Future Cube

With support from the Mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund, Havering Council entered partnership with SEGRO and London Riverside BID to deliver Future Cube – an exciting and engaging space that will empower businesses to adopt new technologies and digital capabilities, improving their performance, resilience and long-term viability.

We were appointed through a competitive tender process to retrofit the industrial unit at SEGRO Enterprise Business Park Rainham. The space, which will be operated by manufacturing specialists MTC, will enable access to innovative technologies such as VR and additive manufacturing processes, and will provide areas for meetings, workshops and events.

The space features a welcoming area with a bespoke reception desk, two flexible workspaces, a demonstrator area and a separate meeting room, along with kitchen and toilet provisions.

Our approach for the space was to use everyday materials in resourceful ways to create flexible and multi-purpose areas. PVS strip curtains mounted on rails allow the unit to act as a single open space or as three distinguished areas whilst a key-clamp system creates bespoke partitions with integrated storage, display and space for hanging coats. Throughout the space, PET felt panels line the walls, softening the existing industrial shell and providing acoustic treatment to the space.

Having been involved from an early start, we also established the visual identity for the brand. Through a series of engagement workshops with project key stakeholders, we assisted with the development of the brand ethos, message and market positioning as well as the name, logo, typography and colour palette. To meet the target audience and vision that defined the project, the brand will communicate and reinforce London’s innovation culture in a bold yet approachable way, tying in all of the project’s ambitions.

Alongside this, we are working in collaboration with public realm designers Untitled Practice, to bridge and harmonise industry and nature – two key factors of this area - through a series of small-scale interventions that will link the Future Cube with the improvements being made to the riverside area in Rainham. Our ambition is for these interventions to encourage connectivity and act as a catalyst for crossovers.