ARC Oxford, named Workspace of the Year at the 2025 Hustle Awards
ARC Oxford, has been awarded the Workspace of the Year title at the 2025 Hustle Awards, recognising its pioneering approach to designing inclusive, empowering environments for the UK’s leading innovators.
With sites across Oxfordshire, Uxbridge and West London, the award celebrates ARC’s commitment to creating intentionally designed campuses that support over 300 innovative companies and thriving start-up community.
Judges praised the strong focus on inclusivity and the commitment to reimagining workspaces for a better future, ARC exemplifies how innovation hubs that combine office and lab space can foster collaboration and growth while prioritising accessibility and community needs.
From office space for leading multinational corporations to science-ready workspaces, coworking, and R&D labs, ARC campuses are all set within energising, green environments.
Ascent is the latest development at ARC Oxford, which sits at the heart of ARC Oxford’s innovation cluster, surrounded by over 30 pioneering organisations including FluoRok which is developing safer, more sustainable, and lower-cost methods for producing fluorochemicals, essential for pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and batteries, and OMass Therapeutics, which is identifying new medicines against highly validated but inadequately drugged targets.
The win follows a ground-breaking research project led by ARC in partnership with global design firm HOK and the University of the West of Scotland. The study challenged traditional biotech workspace design, revealing that conventional lab environments often stifle the very innovation they’re meant to support.
In response, ARC is embedding its research-driven design across its campuses, from retreat and reset zones within labs to biophilic features that bring nature into the workspace. These inclusive environments are proven to enhance wellbeing, unlock creative thinking, and drive productivity.
This is complemented by ARC’s tailored support programme for start-ups, including incubator and accelerator initiatives, cluster manager sector specific guidance, and curated events that build meaningful connections.
Jenny Gardner, ARC’s Development Director, said: “At ARC, we believe that the environments we create have the power to unlock breakthrough thinking. Too often, workspace design in science has prioritised sterile aesthetics over human experience. We’re proud to be changing the narrative, building spaces that enable all minds to thrive.”
The Hustle Awards, hosted by Startups Magazine, honour the startups, founders, and enablers reshaping industries with creativity, resilience, and purpose. Judges this year praised ARC’s bold, inclusive approach as a blueprint for the future of science and innovation spaces.
