Tala Fustok designs Ninja Theory office to entice employees back into workplace

A blood-red bar and all-blue cinema room feature in the Cambridge headquarters of BAFTA-winning game developer Ninja Theory, with interiors designed by London studio Tala Fustok.

Set over four floors, the 2,325-square-metre office was designed to look like a lavish home or entertainment venue in a bid to encourage employees to return to the workplace after a year spent working from home.

Ninja Theory's headquarters are accented with dark jewel tones including forest green curtains (top and above)

"With work-life boundaries becoming blurry, and as employees get more comfortable working from home, expectations for comfort and flexibility in the office environment are rapidly increasing," Tala Fustok explained.

The studio used a palette of dark jewel tones to accent the interior, sometimes even covering entire rooms to create immersive environments reminiscent of the virtual worlds developed by the games company.

The office features multiple bars for socialising

Employees enter the office through a dimly lit lobby with polished black concrete flooring and neon lighting, which Tala Fustok says helps to create the feeling of stepping into another dimension.

Other colour-coded spaces include a green room for motion capture, the all-blue cinema and the red bar, where silk-sheen carpet covers the floor, walls and ceiling to continue the otherworldly theme.

Carpet covers the floors, walls and ceilings of the red bar

According to Tala Fustok, the different colours were used not just for their visual impact but also in the hopes that they would have a positive impact on the mood of those occupying the spaces.

"Red is for energy and green brings in a natural element," the studio told Dezeen. "We included this in the meeting rooms and throughout the terrace. And blue, which we used in the cinema room and offices, gives a feeling of calm."

The office has a cinema room

A broad range of workspaces, which are spread over two floors, were designed to encourage a collaborative culture while providing varying levels of privacy.

Bespoke desks, timber-lined kitchen areas and breakouts rooms designed to resemble private members clubs evoke a relaxed and homely atmosphere.

On the first floor, in the heart of the building, a mixture of secluded and open-plan working areas sit next to communal spaces such as the cinema room and social club.

A terrace wraps one the side of the building, providing relaxed outdoor spaces.

A breakout space features on the first floor

The interior also features movable walls that allow for meeting rooms to be expanded or reconfigured for different needs.

"Working during the pandemic and realising the impact it has had on the creative industries, it has really heightened the importance of the office and the pivotal role it plays in social working dynamics and the creation of powerful work," Tala Fustok explained.

Rooms were designed to create the feeling of being in a members club

Dezeen recently explored the post-pandemic needs of office workers in a live talk with architecture firm J Mayer H and office design brand Steelcase.

The panel discussion explored how the pandemic has revealed a need for better-designed office spaces and how flexible building geometry can allow office spaces to be adapted in response to Covid-19.

Photography is by Gilbert McCarragher.

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Nielsen Jenkins creates backyard extension for K&T’s Place in Brisbane

Australian studio Nielsen Jenkins has used raw timber and concrete blocks to extend a home belonging to an artist and art gallery director.

The project, called K&T's Place, involved the renovation and expansion of a modest "Queenslander" cottage in the Brisbane suburb of West End, which is undergoing significant redevelopment.

Nielsen Jenkins has renovated and expanded a cottage in Brisbane

The goal was to provide more space for the owners – artist Keith Burt and his partner, Tarragh Cunningham, who is assistant director at the Queensland Art Gallery. They live in the dwelling with their two boys.

Originally, the clients asked local firm Nielsen Jenkins to overhaul the kitchen and create new bedrooms for the children, but the project expanded in scope.

The kitchen has been renovated

"By working with them to understand the specifics of their daily routines, the brief expanded to include much more poetic ambitions that bring joy to mundane processes," the firm said.

The home started with an untraditional layout, as the ground level is occupied by a studio that occasionally doubles as a gallery for selling artwork. The upper level holds the public zone, and formerly held all of the sleeping areas.

The extension was built from raw timber and concrete blocks

The architects conceived a semi-enclosed rear extension that adjoins the ground-floor artist studio and the public area up above. Running up the centre of the extension is a masonry fireplace, which is meant to serve as an anchor point.

The new, 54-square-metre volume is surrounded by a spotted-gum wood exterior and is topped with a broad roof.

The interior of the extension has a raw aesthetic

"The semi-enclosed extension forms a series of occupiable landings, which sit under the canopy of a massive fig tree and allow flexible use and controlled connection between the living level and the artist's studio below," the team said.

On the upper level, the team relocated the kitchen, added a dressing area to the master suite, and opened up the floor's overall plan.

"Upstairs, very small interventions allow the once-insular and dark plan to work as three 'streets' of varying levels of exposure and occupation, with connection front and back to light and greenery," the team said.

"The scheme plays on ideas of public and private in the family's daily rituals and aims to celebrate small routines of preparation and retreat."

