If Carlsberg did office spaces, they'd probably want to give Joe McGinley a bell. The founder of the Iconic Office group, Mc Ginley spotted a market for co-working offices in Dublin back in 2013. Four years, 16 locations, 4,000 desks (for innovators, entrepreneurs and start-ups) and ¼ million sq ft later, McGinley – at just 34 – is only getting into his stride.
One of the more unorthodox players in commercial property, McGinley is not driven by figures or facts, but rather by listening to his gut instinct and by his love for art and design. In fact, you’re more likely to meet him a stonemason’s yard, checking out the patina on a slab of marble, than in a boardroom, getting bogged down with statistics. “I get fixated on things I see in hotels, at salvage yards, in restaurants or even graffiti on walls. Something ignites in me and I’m like, right, I’m going to create my next building around this, and I just run with it until it’s done.”
The 7ft Robocop metal statue which he spotted in the UK auction house Cliffords Cross Auctions, near King's Lynn in Norfolk, was the starting point for Number 9 Pembroke Street. "Robocop was bought before I even saw that building and he set the tone for what that space was to become. It ended up taking on a very hipster, New York loft vibe, mostly because the plaster kept falling off the wall, so we decided to make a feature of it and exposed the raw bricks behind the Georgian plasterwork. It's still one of my favourite projects."
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Iconic’s latest launch, the Greenway on St Stephen’s Green, 2,880sq m (31,000sq ft) of “kick-ass co-working space”, according to McGinley, came about after he spotted illustrations by graffiti crew Rarekind in a hotel in Soho and he had what he calls a “boom” moment.
“I pretty much signed the lease on The Greenway, based on this overwhelming need I had to work with them. I flew over seven of their graffiti artists, who worked for seven days painting art on the walls and creating cool signage around the building. I much prefer turning the walls into art rather than buying stuff to hang on them. We did something similar when designing The Brickhouse on Mount Street earlier this year, and ran a competition for NCAD students to install pieces or paint murals on the walls, and the results were incredible.”
No formal background
McGinley has no formal background in design or interiors; he trained as a Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland SCSI property surveyor and worked in various Dublin estate agents before redundancy gave him the impetus to open his first property firm, Bespoke, in 2008. While running Bespoke, he noticed a byproduct of the recession was a new breed of entrepreneurs and innovators who needed space to work but who weren't getting finance from the banks for their own offices. "I took a punt on 127 Lower Baggot Street, signed a long-term lease and thought, what kind of space would I like to work in? All the offices I was renting out at the time in Dublin were so bland and corporate, yet at the same time Google and Facebook were totally changing the concept of the workplace, with these amazing amenities-led buildings, so I took my cue from the best."
McGinley got stuck into refurbishing the 279sq m (3,000sq ft) Georgian building and found it was a creative process he really enjoyed. “I had a tiny budget to work with, around €20,000, so I put the majority of the cash into making the boardrooms, reception and kitchen areas really cool and kept the hot desk rooms pretty basic, as clients are not seeing your desks. Compared to what we are doing now the standard of design was pretty basic, but all the desks were full in weeks and I knew I was onto something.”
With each new addition to the Iconic portfolio, on average one more office location a quarter, McGinley’s vision has become bolder, his design skills more refined and the budgets ever-expanding.
“We’ve just spent €2 million on the interiors for The Greenway, but it is a massive space and I wanted to set the bar even higher. I worked with Róisín Lafferty from KLD on this project, as it was too big to take on solo, and pretty much everything in there is bespoke. We commissioned a carpenter from Johnston Shopfitters to make every single desk because I’m obsessed with joinery.
“I’ve also developed this thing with steel Crittall Windows frames, so they feature throughout the building as they’re a great medium for breaking up large spaces and give a cool industrial vibe. We also wanted greenery everywhere, without the maintenance of real plants, but couldn’t find any decent-looking fake trees, so I had a silk company in the UK hand-make all the leaves for them instead.”
Grand designs
Unsurprisingly, people are always trying to rein McGinley in on his grand designs. “My peers are forever trying to talk me out of decisions, telling me it won’t work, or it’s not worth the spend. Like when we put in a small library at the South Point offices down in the docks, I wanted it to be this cool headspace where you just go to think, so I bought 2,500 vintage books for it and everyone thought I was cracked. But everyone loves it there. Bottom line: if I think something is going to make people smile and bring fun to the workplace, I just crack on.”
McGinley does listen to one person, Althaea Federlein, the company's CCO and his right-hand woman who looks after the numbers, the infrastructure and the day-to-day operations. She fully understands that "you don't keep Joe on a tight leash, he's a creative soul and people love what he's doing. Small companies find it hard to compete with the tech giants, so cool office spaces with creativity at their core are a big draw for recruiting the new generation of workers. People work for causes not just cash anymore, and if you want to keep staff in work for longer, making the office as cool as a five-star hotel, and as comfy as your home, is a good place to start," says Federlein.
In 2018, McGinley will be spearheading an expediential growth plan of three more Iconic offices, and his future focus is going to be on bringing more wellness into the workplace – think gyms, yoga rooms, phone-free zones, cinemas and coffee shops. He’s not entirely sure where they are going to be just yet but, rest assured, he’s already bought the furniture and has spotted a carpet in Hoxton hotel in Amsterdam, “which I’ve filed away in my vision bank and I’m going use as the starting point for the next place.”
