Merlin Entertainments
Together with office interior designers, Oktra, we helped Merlin Entertainments to bring their many brands to life within their London based office. Distilling each brand into both an achievable and effective design, whilst maintaining an overall cohesion, was the central focus of this office refit.
The brief
With a total of 15 different brands and themes, each with their own creative team, we had to work incredibly closely with Oktra, with a lot of meetings to determine a clear plan for every room. Merlin’s creative teams had a clear vision for what was important when it came to representing their brand, however, the challenge lied in pulling key brand elements that could be translated into actionable products. A sense of unity between the rooms was equally important, as they needed to feel a part of one office.
The solution
We found ourselves working with new ideas and products, to curate the perfect bespoke solution for each brand. For example, when it came to the ‘Madame Tussauds’ room, we were looking at thousands of different framing profiles, many of which we hadn’t ever used before.
The room that encouraged the most experimentation was the ‘Cadbury’ room. Taking inspiration from Cadbury world itself, we set out to recreate a giant chocolate bar and gold pipes. We tested a range if samples, but ended up deciding on using entirely ALTO panels for the chocolate, as we were able to precision print the Cadbury logo to give a hyper-realistic engraved effect. The gold pipes were also achieved by trying various samples, but ultimately we used a simple solution of spraying pvc piping in the same Cadbury gold colour found in their factory.
In the Wicker Man themed room, a bespoke feature wall and ceiling was created from ALTO Form. Usually, our ALTO Form comes with standard slat dimensions and spacing, at 30mm facing with a 20mm gap, however we wanted the room to feel as if it was entirely cladded in timber. We designed a version of ALTO Form specifically for this room, with custom bonded mdf slats adhered to ALTO panels, increasing the width, and reducing the spacing, between each slat.
The result
By selecting key elements from each brand, we were able to develop a range of themed rooms for Merlin Entertainments’ London office. Thinking outside of the box, we were able to achieve outcomes we hadn’t previously worked with before, developing bespoke solutions that would fit each room’s brief perfectly.
