Ninja Theory is a cutting edge, world famous, BAFTA award winning video-games developer based in Cambridge, UK. 

dpa lighting consultants were delighted to be asked to work with the Interior Designer Tala Fustok Studio and Architect TP Bennett on Ninja Theory’s new design studio space.

The vision of both Ninja Theory and Tala Fustok was to create a working environment that breaks completely with the traditional office “look and feel”. A welcoming residential feeling is present in most spaces. Meeting rooms feel like living rooms, break out spaces and dining areas feel like a very high-end family kitchen and even the workstations feature an unconventional lighting approach. Each desk is locally illuminated with a ceiling recessed low glare pinhole downlight or track mounted spotlight. This approach provides adequate local illumination to the desks without flooding the floor with light as normally done in typical speculative open-plan office spaces. The result is a cosy, intimate, calm and welcoming work environment.

The work culture at Ninja Theory is unconventional when compared to traditional office spaces, every corner of the building is packed with sofas, screens, and video game stations where the staff can connect, review their designs and trial their creations, therefore glare, reflections and visual comfort had to be carefully considered throughout the different types of spaces.

Originally the building was conceived as a student accommodation building, before being redesigned as Ninja Theory’s new studio space. This change of use provided many challenges to the design team, especially due to the lower ceilings and reduced ceiling service void space available, resulting in clever lighting strategies and in-depth coordination with the design team in-order to successfully meet the brief.

The studios feature a multitude of different spaces, each of them having different challenges to overcome, a cinema room for video game final presentation and testing, a green room completely covered in a plush red carpet (floor, ceilings and walls), a motion capture studio where actors are filmed performing in order to extract their facial expression and movements which are later transferred into the video-games, external terraces, a boardroom, a bar, and a pub which is also open to the public.

The overall final result is a cutting-edge working environment looking at the future of how we work and interact in the work place.

Client: Ninja Theory 
Interior Designer: Tala Fustok Studio
Architect: TP Bennett
Photography: Gilbert McCarragher