The No Picnic office by Jonas Elding and Johan Oscarson

No Picnic is a Stockholm-based creative agency that needed a new office. They asked Jonas Elding and Johan Oscarson to help with that. The request seemed simple at first but, as usually, the plans don’t match with what you see on site. The architects faced a big challenge when they realized that the main space of the building they had to turn into an office was split in two by a steel mezzanine platform.

No picnic office5

The building was a former military barracks from the 1980s. The steel platform was sitting on columns and it wasn’t what the architects were planning to include in their design. However, in order to avoid unnecessary costs, they decided to work around it. They needed to find a way of including that platform into the design without making it seem odd or strange. Finally, the inspiration struck them. It was quite unusual but the inspiration came from a photo of the Hall of Mirrors from Versailles.

No picnic office5
No picnic office5
No picnic office5
No picnic office5
No picnic office5

Keeping that image in mind, the architects decided to design the whole space in an illusionistic way. The walls were coated in reflective rolled aluminum and this way the mezzanine area was turned into a series of rooms hidden behind a mirror image of the space. It was a clever idea. The meeting room is covered with glass. Above the mezzanine level there’s a workstation area that can be reached via a staircase. As a result, with some inspiration and creativity, what seemed at first like an impossible job turned out to be a challenging but very interesting and fulfilling project.