings back to life, working hard to find solutions, and putting real life interaction ahead of digital distraction are key to his work.
Recorded less than 24 hours after GPE’s 170 Piccadilly scheme, a retrofit project worked on by dMFK, picked up the BCO London Award for Best Project up to 2,500m2, de Metz uses the building as an example of how sensitive design can reconcile heritage buildings with modern performance, creating spaces that feel uplifting, functional, and market‑appropriate.
Listen in as the pair discuss design as the primary differentiator when it comes to quality workspaces, how the purpose of our offices is to build culture and why we need to work harder to unlock the untapped potential in our existing buildings.
All that plus, how we balance standards and guidance with the need to encourage a more values‑led design focus and why, ultimately, if we want to deliver workspaces that work for human beings, we need to unwire ourselves from excessive digital dependency and re‑embrace physical, human interaction as the true purpose of workplace design.
Enjoy.
