ASKA unifies rooms of Stockholm office with pistachio green accents

Pistachio-green features form a connecting thread throughout the interiors of this office for real estate agents Fantastic Frank, designed by Swedish studio ASKA.

The Fantastic Frank office occupies a 160-square-metre unit that used to be home to a medley of different businesses, and in turn had a somewhat fractured floor plan.

Eager to "build on those traces rather than overwrite them", ASKA decided to preserve the layout and loosely group rooms into three areas that were united by pistachio-green decorative features.

"Instead of organizing the layout around conventional functions such as meeting rooms and workspaces, we decided to approach each area through its own atmosphere and narrative," ASKA's founder, Polina Sandström, told Dezeen.

"In many ways, that also relates to the essence of Fantastic Frank as a real estate agency – capturing and presenting the character and story of different spaces," she continued.

"I've never believed that a newly renovated office could gain personality through decorative rugs, plants or scented candles. If you want a space to feel present and carry a certain nerve, you have to dig deeper."

As visitors enter the office they come into The Gallery, a pair of rooms which have been designed to have an "exhibition-like character".

Items throughout have therefore been displayed much like artworks; copies of Fantastic Frank's in-house journal are on wall-mounted shelves, while large images of the agency's property listings are suspended from moveable ceiling tracks.

The two spaces are connected via custom-made glass doors with green bordering. These are one of the few new elements that were added to the showroom by ASKA, which kept many of the building's pre-existing features.

"In many ways, the process felt like peeling an onion, gradually uncovering and accentuating qualities already there," said Sandström.

"One of the biggest discoveries was the original industrial timber floor, which we restored and brought back into focus," added William Wikström, an architect at the practice.

"We also highlighted the large arched facade windows by painting the frames and trims in a green accent colour. The former division into separate units is emphasised by preserved level differences between rooms, highlighted by a green border aligned with the top of the stair."

Deeper into the plan lies The Atelier area, which also comprises two rooms. One of them is modelled after a sewing studio that was once on site, and is thus centred by a "craft" table.

The table was taken from Fantastic Frank's former office and given a green gloss overlay.

The other room is a kitchen. Its lower cabinets were made from stainless steel, but the upper ones – which were there before Fantastic Frank moved in – have been repainted green and finished with chunky square handles.

Their shape is intended as a subtle nod to the blocky font of the agency's logo, which was updated as part of its recent visual identity refresh.

Various green tones also formed part of Fantastic Frank's rebrand, hence the colour scheme of the office.

"For us, translating visual identity into space is a core part of brand design, where the interesting part begins when you move beyond the obvious," said Sandström.

"The ambition is not to reproduce an identity one to one, but to create a spatial experience that feels unmistakably connected to it."

The final space is The Antiquariat, which is meant to serve as a "quiet counterpoint" to the more public, exhibition-style rooms.

As a result it has been given a homelier feel with wooden furnishings, a green chequered rug, and a bookshelf.

Last year ASKA also designed a showroom for skincare brand Lumene. The interior is meant to emulate an "abstracted landscape" so includes a number of nature-inspired features like a circular sun-like light installation, and a display area reminiscent of a waterfall.

The photography is by Mikael Lundblad.

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