Commercial
Spaces with commercial purpose and architectural character: workplace, hospitality, leisure, retail and mixed-use.
Our Position
Architecture for ambitious businesses and brands
Spaces with commercial purpose and architectural character: workplace, hospitality, leisure, retail, destination and mixed-use.
Our clients are businesses and brands who need their building to do a job. Recruit. Retain. Welcome. Convert. Sell. They come to us because they want commercial architecture that earns its rent.
Featured Case Study
ICRTouch HQ. The flagship
A new commercial headquarters for one of the Isle of Wight's most successful technology businesses: designed around the runway it overlooks.
A point-of-sale software company's headquarters: opening directly onto the airfield.
- Full: RIBA 1–6
- Hangar: Conversion + Mezzanine
- On site
Sectors We Serve
From workplaces to waterfronts
Six commercial sectors we serve, with interior architecture running through all of them.
Headquarters, fit-outs, co-working, creative-industry space. Workplaces where people choose to be.
Hotels, restaurants, bars, members' clubs. The architecture of hospitality is the architecture of experience, and the experience is the business.
Spas, wellness, sport and visitor experiences. Places designed around how people spend their time, and why they come back.
Independent boutiques, flagship stores, brand showrooms. Retail design is pace, story, and choreography.
Buildings people travel to. Landmark venues, waterfront sites, and heritage buildings put back to work as places worth visiting.
Combined retail, residential, hospitality and commercial schemes, including the repositioning of under-utilised buildings. The interaction between uses is often the design opportunity.
Why Woods
Design as business infrastructure
Architecture is downstream of strategy. Before we draw, we ask what the space is actually for, then design it to perform across every dimension that matters to the business.
Spaces shape how customers feel, how long they stay, and whether they return. We design the experience, not just the enclosure.
A building is the most physical statement a brand ever makes. The architecture should say what the business stands for: before anyone reads a word.
Workplaces recruit and retain. The quality of the environment is part of the offer to the people a business most wants to keep.
Plans that work for how the business actually operates: flow, servicing, back-of-house, energy. Buildings that are efficient to run, day after day.
Whole-life thinking: buildings designed to hold their value and adapt as the business changes, not to date with the fit-out cycle.
Isle of Wight Council, Portsmouth, Southampton, Winchester, the New Forest, the South Downs: we know the policies and what gets approved. Pre-application strategy de-risks commercial planning.
Process & Fees
Clear stages. Written proposals
Fees are structured around scope, programme and procurement route, with staged appointments available from feasibility through delivery.
Every appointment is set out in a written proposal, staged through the RIBA Plan of Work, and agreed before any work begins.
In practice