Western Morning News headquarters and printworks (The Ship)

Looking to leave cramped city-centre offices and switch to offset printing and new communications technology, the Western Morning News Company, a part of Northcliffe Newspapers, invited four practices to compete to design a headquarters and printworks at Derriford, on an undeveloped site at the edge of the city. Its managing director, Jerry Ramsden, wanted a landmark that would leave an impression locally, and he was drawn to the Financial Times print works that Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners had designed in Docklands, whose glass walls let passing motorists watch the presses run. The practice was appointed in early 1990.

The scheme was granted planning consent in April 1991, and construction began that July with the concrete frame. Construction ended in December 1992, for £15 million, and the doors opened in January 1993. In 1993 it won the Structural Steel Design Award, a Royal Fine Art Commission Building of the Year award and a British Construction Industry Award, followed by a RIBA award in 1994.

Among the newspapers run off the presses on site were The Herald, the Western Morning News, the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Mail and the Cornish Guardian. The Herald and the Western Morning News relocated in 2013.

Demolition was then put forward by the former owners. The Twentieth Century Society, working with Grimshaw, asked Historic England for an urgent listing assessment; Burrington Estates bought the building in 2015 and said it meant to turn it into a business hub. Grade II* listing followed on 22 July 2015, citing among other reasons a rare example of a large newspaper production facility and an important development of point-fixed structural glazing. The owner relaunched the site in December 2015 under the name "Spirit of Enterprise".

The plan follows two givens: the very linear process of producing a newspaper, and a steeply sloping bluff overlooking Plymouth Sound. The building is boat-shaped, its prow facing north-east, and steps down the slope over three levels. In the north the prow held editorial, marketing, administration and shared leisure spaces; in the south the stern gathered paper delivery, printing and dispatch, on ascending levels. The presses stood on the ground floor and the publishing hall on the first floor, from which newspapers left by gangways across a moat towards the loading areas.

Visitors enter by a footbridge at first-floor level, which leads to a triangular atrium rising the full height of the building to a glazed toplight. Above it all, a box cantilevered 22 m up housed the boardroom and an observation gallery; it is carried by a concrete column that contains a lift and a stair. It takes the position of a ship's bridge and looks out towards Plymouth Sound, Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor.

The structure is steel and concrete. On the main facades, external steel columns known as "tusks", each made of two curved tubes joined by a welded plate, taper and flare outwards as they rise. They hold 700 point-fixed Pilkington Planar glass panels, 12 mm thick and weighing about 120 kg each, shaped as faceted curves. Their curved profile is meant to cut solar gain and to let people see in without reflections of the sky. At the back, to the south-west, the wall is ribbed steel cladding pierced by portholes and loading doors; this plainer treatment was chosen to leave room for a future extension.

Ove Arup and Partners were the project's engineers, and Cundall Johnston and Partners handled mechanical and electrical services for both the building and the presses. With a residential home and a hospital nearby, heavy acoustic insulation was worked out with Applied Acoustic Design. Grimshaw has said that the building's curves took their cue from the lie of the land, not from any wish to create symbolic imagery; the ship shape nevertheless became the newspaper's logo.

The building has been divided into units. The prow holds offices let to businesses; the stern holds leisure venues, among them an indoor adventure park set up in 2017 (trampolines, inflatables, virtual reality).

The building stands on Brest Road, in the Plymouth International & Medical Technology Park, next to Derriford Hospital. The public enters the stern through the leisure venues that occupy it.