Oru Sutton – ADC

Sutton, South London, Zone 5. I grew up here and not long-ago Sutton High Street was full of the usual suspects: TJ Hughes, Topshop (and Topman), BHS, Debenhams, HMV – and the rest. It was such a typical suburban high street that it was used as the set for Channel 4’s PhoneShop. (People at school used to walk past the camera in attempts to be spotted in the background of the show).

PhoneShop lasted three series and today, all those once typical high street shops have gone, with most of the companies now no longer operating. Pubs and nightclubs have followed suit – and the St. Nicholas Shopping Centre, billed in 1992 when it opened (to the tune of £100m) as a “premier” retail space for the South East, is due to be demolished after the council recently bought it for £26m. Sutton Council estimates that in the past ten years, roughly 120,000 square metres of offices has been lost, reducing the total office floorspace in the borough by around a third.

Sutton isn’t unique in its high street woes. Many towns and urban centres are facing similar issues. However, in Sutton, there are indications change appears to be on the horizon.

Given its struggles, which were accelerated by the pandemic, the area doesn’t leap out as a viable site to build a trendy co-working space that offers yoga classes, a meditation room and massage therapy – but Paul Hepworth Nemes and Vibushan Thirukumar, co-founders of Oru, did just that.

“Sutton’s high street was dying. It needed life,” said Hepworth Nelmes taking me through the space which occupies the former BHS offices and warehouse. “This isn’t just about creating a co-working space; it’s about bringing people back into the community and making the area vibrant again.”

I first visited Oru Sutton on a Thursday afternoon in early January. By then it had been officially open for almost a year. The space wasn’t bustling, but it was quietly humming with a gentle flow of people, as you’d want for a place primarily geared for co-working.

On the first floor is Trinco, their public-facing café/restaurant while on the floor above can be found an array of desk spaces and offices, along with meeting rooms, treatment rooms, a yoga studio, fitness studio and more. The upper levels house Oru’s main workspace areas. The businesses and facilities here vary wildly and include (but are by no means limited to): an auditorium event space, a laser and skin clinic, a nursery, fitness studio, massage therapist, beautician, osteopath, GP, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, cryogenic therapy, an infra-red sauna, meditation room and an acupuncture practice.

To say there is a wealth of wellness possibilities here might be an understatement. It’s not something one would expect to find in Sutton either – a Sutton I have always thought of as being part of London’s suburban hinterlands, a forgotten place where people lived to go have their fun elsewhere; not a place that offered co-working space and hyperbaric oxygen therapy – that was for the Williamsburgs, the LA’s and the Shoreditchs of this world. Not Sutton.

Hepworth Nelmes was quick to point out that Oru does not exclude any type of business. Instead, its inclusive- and values-driven ethos naturally attracts purpose-oriented companies, from creatives to corporates, with examples also including a large education trust and local media companies.

“For us it’s about accessibility and affordability for all. We even provide free hot desks for people transitioning careers or starting something new via our bounce-back membership,” he added.

Continuing a journey through the building, a level above offers further office space and a chance to get even higher, onto the roof, where there’s a community garden and summer rooftop bar. Though naturally quiet in the winter, it’s easy to see this as a happening social space in summer evenings.

Making all this work architecturally was no small task, especially given the space Oru was inhabiting. To further complicate things, what was once the BHS shop floor is now owned by H&M, meaning entrance directly from the high street wasn’t possible. Instead, entry can be gained from the back of the high street or through the Times Square Shopping Centre – which is eerily empty besides the foyer for Oru and a Sports Direct.

The project was a collaboration between Takero Shimazaki Architects (t-sa) and Samuel Chisholm Studio and the resultant design has carved out space to let natural light in and establish routes through the building’s deep plans, achieved through an approach that considers the existing structure as an “un-tamed topography.”

“The pattern of different uses that comprise Oru is analogous to a city, and so we thought of this inhabitation in urban terms,” said Chisolm.

His studio worked on the first Oru Space also in South London, over in Dulwich. “In the development of all Oru projects we have embraced the principle that constraints and unknowns represent opportunities. As with the site in East Dulwich, the Sutton project begun with strip out commencing and with over 50 per cent of the space unclear on usage. We began design work knowing only that we needed to incorporate coworking space, one yoga studio and a café restaurant. We have ended [up] with a 100-child capacity nursery, a fitness studio, 400 square metre community garden, 200-seat event space, five retail units, incorporated into it also.”

To knit all these different spaces together, Chisholm treated Oru Sutton as a city, with internal courtyards, or “quads,” as Chisholm describes, being employed to punctuate the deep-plan.

