Somerset House Studios is a new experimental workspace for artists, makers and thinkers in central London. AOC worked closely with Somerset House Trust and resident artists to provide 36,000 sq.ft of rooms for producing, performing and presenting in the lower three floors of the New Wing of the Grade 1 listed Somerset House. An arts centre for the 21st century, the Studios are an R&D lab, factory and shop window rolled into one. Begun in 1775 to designs by William Chambers, Somerset House was the first purpose-built office complex in the UK. Radically for the time it brought a number of government departments together under one roof (along with three fledgling arts societies), encouraging cross-department conversations. Today Somerset House is the biggest concentration of creative industries in central London; the Studios are its engine room, providing affordable workspaces for artists and actively nurturing cross-disciplinary conversations between residents. At the opening of Somerset House Studios, London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan announced his plans to tackle London’s shortage of affordable creative workspace, praising the Studios as a model example of how genuinely affordable workspace can be made available in central London to a wide range of artistic talent.