XTX Markets, a fintech company spun out of hedge fund GSA Capital in 2015, has created a new sci-fi and mathematics-inspired office in King’s Cross, NW1.
The market-maker, which provides liquidity across the foreign exchange, commodities, derivatives and equity markets, has swapped the traditional hedge fund enclave of Mayfair for the tech hub environment of King’s Cross, taking 22,000 sq ft at Argent’s R7 building on Handyside Street.
The Peldon Rose-designed office includes a “portal and experience tunnel”, which comprises thousands of individual sensor and light units that detect a person’s movement and capture their silhouette.
It is designed to challenge the minds of the people who can understand it and visually captivate the minds of those who don’t.
Inspired by the company’s love for programming and mathematics, the art installation in the portal is based on the 15th monohedral tiling convex pentagon, which is the final solution to a mathematical problem devised by Reinhardt in 1918.
Notable features of the office also include:
- A replica of the Apollo 11 landing capsule – inspired by the co-chief executive’s love of sci-fi and space exploration, it is situated in the canteen and can be used for meetings or downtime and comes equipped with gaming consoles;
- A Hoberman chandelier – a mechanical breathing light fitting that expands and contracts independently;
- An airlock chamber and interactive art wall – containing Cylon and 30,132 LEDs, it is made up of 10,168 individual pentagonal tiles;
- A pentagonal wall in reception with digital clock – with more than 4,000 pentagons, there are 17,000 individual engraved lines that were all placed by hand over 500 hours
Three breakout areas in the office have been designed to allow staff to relax and enjoy downtime.
Sleep pods, a BrewDog beer tap and pool tables all feature in the new office.
XTX Markets has a talent pool that sits in the top 0.1% of candidates who work at tech giants and fast-growth fintech start-ups, so the office needed to reflect a balanced, inspirational working environment that would reinforce the firm’s profile as a major player, while attracting and helping the company retain the best talent.
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