“The quads that comprise the new inhabitation are connected by a single path which runs from the Times Square shopfront entrance at ground floor up to the fourth-floor rooftop, which is now used as a garden terrace. The path is imagined as a promenade, i.e. something that is enjoyable to walk along, and as such it is the most generous circulation route in the building in terms of scale and openness. The path begins in a retail unit at ground floor, before passing the Trinco café & restaurant and ‘Town Hall’ event space at first floor, ‘Wellbeing Quarter’ and workspace at third floor, and arriving at the fourth floor Community Garden and outdoor bar. As such, walking along this path introduces a visitor to all aspects of the Oru operation.”

Oru Sutton had to be built to withstand significant change, too.

“The project was designed, constructed and operated with a high degree of openness and ‘tolerance’ with regards to how the finished building would be used,” added Takero Shimazaki.

Despite these big moves being made, aesthetically, the project appears to be light touch. “We didn’t repaint the ceiling beams or plasterboard downstairs. It saves on chemicals, paints, and sealants — one of many way we reduce consumption,” said Hepworth Nelmes, an ethos that was reflected in the architectural brief.

As a result, Chisholm and t-sa formed the principle of only changing things that they considered to have some infrastructural importance in accommodating the building’s new use.

Found materials and elements have been reused as well. A workspace reception desk has been made from bricks that were removed to form the structural openings of new windows and curtain walling during construction. When Hepworth Nelmes was showing me the auditorium/event space he enthusiastically gestured an array of metal chairs, taken from Greenwich Town Hall when it stripped them out. “They fit perfectly. It’s like they were made for this space.” They had to have them.

The circular approach was also aided by Oru’s phased launch, with the space opening when 50 per cent of it was ready. This in turn allowed contractors and the design team to adapt proposals to make use of materials found on site, or elsewhere.

“A good example of this was a large quantity of metal grating we acquired that from a company called Rackway who sell second hand shelving and metalwork,” said Chisholm. “So far, we have found nine different uses from it, from flooring to trellis.”

At the time of writing, Oru Sutton has let more than 80 per cent of its space, making it a success in the eyes of its co-founders and Sutton Council, who contributed £4.7 million to the £8 million project. (A further £1.3 million came from the GLA’s Good Growth Fund and £5665,000 from the Grow Back Greener Fund).

In the wake of Covid-19, the borough took the opportunity to review its approach to workspace in in towns and district centres.

“Due to a historic loss of office space and changing working patterns, we were sure there would be demand in Sutton for this new, more flexible type of space,” a spokesperson for the London Borough of Sutton told AT.

“That’s why purchasing the former BHS building was the right thing to do to help safeguard this key asset in the high street. A new tenant (H&M) had recently moved into the lower floors and there was an opportunity to use the upper floors of this key anchor site to add value to the high street and maximise value from the space.”

“Post-pandemic, there is ongoing demand in outer London boroughs like Sutton for people to both live and work locally. The success of Oru Sutton has demonstrated the need.”

And Oru Sutton isn’t finished yet, either. A wellness centre, designed by Hassell, is being added to the roof and is set to include a spa, treatment rooms, a jacuzzi and sauna – plunge pool and all. This latest part of the project is easily the most ambitious and in keeping with what has come before, Oru has directly charged Hassell with using as many non-virgin materials as possible.

“We visited Paul when Oru was still a construction site,” Xavier De Kestelier, principal and head of design at Hassell told AT. “He had already collected loads of materials to be embedded into the project – he was showing us things he’d sourced, saying, ‘I just bought X amount of this, look how amazing this is.’ It was clear he really believed in the approach, and that made us want to take it on.”

“It’s not easy to work like this – it challenges procurement processes and even RIBA work stages. It’s difficult because you’re designing without always knowing what materials will be available. It’s tricky for the design process, for planning approval, and for procurement.”

Jonathan Irawan, associate at Hassell, is helping to lead on procurement. The spa’s brick flooring uses reclaimed bricks from knocked down walls on site while large pipes, cut in half, are to be used on the roof. The pipes come from Cleveland Steel – a company better known for working on large-scale oil and gas infrastructure projects, from which surplus pipes are to be used here in Sutton. The plan at Oru is to cut these beams in half and use them structurally on the roof. For this to happen, however, the steel needs to be recertified, which is being currently being worked on.

“We’re healthy hoarders in a way. These old sprinkler pipes?” said Hepworth Nelmes pointing at a sea of construction materials on the roof. “They’ll either be used for planting, turned into sculptures, or integrated into the spa design.”

“It’s easier to buy new materials every time. But we have to find a way to reuse and repurpose, or nothing will change. We must use less, in our buildings and in our lives.”