The Financial Modern Workspace
SpaceInvader has completed a boutique, 2,000 sq ft workspace for Manchester-based Tosca Debt Capital on the 5th floor of the Helical-owned Trinity Building on the city’s John Dalton Street. Not only was this a fast turnaround scheme, commissioned in July 2020, but it was designed and delivered by the SpaceInvader and wider installation team during lockdown and semi-lockdown, proving what could still be achieved under such exacting pandemic conditions.
Tosca Debt Capital is a financial services company that brings additional, complementary debt funding options to regional markets, giving SMEs – particularly those across the Northern Powerhouse – access to institutional capital to help drive entrepreneurial ambitions.
‘Our client is a very forward-thinking and successful finance sector business, with a real sense of quality and style’, SpaceInvader Founder John Williams commented. ‘It was important for them that their people could be together at their best and so the overall brief was for a lot of different spatial typologies within the 2000 sq ft overall space on the 5th floor of the Trinity building’.
The client’s brand values were defined as ‘experienced, professional and knowledgeable, reliable and responsive and relationship-driven’. SpaceInvader’s approach therefore was to create an interior that would reflect Tosca as a forward-facing professional company, without any kind of faddy or trend-led concept, but instead creating an understated, high-quality scheme with muted, warm tones and featuring high levels of bespoke joinery and craftsmanship to help create a quiet, sophisticated and timeless feel. 
‘In many ways, this project is a vision of what the future workspace will be for many companies’, John Williams noted. ‘This is a client who has moved away from a traditional office and who briefed for a space to fit current and future needs, where the workspace becomes a hub, not only for them, but for clients too and for the businesses whose boards they serve on, with the space able to perform a multitude of tasks, ranging from meetings to focus work, one-to-one and larger collaborations, with enough space for project pin-ups and reviews, as well as spaces for breakout, hospitality and entertainment’.
The material treatment for the scheme included warm timber tones; blue and auburn upholstery finishes and a feature deep blue paint finish set against the predominant neutral off-white. There are also neutral and textured wallpapers; deep blue and mottled grey acoustic finishes; carpet tiles in a mixture of charcoal grey and beige and a surface finishes, including marble, grey and black laminate, along with black-stained ply.
Gary Davison, Partner at Tosca Debt Capital, commented on the project:
‘SpaceInvader were really great to work with – pushing at every boundary to make sure the design was strategic and truly reflected our culture and identity. The finished environment is exactly what we were looking for: warm and welcoming for both our team and our clients and with a seamless spatial flow. The look is crisp and sophisticated and, most importantly, offers us as a business the future-proofed flexibility we need to move forward.’
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