A new chapter at Welbeck Street

Cain International's move to 72 Welbeck Street provided an opportunity to rethink how the workplace could support the business, its people and its future growth. It came at a moment when many organisations were reconsidering what the office was for — and Cain's answer was a confident one: a more central London address, and a place people would genuinely want to spend their time.

Located within Buckley Gray Yeoman's redevelopment, the floor offered generous natural light, strong proportions and the flexibility to bring teams together on a single level. Working closely with the client, Mehrai Design developed a workplace shaped around visibility, hospitality, focus and connection — a setting equally suited to everyday work, client meetings and company-wide gatherings.

The story begins the way a visitor experiences it — at the threshold. Reception is where the company introduces itself, to a partner, a tenant or a new recruit: a calm, considered arrival that signals care before a word is exchanged. From here the floor opens up, and the rest of the building reveals itself in sequence.

The new floor's most generous gift was light, and we chose to share it widely. The prime daylit positions — the desks along the glazed perimeter — went to the teams who spend the whole day on the floor, while the enclosed rooms, used for an hour at a time, were drawn into the core. People in the light; meeting rooms inside.

It is a quiet decision with a real effect on how the day feels. Everyone shares the daylight, the floor reads as open and connected, and the message to staff is unmistakable: the best of this workplace is for you.

The floor was planned around three different journeys. Employees move freely across the whole plate, navigating with ease thanks to an atrium that race-tracks the floor as its main circulation — a continuous loop that makes every area easy to find. Visiting colleagues from the US have the run of the workplace and meeting rooms too, woven into the everyday life of the floor. And the VIP guest is held, graciously, front of house: contained close to reception, yet given glimpses through the atrium of the life and work beyond.

That front-of-house room does a great deal of quiet work. It opens the entrance through to the deeper floorplate on sliding cross-reeded glass doors — privacy when it is wanted, openness when they draw back — always keeping the view in play. It becomes a further meeting room when one is needed, and a function space for events, with a big screen for new launches and cocktail evenings, and a warm welcome from a reception that enjoys natural light of its own. Daylight was considered for everyone, the whole floor planned around circadian rhythm — so even the glimpse through the glass is just enough to intrigue.

Where daylight does the work, artificial light was kept quiet and supportive; where it cannot reach, light was layered to carry the same warmth from a bright morning to a winter afternoon. Linear runs trace the open plan, soft pools mark the lounges, and feature pieces give the social spaces a gentler, more domestic register. Everything is warm in tone and dimmable, so the floor holds one consistent atmosphere through the day rather than the flat, even glare of a conventional office.

Every department was given its own collaborative space — a place to gather close to the desks, with coats and print storage, recycling and confidential waste handled discreetly nearby, and a project break area where a team can step away from screens and talk a scheme through. The practical things that make a working day run are designed in, not tacked on, so each group has somewhere of its own to think out loud.

Cain wanted hospitality embedded into everyday working life, not reserved for special occasions. A café and bar sit at the social heart of the floor, on the natural routes between teams, so a coffee becomes a conversation and lunch becomes a meeting that would never have been booked. They give people a reason to gather, and the company a place to come together — from a quiet morning at the counter to a floor-wide event in the evening.

Deeper in sits the formal heart of the floor: a generous boardroom, with side seating that lets it flex to hold more people when the moment calls for it. It is the room for the set-piece meeting — considered, quietly confident, fully equipped. Throughout the meeting rooms, ceilings and walls are lined with the SoftCells panel system by Kvadrat, tuning the acoustics so a room stays calm and clear however full it gets.

From there the settings step down in scale and formality. A ten-person meeting room is anchored by a burl-wood table with integrated AV, lined with a curated library — architecture, sport, design, art, finance and landscape — assembled with Ultimate Library so the shelves reward a second look. Smaller rooms handle the everyday, and for one-to-ones and focused work there are staff-only booths and softer settings designed to change the mental register of the conversation.

And because work no longer happens only at the desk, anyone in the open plan can duck into a fully acoustic room with all the AV they need — a quiet setting for a call or a moment of focus, a few steps away. Choice, here, is the point: the right room for every conversation, without ever leaving the floor.

Cain International invests in and develops some of the most distinctive real estate and experiences in the world, and that story is woven quietly into the floor. Screens set into the joinery carry visuals of the firm's latest projects — assets across hospitality, residential and leisure shown off around the floorplate, so every department stays close to the wider portfolio rather than only its own corner of it. It is showcased with restraint: present, proud, never loud.

The screen surrounds themselves carry an idea. Their open framework references scaffolding — the language of building and of work in progress — and doubles as a device for giving departments a degree of privacy without ever blocking the light. You can see through and across the floor; the structure suggests separation without enforcing it.

The collection became part of the daily backdrop to working life — and part of Cain's own identity, from cityscapes of the buildings it knows to the things its people love. Work is distributed across the whole floor, so everyone encounters it through the day. Some pieces are loved, some are debated, some introduce a moment of curiosity between meetings.

A wall of textile-bound spines, a portrait carried in on install day, a record sleeve enlarged to the height of a room — the programme is playful, personal and serious in equal measure. The office doesn't feel like a gallery. It feels like a workplace where creativity and commercial thinking comfortably coexist.

The instinct is well supported: art at work is linked to curiosity, emotional engagement and creativity, and to the cognitive restoration that helps people think well across a long day.

Some of the most considered moments on the floor were resolved the old way — around a table, by hand. Material samples were laid out and chosen together, textures compared in the light they would actually live in. It is slow work, and worth it: the decisions that give a place its character are rarely made on a screen.

That spirit of collaboration produced the floor's most personal piece. Human by Design — the artwork at the left — was created by Mehrai Design together with everyone on the project, the client included: a portrait made collectively, and a quiet emblem of how the whole workplace was made.

Materials were never the story; they were how the story was made to work. Soft finishes and careful planning answer acoustics, so focus stays focused and conversation stays easy. Hard-wearing surfaces answer the heavy daily use of a busy floor. Warmer, domestic textures in the café and lounges give people a real change of register when they step away from the desk. Each choice meets a human or operational need first, and reads as considered because it is right.

Longevity was the real sustainability strategy. Durable materials chosen for how they age, joinery and furniture built for a long life, existing artwork carried over rather than replaced, a plan kept flexible rather than tied to a trend that dates. A workplace that can grow with the business is the more responsible choice — and the more commercial one. We held the design through construction, so what was promised is what was built.

What sets the studio apart is the order of operations. We study how a business behaves — its culture, movement, hierarchy, collaboration, light, acoustics and hospitality — before anything is drawn. The design emerges from those observations rather than from a style applied on top.