Visualisation/Sketches

Floor 1

 

Library/Lounge/Cafe

Our Concept

Mood Boards

Our mood boards ideas are based on James Bond Movies, Industrial Design, opened spaces, simple and sleek design combined with technological elements.

Our bubble diagrams/Working on space planning

Presentation for Gensler

Our Logo

We were thinking of our companies name quite a long time, though idea of a Logo came up quite quick, so that a result: Our name and a line which reminds a shape of a building(because we are Architecture and Interior Design company). We have got white colour to reflect urban WHITE name.

 We work together and we enjoy it a lot.

Sketch model and quick structural plans of given space for James Bond project.

This is our first sketch model for the project James Bond style based architecture or interiore design office space.
We were given 4 floors of our university building, which is a faculty of London Metropolitan university.
We have to design an office space for our hypothetical client - Jestico Whiles company.

Urban White visits RIBA

We are now having meetings at RIBA building every Monday. This was our first time there, we saw amazing exhibition of Architecture students. Inspiration comes easily.

Interview with John Whiles, director of Jestico Whiles

Interview with 

John Whiles

    

‘‘John is one of the founding Directors and was instrumental in transferring the ownership of the company into a Trust for the benefit of all who work in the practice. John has been a judge on competitions, a visiting critic and speaker at many schools of architecture in the UK as well as lecturing in China and north America. He is Director responsible for finance and planning.’’

UW: How does your company work? What is the process like and how do you split your job between all of you?

J: We try not to do that. The spirit of the company is what is called a 'trust'.

 Everybody who works for a company more than one year becomes a member of it. The idea of a 'trust' is that it must distribute as much of a profit to the members at the end of every year to prove it. Legally we are a company, but we still have to have directors to be responsible for it. So, I am a director and there are three others and we all have our own groups. We have got an associate director, associates, senior directors. We make appointments for the recognition with what they have done over the year. But we are now considering being a partners, so there would be no difference and we all would be the same, because it is our house, where we sit and design and we all are the same good, well, maybe not... Everyone is a designer, so he has to have an opportunity to design, not just sit here and do details all the time.

UW: Well, basically, you are splitting the projects and working on different things. Aren’t you?

J: Inevitably, every project comes and gets a team that works for it. A director must be responsible for the project (that is why a client know who he can go to) and then the associate director or associate, who runs the project, depending on a scale of a project. Director works for design, goes to the meetings, but does not produce the project.

UW: When was your company established and how it all started?

J: The very beginning was, when I and Tom Whiles met in 1977 and we set up practise individually. Our name was not Jestico Whiles until 1979. We worked together in a shared office in Shelton Street but with different clients. We had different businesses. Sometimes we were helping each other. After two years my accountant said: 'Who is Tom Jestico?',' Well'- I said,-' he sits opposite me'. 'But I don't understand - one minute you are paying him and the other minute he is paying you'. 'Yeah, cause we work for each other'. And he said: 'It is very strange. Is he there? 'Yes', - I said. 'Pass the telephone' – he asked.

So I've passed the telephone over to Tom. He had one half of a conversation and I had the other. So accountant just encouraged us to stop working as an individuals and join, because our clients would be more impressed that there is a name of a company and it would be much more efficient and Tom did not mind. So, we just got together like that.

We had a good kick off straight after because we won a Financial Times Industrial Architecture Award. After this we moved to the other office just round the corner and we grew from two people to five people.

UW: What did you employ?

J: Some students and friends. We were doing loads of small projects: conversions of houses, office fit outs and then we have done an industrial building.

Finally, we've got a call from a big company Pedigree, which was a client of other big architecture companies at that time and we were just five of us. We came to their office and they had a restoration works going on, so it was all filthy. We decided to rent the office to have a meeting with them there, where it is clean and nice and they were really impressed by that. That was how we got this job.

UW: What was the next step?

J: It was our first trip abroad. We thought design must not stay in a country we work. We took 8 people to France for a day in 1984 to have a look at the architecture, get inspiration.

From that period we grew up to 18 people, because we were getting more and more work. It was still mostly residential with some business offices.

UW: Was it hard for you to gain that respect from the customers?

J: Oh, yes. You know, sometimes you read the articles that architects are always young (that is how magazines wants to write) but you cannot be a successful architect until you are 40 or something. You have to win some awards, built up experience. We were the first ones who made and mixed use space: industrial and residential.It is very common in London now, but in those days it used to be separated. Then we won an award for large housing scheme in Docklands and people saw us. That was a big step forward. Then we had another big project to work on and after we grew from around 15 to 35 people in 1990ies. We became 4 directors. It was just because we wanted to move out to a bigger office and we needed more money to invest into our business so they could buy our office (laughing).

UW: Alright. So, that was all in London, but it is very odd that you have another office in Prague. How did you get abroad and why there?

opene offices in more cities in Europe: Prague, Bratislava, etc. Then they have asked us to submit a fee of work placement and we were given Prague, which was the greatest job of all. Half way for this job we asked them: 'Why did we get the Prague'- and they said:'Because you have an office in there'. And that was the biggest misunderstanding. They got it completely wrong, because they meant to give us Budapest. But there was no way we could have changed it. It was fantastic! We got this for a wrong reason. It happened in 1993. Working with British government built up our reputation.

This company worked with artists, coming up with amazing ideas of lightning. Very good example is W hotel in Leicester square. They have done just the outside of a hotel, because they had that idea of having interior designer from other country, not the country it has been built in. They developed from Architecture to Interior Design slow. They have started it in 1995. They work with the artist in the beginning and the interior designers jumps in and out to the process of project.

Jestico Whiles are well known worldwide, they are working on multiplex cinemas in India at the moment. Jestico Whiles is doing a lot of schools at the same time. There are only 15 people in interior design section and 17 in architecture. They have got around 90 employers at this time. Maximum 5 people working on a project: 1 interior designer, director, 1 associate, project architect, assistant architect. One project takes approximately 3-5 years. First there is inception, then concept of a project, then planning, then planning approval which takes time to get approved, then detail design and then production stage.

Ethos of Jestico Whiles:

• ·        Absolute design;
• ·        Minimised management;
• ·        One day in a month of practice, design task;
• ·        Travelling together to see architecture outside England;
• ·        Drawing and sketching;
• ·        Improvisation;
• ·        Working abroad;

‘Foyer of a cinema has to be as challenging and interesting as a movie’(John Whiles).

References: http://www.jesticowhiles.com/;

Intervied by: Urban White Design Team.

13/10/2011