Insight: Celebrating personality over polish
Sean Willcock, Director at Davenport Campbell, shares insight on celebrating personality over polish when it comes to designing for workplaces.
Workplaces should be clubhouses, not showrooms.
Moments of surprise, shared history, and genuine personality that can weave people together.
In one of our recent projects, we installed a working, old-school, telephone box into a workspace. Not an acoustically perfect pod, just a quirk from company history, so that everyone has a daily reminder of company pride and purpose.
It’s rare for someone to point out the materials or finishes in their workplace as the highlights. What people remember and talk about most are the stories. What are those special moments, traditions, and culture that make a space feel meaningful and alive?
The 2025 Leesman Report promotes personalised and culture-driven spaces, and in the 2025 Gensler Global Workplace Survey finds that "the best workplaces don’t just support work, they reflect what people value most." This reinforces our belief at Davenport Campbell that spaces designed around culture and storytelling create stronger performance, loyalty, and engagement among employees. These elements drive engagement far more than design polish or expensive finishes.
People think nothing of driving hours to a favourite pub or holiday house… but ask them to come into the workplace and suddenly it feels like a chore. As workplace architects and designers, we help create spaces that teams look forward to - places that spark pride, reflect culture, and invite people in.
We should want our spaces making headlines in culture blogs for originality, character, and meaning. Let’s go ahead and build spaces with swagger. What will your workplace be remembered for… its stone countertops, or its stories?
Author: Sean Willcock, Director at Davenport Campbell
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