Santander is reinventing the bank HQ with its Unity Place building in Milton Keynes. Kristina Smith visited the site to find out how.
Given the pandemic-induced shift to flexible working, one might assume that the last thing Milton Keynes needs is new office space. But there it is, as you walk out of Central Station: eight storeys and 37,000 sq m of brand-new building taking shape.
This will be Santander’s Unity Place. A bank HQ, but different. Forget the security guards and scanners, here the ground floor will be open to the public, with pop-up markets, cafes, yoga classes and performances to encourage people to wander through. Santander is keen to accommodate and nurture entrepreneurial fintech start-ups on the lower floors.
“It’s a real paradigm shift for an HQ building,” says Richard Hutchinson, director at LOM Architecture and Design, which designed the building for developer Osborne+Co. “While Unity Place is designed with security in mind, the business’s ethos is to be open and transparent – and to play an active part in the local community. This has informed the design of the building.”
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