Materials throughout were left raw and understated

On the ground floor, the architects created a pair of kids' bedrooms, along with making enhancements to the studio. For instance, they added a gridded pegboard made of dowel and Masonite.

Because the project had a strict budget, the team had to keep expenses low. Materials were left raw, and minimal changes were made to the home's structural system.

The studio stands alongside the "Queenslander" cottage

"We have been able to completely change the way the house works for a relatively small square-metre rate," the architects said, noting that the project was completed for $2,200 Australian (£1,163) per square metre.

One of the benefits of the extension is that it offers privacy, the architects said, since tall buildings are popping up in the area.

The original home was also refurbished

"The arrangement of the design works to defend the everyday workings of the family from new, 16-storey neighbours to the west and predicted unit development to the south," the team said.

The firm said the project embodies its belief in honest materiality and creating memorable spatial experiences.

Wood was also used in the interior spaces

"We feel really proud of this project in this way," the team said. "We feel like it is humble but really ambitious in the way that it engages with the users and the suburb that surrounds it."

Nielsen Jenkins also recently completed a "tough" family home with lush courtyards and high block walls that provide protection from brushfires.

The photography is by Shantanu Starick.

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Project credits:

Architect: Nielsen Jenkins
Builder: Struss Constructions
Engineer: Optimum Structures
Landscape: Jonathan Kopinski and Nielsen Jenkins
Town planning: PLACE Design Group
Artists: Keith Burt, Anna Markey (ceramic pendant)

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TYPE transforms stone barn into home in the English countryside

Architecture studio TYPE has converted the dilapidated Redhill Barn in Devon, England, into a house that retains its 200-year-old stone walls.

London-based TYPE oversaw the conversion of Redhill Barn, which occupies a secluded spot within a 25-acre site that was previously part of a large farming estate, as part of a wider project to turn the agricultural land into an ecological smallholding.

Top: TYPE has converted a barn in Devon into a house. Above: the studio added an aluminium roof

The 199-square-metre home was originally constructed in 1810 as a threshing barn and cow byre.

Prior to its renovation, the barn had fallen into a state of disrepair, with its roof missing and the remaining stone walls overgrown with weeds.

Throughout the renovation, the architecture studio aimed to preserve the exemplary work of agricultural engineering while creating an appropriate home for modern family living.

The studio retained the barn's original stone walls

"We wanted to restore the building's character in an original way and to be very clear about what was old and new, retaining the weathered beauty of the monumental stone shell and wild agricultural setting," said TYPE.

"We wanted to show this when viewed in the landscape, reinstating the hipped roof with milled aluminium sheeting to 'ghost' the original roof form in a light, reflective material."

A line of stone columns runs along the lower floor

The design strategy retains the building's stone walls and uses the existing openings as they were found, with all interventions located within the original envelope.

Windows with simple frames were set back into the deep reveals to allow the maximum amount of light to enter.

The wide openings originally created for cattle now incorporate arched pivot doors to retain a connection with the outdoors.

Wood panelling was used throughout the interiors

The house's floor plan is informed by the barn's internal stone columns. These support a new floor and roof structure made from Douglas fir that is designed to evoke the rhythm and simplicity of traditional agricultural buildings.

"The roof truss spans lengthways," the studio added, "utilising small section timber and steel connections, allowing the structure to sit higher than a conventional truss and stressing the height, form and scale of the space."

Freestanding elements constructed in English sycamore are used on both levels to define and serve the main rooms while retaining the overall volume and rhythm of the spaces.

The cellular arrangement of the ground floor contains two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen, each with arched doors framing views of the landscape.

The main living space is located up the upper floor

The upper floor contains an open living and dining area that is bookended by freestanding units separating this social space from a study at one end and a shower room at the other.

The material palette used throughout the project seeks to complement the original stone and lime plaster walls and columns while distinguishing these existing elements from the new interventions.

The structure's roof is visible in the main living space

In addition to overseeing the architecture project, TYPE was involved with all interior work as well as the ecological landscape design, which includes the creation of a vegetable garden, wildflower margins, copses and an orchard.

An access track was introduced to the previously inaccessible site, while services including water and electricity are now provided along with an air-source heat pump for heating the house.

A wood-burning stove was placed in the living space

"Redhill Barn has afforded us the unique opportunity of leading the design and construction of one of our projects," said TYPE's director Tom Powell.

"The project reflects the ethos of our practice and our holistic approach, which includes working with the landscape, building, interiors and furniture design, and takes into account all details, from how individual stones are placed to how the door handles are shaped."

The upper floor also contains a dining area

TYPE was founded by Powell together with Sam Nelson, Ogi Ristic and Matt Cooper in 2013.

Elsewhere in England, Turner Works converted a dutch-style barn in the Cotswolds into a holiday home while Sandy Rendel Architects converted a barn in Sussex and clad it in corrugated steel.

Photography is by Rory Gardiner.

