Dyson Spaces

I have always wanted Dyson’s people to work in inspiring spaces which have their own story and character. Buildings matter because they affect all of us as individuals. Architecture and the spaces we inhabit have a profound impact on our health, how we feel, and how we work creatively together.

While studying at London’s Royal College of Art, I came to appreciate the brilliance of the revolutionary structures designed by Tony Hunt and Buckminster Fuller. Working with Tony Hunt, previously my structures tutor, and the late Chris Wilkinson to develop the first buildings on our Malmesbury Campus, I realised the importance of fresh, rather than recirculated, office air to avoid ‘sick building syndrome’ and keep us all healthy (this was controversial at the time, but in a post-Covid world the benefits are now plain to see). And through my Foundation’s work, at the Dyson Centre for Neonatal Care in Bath, I saw how natural light can improve health outcomes for premature babies and improve the morale of those caring for them.

For these reasons, and many more, I believe a place of work should be inspiring – a destination to look forward to at the end of the commute and a place that inspires collaboration. There is nothing quite like walking into an exciting and uplifting building. That is how I feel when I walk into St James Power Station, our new Singapore global headquarters, and onto our campuses in Malmesbury and Hullavington, Wiltshire. That goes for our Demo stores too, from New York to Paris to Tokyo, which were designed to look like art galleries but work like traditional market stalls without the clutter. They are, I hope, inspiring places to visit and get hands-on with our technology.

At Dyson we make physical things, so it is vital that we interact face-to-face with each other and with our products. We collaborate, using the latest equipment in shared spaces and labs where we experiment and test out prototypes and ideas. We have taken this approach since we started out in the Wiltshire Coach House adjacent to my house near Bath – our 18th century English equivalent of the mythical Silicon Valley ‘garage’. We had to do it up, restore the old building, fit windows and sweep away the fusty straw to make a space to work.

Things are a bit different now. The first vacuum cleaner we made, the DC01, involved four mechanical engineers sitting in the hayloft of a Wiltshire Coach House and two engineers downstairs, working machines. The latest, the V15 with laser and sensor technology, involved 400 engineers – engineers and scientists working in acoustics, AI, connectivity, energy storage and motor control – with a vast array of skills and expertise, all over the world. We have grown to become a global technology company and we are growing still, recruiting thousands of new engineers and scientists, and investing in the latest labs where they work.

Globally, we strive to build and engineer spaces that are well-designed – places that are enjoyable and exciting for our people and customers. I have always been sceptical of design that puts looks ahead of function. It is no use having a beautiful product that doesn’t do its job – and the same goes for buildings.

We want to preserve the original purpose of our old buildings while modernising them for use today. It’s something we’ve done since the very beginning because it’s the right thing to do, both for the environment and the way we work. We don’t hide things away; the services and structures are all there to see because what works begins to look beautiful.

We don’t want people tucked away in offices so we have open-plan spaces, where teams can meet, talk and think together – the chance encounter being as vital to progress as the long-scheduled meeting. Our cafés serve great-tasting, locally sourced food (in the UK this is often from our own farms) cooked by world-class chefs. They serve as more casual forums for collaboration, dotted around our spaces, a coffee or tea within easy walking distance.