offices
Clive Wilkinson Architects & Holloway Li, 1930
10 Redchurch Street, E2 7DD
Mother has been in the Biscuit Building since 2006, it was designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects. It is a four-story creative workspace, with the design centred around a 14-foot wide staircase through the building from ground to loading level to first floor and then second floor. A table, which accommodates Mother staff, is shaped as a continuous ribbon with this staircase.
Liverpool Street
Shoreditch High Street
This will be a walking tour.
Mother was founded in London in 1996 by a group of creative, free-thinking individuals sitting around a kitchen table eating lunch. It’s here that the group decided that they were hungry – not for more sandwiches, but to do things differently. They wanted to break free from the shackles of traditional agencies and be 100% independent. To be free to do the best work possible.
Since its beginnings Mother, had all of their staff work around a table. As the company grew, the table grew. Today, Mother is still fiercely independent, but now there are over 500 like-minded people in our family, with offices across London, New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai and Berlin. All with kitchen tables in them. And all with people sitting around them that come to work every day to make the best work they possibly can. Come on in. Everybody who is passionate about great work is always welcome at our table.
In the spring of 2003, Mother commissioned Clive Wilkinson Architects to work with them to design our new expanded offices in Shoreditch.
Our new Home, originally the Lipton Tea Warehouse, was a state-of-the art bacon curing plant — built on the site of a tea storage facility, hence the name. The bacon factory, and an adjoining warehouse for teapacking (known today as the Biscuit Building — home to Shoreditch House and Mother), were owned by the Lipton grocery brand, which distributed tea around the world and bacon across London.
Mother took 42,000 sqft of the eastern portion of the Biscuit Building. As there was no direct connection from the newly created entrance (an old loading dock), Clive Wilkinson Architects proposed driving a large 14-foot wide staircase through the building from ground to loading level to first floor and then second floor.
The 4.2-meter-wide staircase turns into the Agency’s concrete worktable and circuits through the upper floor like a racetrack, becoming perhaps the world’s largest table at 250 feet long.
To mitigate sound in the hard factory space, the Design Team designed 2.1-meter-long lamp shades padded with 75mm of acoustic foam. The 50 light fixtures were then covered with unique patterns of Marimekko fabric selected from archive stock in its’ factory in Helsinki, achieving the effect of a large art installation.
The inspiration for the concrete table was inspired by the iconic 1920’s Giacomo Matte-Trucco rooftop race track for Fiat Lingotto in Turin—making a monumental statement.
Our Ground floor area was refreshed by Interior Architects Holloway Li at the start of 2024.
Drop in
civic, art in the public realm, community/cultural, entertainment, mixed use, theatre, concert/performance space
Originally opened in 1866, Shoreditch Town Hall is a Grade II listed, landmark building, and was for over 100 years one of the grandest Vestry Halls in London. Today, Shoreditch Town Hall is a leading cultural, community and live events space made up of 70 individual rooms - from the Victorian grandeur of the Assembly Hall to the intimate warren of the untouched basement space.
Caesar Augustus Long, 1866
Drop in / Guided tour
institution/profession, historical house
A rare opportunity to explore the Georgian headquarters of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), the UK’s oldest building conservation charity, not normally open to the public.
Unknown, 1740
Drop in / Guided tour
gallery, art in the public realm, community/cultural, museum
The Gilbert & George Centre was originally established as a registered charity by the artist in 2009 with the objective to advance the education of the public in the arts, and generally to advance the arts, architecture, heritage and culture for the benefit of the public.
SIRS Architects, 2022