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Point Supreme uses raw concrete to enhance "magical cave-like" feel of Athens apartment

Greek architecture firm Point Supreme has transformed a semi-basement storage space in Athens into a small one-bedroom home.

The apartment is located at the base of a typical Athenian polykatoikia – a concrete residential block with tiered balconies – in the suburban neighbourhood of Ilioupoli.

The apartment is located in the semi-basement of a residential block

Daylight only penetrates into the sunken, 56-square-metre space from above on one side, giving it a "magical cave-like" feeling that Point Supreme wanted to retain.

"It's very appropriate and pleasant given the warm weather and strong sun in Athens during most of the year," said founders Konstantinos Pantazis and Mariana Rentzou.

"The goal of the renovation became to strengthen this feeling."

Cork panelling features behind the bed

Key features of the space such as the steel windows and doors as well as the raw concrete surfaces of columns, beams and ceilings were retained.

An existing small toilet was extended to make space for a shower. But apart from this, no internal walls were added in order to make the space feel as large as possible.

Instead, floor finishes, furniture, sliding partitions, hanging shelves and curtains were used to separate the apartment into different zones.

The apartment's raw concrete columns and ceilings were left exposed

"These create the illusion of depth," said the studio.

"Coupled with different details and aesthetic choices, they create an especially pleasant and rich visual result."

Point Supreme chose a tactile, warm-hued material palette to enhance the cavernous feeling of the apartment, from a timber screen with built-in bench seating at the apartment's entrance to cork panelling and a sliding Corten-steel partition in the bedroom.

In the kitchen, custom-made red Formica and melamine cabinetry with plywood countertops sit alongside a rust-coloured table and the owners' vintage chairs.

Red accents cabinetry features in the custom-made kitchen

The glazed Cotto tiles covering the floor of the main space were salvaged from storage. These kinds of ceramic tiles were popular in the 1970s, the studio said, when they were used to cover verandas and porticos in holiday homes throughout Greece.

In the apartment, they complement the rough texture of the raw concrete while adding a sense of warmth.

Blue tiles cover all surfaces in the bathroom

Blue is used as an accent colour on a curtain, a strip of floor tiles at the entrance to the bedroom and across all surfaces in the bathroom, where it creates the impression of being submerged underwater.

Point Supreme used a similar zoning strategy when refurbishing another apartment in Athens with a green-stained plywood storage wall.

Photography is by Yiannis Hadjiaslanis and Point Supreme. 

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Sou Fujimoto creates undulating virtual installation in London

Visitors to this year's London Design Festival can use mixed-reality glasses to manipulate their walk through Medusa, a virtual installation by architect Sou Fujimoto.

Created by the Japanese architect Fujimoto in collaboration with mixed reality studio Tin Drum, the virtual structure has been installed at the V&A Museum.

Up to 50 guests at a time can put on a pair of mixed-reality glasses and explore the experimental architectural forms designed by Fujimoto.

As they move through Medusa, the dynamic structure "changes and evolves based on the movement of its admirers".

Medusa responds to the movements of its audience

"Visitors will be able to simultaneously observe this piece of virtual architecture, floating and moving inside of the space that is confined by the gallery itself," said Yoyo Munk, Tin Drum's chief science officer.

"The structure is observing the entire group and changing itself based on what it's observing about the audience behaviours, rather than any individual," he told Dezeen.

"It explores the contrast between the individual and the collective."

Tin Drum drew on the science of bioluminescence to inform the design

The installation takes its name from the mythological figure Medusa as well as the zoological term for a jellyfish, in a conflation of myth and science that sits at the core of the design.

"We liked the idea of a figure of life that finds this balance between something that is beautiful, attractive and dangerous," explained Munk.

The studio also used the primal attraction to light and underwater bioluminescence to inform the evolving dynamic structure.

"We drew a lot of inspiration from natural light structures like the aurora borealis (also know as the Northern Lights) and our connection to light sources," recalled Monk.

"When we look at an aurora borealis, we share some commonality with the neural circuitry that leads prey and so forth to be consumed."

Medusa was designed to provoke individuals to play, interact and follow the lights as they walk through the virtual installation.

According to Monk, both Tin Drum and Fujimoto were most interested in the potential of using light as an architectural medium.

"What's exciting for all of us is this idea that you could construct structures that had no physical form and existed only as light being projected into the eyes," said Monk.

"We get the sense of a space that has a design structure that exists in a spatially explorable sense – that has the ability to change our perceived environment and the way that we feel and explore while having no physical form."

Fujimoto established Sou Fujimoto Architects in 2000. Although he is best known for his buildings, he has worked on a number of installations. In 2017, he created a series of abstract bookshelves made from thin steel rods for Design Miami/Basel.

For the fashion brand COS, Fujimoto used spotlights, mirrors and sound to create an immersive installation that responds to visitors' movements.

London Design Festival 2021 takes place from 18 to 26 September. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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