Island Records and EMI turn their King’s Cross headquarters into a living music archive

More than 70 artworks, photographs and pieces of ephemera shape a redesigned London headquarters that blurs the boundaries between workplace, gallery and record-label archive.

A Jeremy Deller artwork, a hand-painted Jamaican sign mural and photography by Annie Leibovitz and Anton Corbijn are among the pieces woven into the redesigned King’s Cross headquarters shared by Island Records and EMI.

Created over 18 months with spatial design studio Interesting Projects and the labels’ in-house creative team Studio Eye, the Pancras Square workspace has been conceived as part office, part exhibition and part archive. More than 70 historic and newly commissioned works appear throughout the interior, drawing on the visual histories of two labels whose artists span Bob Marley, The Beatles, Grace Jones, U2, Elton John, Amy Winehouse, Taylor Swift and Lola Young.

Rather than separating artwork from the architecture, the project builds each label’s identity into the materials and colour palette of the space.

Island’s signature Pantone 109C yellow is paired with Pantone 671C pink, referencing the label’s progressive and folk era between 1967 and 1970. EMI’s palette draws on a deconstructed Union Jack, using red, white and Yves Klein blue. Colour-matched ALPI wood joinery, stainless-steel wall fabrication and bespoke framing carry those identities through the interior.

The collection brings together work by Annie Leibovitz, Thierry Noir, Jeremy Deller, Corbin Shaw and Anton Corbijn alongside archive photography and ephemera linked to the labels’ histories.

Island’s area also includes a hand-painted mural by British Jamaican sign-painter Jorge Jacobs, based on a design originated by the Nurse Signs collective in Jamaica. The work connects the London headquarters back to the label’s beginnings in Jamaica, where Chris Blackwell founded Island Records in 1959.

EMI’s history stretches back to London in 1931, giving the two labels very different points of origin but decades of shared influence across music and visual culture.

James Mason and Joana Filipe, directors of Interesting Projects, describe the headquarters as an extension of the studio’s exhibition-led approach to interior design: “This project sits at the intersection of our practice. We design spaces that encourage creativity and exchange, and we bring exhibition thinking to workplace environments, shaping them as curated, narrative-led experiences. For Island Records and EMI, the office became a spatial expression of musical legacy, where materiality, colour and art function both as an archive and as a foundation for the labels’ next chapter.”

The project follows Interesting Projects’ work across both cultural and music spaces, including exhibition design for Keith Haring at Tate Liverpool, Sneakers Unboxed: Studio to Street at the Design Museum and Defected Records’ London headquarters.

Holly Williams, Creative Director at Studio Eye, says the collaboration grew from an admiration for the studio’s Tate Liverpool work. “Commissioning and collaborating with Interesting Projects stemmed from my deep admiration for their exhibition design for the Keith Haring retrospective at Tate Liverpool in 2019. The Island Records and EMI spaces blur the boundaries between workplace, gallery and concept store to create an environment where artists and staff can feel inspired and contribute to the legacies of two legendary, British record companies.”

The result is a headquarters that treats decades of music history as something to be encountered rather than simply displayed. Art, sound, graphic identity and archival material sit within the everyday workings of the labels, turning the office into a space where past releases and future campaigns occupy the same visual language.