Siren Design’s stunning fitout for Lonely Planet creates a memorable journey through space and time at Carlton’s iconic former CUB site in Melbourne’s inner north.

When travel media company Lonely Planet downsized to The Malt Store on the heritage listed site of the old Carlton & United Breweries factory in Carlton recently Director of Sales and Marketing Chris Zeiher says the company was determined to reflect its brand values and raison d’etra in the fit-out, as much for desk-bound staff as for public visitors to the retail store in its reception lobby. “We wanted to manifest what we do into the design space,” he says. “We’re a travel media company and we wanted to make sure that we take our staff on a journey through the space. Contrary to … belief, not all of our staff actually get to travel very much. So we wanted to be able to bring travel to them.”

Siren Design’s imaginative fitout packs LP’s spatial world with highly detailed, wondrous adventures at every turn. Guidebook editors and cartographers might spend a morning in New York at workstations with taxi signs overhead and zebra crossing carpet underfoot. Collaboration could take place in Borneo at breakout booths draped in real vines and wrapped in jungle imagery. A gathering in the formal boardroom means a trip to Japan, in either spring or autumn, thanks to knock-out imagery digitally printed onto sliding doors.

Read more in issue #67 of Indesign magazine.
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