Epidemic Sound | White Arkitekter

A music company gets an industrial office space in an old brewery building in central Stockholm – a non-traditional environment drawing inspiration from music and with reuse as an interior concept.

When the music company Epidemic Sound merged its attic loft with the floor below in an old brewery building in central Stockholm, the ambition was to create a non-traditional office environment while preserving the building's industrial character. With that as a basis, White created an interior concept drawing from the authenticity of existing raw space with reuse as a theme. Music permeates Epidemic Sound’s identity and was a source of inspiration.

White redesigned the existing floor plan as an environment where employees can collaborate in an open office landscape or alternatively choose a quiet room, depending on personal preference or the task at hand. Plans for the new floor required added work spaces to meet current demands of a growing staff as well as the ability to convert space for future expansion. In addition to the open office landscape, Epidemic Sound has a need for separate sound insulated rooms for meetings and interviews as well as for more specific features listening booths.

One of the design challenges was to behold a unified feeling for employees with the additional office floor to ensure the continuation of seamless communication. An expansive opening in the floor slab generates a necessary visual link between the two levels while industrial stairs work as the physical link. For a loftier feeling, the under ceiling was removed revealing the building’s mechanical systems and reinforcing the industrial nature of the old brewery building.

Sheets of plywood, Valchromat (a through-colored wood fiber panel) and Träullit (a cement-bonded wood wool) recur as the wall-cladding materials; selected for their robustness, acoustic properties and durability. The color palette for the interiors is fastidiously chosen to complement the existing building’s character making the obvious choice of leaving the original concrete floor bare and polished.

The majority of non-attached inventory is re-used in the newly formed spaces which provides a cohesive style that further enhances Epidemic Sound’s collective identity.

Customer: Sound Epidemic

White's expertise: Interior design, lighting design, architecture

Size / area: 825kvm

Project start / end: 2014 - 2015

Completed: 2015

Team: Carolina Nyström, Rebecca Edwards Mannheimer, Märta Friman, Mikaela Åström Forsgren