Sunday Herald

It is the start of the political conference season, and some sections of the press have been making hay out of the old gripe about the Liberal Democrats being neither one thing nor the other, but somewhere in between. But on the edge of Glasgow's southside, a long way from conference beaches, two creative companies have been making a business move out of something similar. McConville Architecture staff have moved into the Gorbals premises of the design company CuriousOranj to form the new CuriousGroup. They are pioneering a tie-up which is more than a strategic alliance but much less than a merger. It is an in-house collaboration with a single board and one creative director, but with two separately functioning companies. “The way we have described it in-house is that we will sleep together before we get married,” says Stephen Halpin, managing director and joint owner of CuriousOranj.