When you emerge on the ninth floor of 4 Pancras Square, an office tower in London’s King’s Cross neighbourhood, you’d be forgiven for mistaking the workspace for a contemporary art gallery. Here, at the new headquarters of Island Records and EMI (both part of Universal Music Group), you’re as likely to encounter a portrait by Annie Leibovitz or a Thierry Noir mural as you are at any museum across town. When you consider that the space is designed with local studio InterestingProjects, known for its curatorial approach to interiors, it all starts to make sense. Holly Williams, Creative Director at Studio Eye, the label’s in-house creative studio, became familiar with the firm’s work back in 2019, through their exhibition design for the Keith Haring retrospective at Tate Liverpool. When the time came to select a designer to collaborate with on the office renovation, they were an obvious fit.
The biggest challenge was to bring together the identities of two different labels within a single cohesive space: Island Records, founded in Jamaica in 1959 and known for launching legendary reggae artists like Bob Marley, and EMI, established in London in 1931, whose roster has included icons as diverse as The Beatles, Elton John and Amy Winehouse.
The designers have delineated the two workspaces via colour. The entrance to Island Records is awash in the label’s signature yellow hue, with soft pink accent walls further inside — a palette that nods to its progressive and folk eras between 1967 and 1970. EMI’s space, meanwhile, draws on the brand’s British heritage through a deconstruction of the Union Jack: red, white and Yves Klein blue. “The office became a spatial expression of musical legacy, where materiality, colour and art function both as an archive and as a foundation for the labels’ next chapter,” explain James Mason and Joana Filipe, directors of InterestingProjects.
Throughout, traditional open-plan desk setups are balanced with more intimate workspaces, each with their own distinct personality. One informal meeting area, for instance, is clad in a bold wood veneer with an expressive grain pattern from Alpi’s Ettore Sottsass collection, bringing in an element of texture. The listening room is bathed in a deep blue, setting a moody tone for an immersive space that foregrounds music first and foremost (which is played on bespoke RN1 & M210 studio monitors by British hi-fi manufacturer TPI Aerospace).
The interior’s colourful shell forms the striking backdrop for an art collection of over 70 works, both archival pieces and new commissions that chart the cultural impact of both labels. A portrait of a young Amy Winehouse by Jake Chessum hangs in the communal kitchen; a typographic textile piece by Corbin Shaw, Just Four Lads From Liverpool, pays homage to The Beatles in a shared meeting room.
Typography features heavily throughout the office, from a mural of Bob Marley’s ‘One Love’, painted by British-Jamaican signwriter SignsbyJorge, to a custom curtain by InterestingProjects that prompts visitors to ‘Pump Up the Volume,’ to the blown-up version of current EMI artist Lola Young’s speech at the 2025 Ivor Novello Awards that holds pride of place in the office of label president Louis Bloom. These highly personalized touches turn the workspace into a kind of living archive — one that honours the vast history that made both labels what they are today, while also holding space for the next generation of talent.
The post At Island Records and EMI’s New London HQ, Music Is an Art Form appeared first on Azure Magazine.
