This is Cyril Shing, senior lecturer at UCE Birmingham. A while back Cyril brought in some of his students who are studying for BA (hons) in Interior Design. We briefed them on the wieden + kennedy offices here in Hanbury Street and, as part of their course work, they went away to think about how they could revamp our environment. Today, Cyril returned with the two groups who had scored the highest marks for their project so they could present the ideas back to us. Both the ideas were absolutely brilliant and would be an amazing place to work in.

Here are Yen, Ann and Veronica presenting their idea, which was based around a concept of molecules bonding together and featured a central shaft running right through the building and weird and wonderful bubble-shaped meeting rooms.

This is Traci, whose idea was to create an office that made work feel more like a holiday. It included things like filling the basement with sand to create a beach, using fake grass as a floor covering and building ‘beach hut’ meeting spaces out of recycled driftwood.

Some of the designs. I don’t want to show them in detail as they might get nicked. The level of creativity and inventiveness was really, really impressive. If this had been a pitch, they would have got our business!

Neil of Wieden + Kennedy with Cyril and students.

I hope I get the names right here. L-R: Traci, Ann, Veronica, Yen. These ladies are some talented designers – watch out for them.