Work at your own depth.
Isoline is a workspace built in layers. Talk on the top floor, flow on the middle one, and go quiet all the way down.
Most offices are built for interruption. We built ours like a well.
Three floors, each quieter than the one above it. You choose how far down to go each morning, and the building keeps everyone else at their own depth.
Three depths. Pick one each morning.
Every floor has one colour and one rule about sound. The lower you sit, the deeper the colour and the quieter the room.
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Level 3
Shallow
Calls, coffee and talk. The floor for starting the day, meeting people and coming back up after a long stretch.
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Level 2
Flow
Long desks and low voices. Questions are whispered or written down, headphones are welcome, laptops stay open.
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Level 1
Deep
Single carrels and sealed booths. Phones sleep in lockers by the stairs, and nobody taps a shoulder.
The building has a day of its own.
The floors open in order and the quiet moves through them. Here is a weekday, from the first key to the last light.
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Level 3
Doors and coffee
The top floor opens first. Say hello now; it is the loudest the building gets.
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Level 2
Quiet hours begin
Flow fills up. Voices drop to a whisper and the long desks go still.
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Level 1
The deep block
Phones go into lockers at the stairs. Booths are held for three hours, no knocking.
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Level 3
Up for lunch
One long table on the roof. Talk about anything except what you are working on.
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Level 1
Second descent
The afternoon block. Most members say this is when the real work happens.
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Level 3
Surfacing
Lights warm up, the roof opens, and on Thursdays someone talks about how they finished something.
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All levels
Last light
The building closes from the bottom up. Residents keep a key to their booth.
Rooms, in order of descent.
Four places to sit, listed the way you reach them: from the roof, down the stairs, to the carrels at the bottom.
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Level 3
The Roof
Benches, a long lunch table and the only place in the building for phone calls. Open from spring to the first frost.
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Level 2
The Long Room
Forty seats along two oak tables under west windows. Bring headphones; the afternoon light does the rest.
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Between levels
The Stairs
The landing where you leave your phone and your voice. Lockers, water, and a bench for deciding how far down to go.
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Level 1
The Carrels
Twenty-two white carrels and six sealed booths. One clock per room, no screens on the walls, nothing to look at but the work.
Three rules, posted at the stairs.
Each floor has exactly one. They get shorter as you go down.
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Level 3
Talk is fine. Calls go up on the roof.
Meetings, laughter and coffee orders all belong up here.
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Level 2
Whisper, or write it down.
Every desk has a notepad for questions.
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Level 1
Phones sleep upstairs.
Lockers wait on the landing.
Who works down here.
Four of our two hundred members, each standing at the edge of the depth they keep coming back to.
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Level 3
Ines Varga
Sound designer
“I mix on the roof and listen back in a booth. The stairs between them are my best edit.”
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Level 2
Maren Holt
Illustrator
“Drew a whole picture book at the long table. Nobody asked what I was making until it was done.”
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Level 1
Teodor Lund
Novelist
“Booth four, every morning for two winters. The book has the same number of chapters as there are bands on the wall.”
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Level 1
Arun Desai
Translator
“At eighty-one I finally have an office with no telephone. I translate a page a day and leave at four.”
Surfacing, on Thursday evenings.
Once a week the building comes up for air. A member talks for twenty minutes about how they finished something, then the roof opens.
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16 OctThursday, 18:30
How to end a long book
Teodor Lund on the last forty pages and the two winters it took to reach them.
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23 OctThursday, 18:30
Silence is a material
Ines Varga plays the rooms of the building back to us, one recording per floor.
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30 OctThursday, 18:30
A page a day for forty years
Arun Desai on slowness, dictionaries and the joy of an office without a phone.
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6 NovThursday, 18:30
Drawing without an audience
Maren Holt shows the sketchbooks behind a picture book nobody saw until it was finished.
Finished at depth.
Some of the things members have completed in the building, and the floor where each one was finished.
| Work | Kind | Maker | Finished on |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Salt Year | Novel | Teodor Lund | Level 1 |
| Small Hours | Album, eight tracks | Ines Varga | Level 3 |
| Where the Fox Sleeps | Picture book | Maren Holt | Level 2 |
| Tidewater Grotesk | Typeface, four weights | Pell Okafor | Level 2 |
| The Collected Letters of R. Anand | Translation | Arun Desai | Level 1 |
| Soil Memory | Doctoral thesis | Lise Brandt | Level 1 |
How deep a membership goes.
Every plan opens the top floors. The deeper the plan, the further down your key works.
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Member
€190 a month
- All three levels, weekdays
- Two booth blocks a week
- Thursday evenings included
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Resident
€340 a month
- Your own carrel on Level 1
- A key to the building, seven days
- A locker that stays yours
Come down for a day.
Ask for a tour and we will walk you from the roof to the carrels in fifteen minutes, quietly on the way down.
- Address
- 14 Wren Yard
Leeds LS2 7EW - Hours
- Weekdays 7:30 to 21:00
Residents every day - Phone
- +44 113 000 0000
Isoline, 14 Wren Yard