Enigma Quests — Our most unique fit out project of 2024

Three months back, Enigma Quests welcomed visitors to their Holborn location for the first time. With the ten-year anniversary of their popular Shoreditch escape rooms just around the corner, founders Dmitri and Nargiza decided it was time to branch out, and Enigma Quests Holborn became London’s very first escape arcade.

Around six months before their new site was due to open, the Enigma Quests team got in touch with a seemingly simple brief: they needed a staircase put in. Sounds easy enough, right?

We had our expert team drop by the site to find out.

The challenge

As it happened, construction of the staircase would take a lot more work than anticipated…

Many buildings are designed with a ‘soft spot’ — a section of the floor with reduced support, allowing for easy removal when it comes to installing a staircase later down the line. The surrounding area is reinforced to bear the load that will be redistributed once the staircase is put in to ensure that structural integrity of the floor is maintained.

For tenants willing to pay for adaptability, or whose plans for the space haven’t quite been finalised when their lease is signed, buildings with a soft spot can be a great option. However, the location of the soft spot isn’t always in keeping with the client’s vision for the space.

This was the case for Enigma Quests, and so — understandably — it took a fair bit of persuasion to convince them that installing the staircase where the soft spot was located was their best bet. After much deliberation, the client decided to go with the spot recommended by the building’s original architect. Ultimately, though it wasn’t exactly where they’d initially wanted the staircase to be, it was clear that this spot offered the most practical solution when it came to structural integrity, ease, cost, and time.

The process

You’d think that with that decision made, it’d then just be a case of cutting a hole in the floor and fitting a prefabricated staircase. But in reality, it’s often the simplest briefs that turn out to be the most complicated projects, and in this instance, the complexity of the build demanded an all-hands-on-deck approach. Installation of the staircase required several dedicated teams and experienced individuals:

• Structural engineers: Two engineers were brought on board to assess the building’s integrity and ensure that cutting into the slab wouldn’t compromise its structure.

• Electricians: Electrical systems had to be rerouted to accommodate the staircase installation, particularly where lighting or wiring intersected with the new layout.

• Mechanics: The existing air conditioning system was removed and relocated, and the airflow rebalanced to suit the new layout.

• A staircase designer: A designer was consulted to ensure the staircase met aesthetic and functional requirements, aligning with the overall vision for the space.

• A staircase manufacturer: The manufacturer played a crucial role in fabricating the staircase to exact specifications, ensuring a seamless fit.

• Heavy-duty removalists: The project entailed removing four tonnes of concrete slab from the site, which required careful planning and execution.

Further to this, given the change to the layout of the building, fire-stopping measures, additional fire alarms, and sprinkler relocations were all necessary. Every step of the way, precision was key; the staircase had to meet strict safety regulations and required stress testing to guarantee durability.

Now, imagine having to coordinate all of this yourself… picking out each and every contractor separately, with no real knowledge of the work required to carry out such a project safely — nightmare! And, since very few companies have someone hired specifically to deal with office moves and redesigns, it’s often the case that there’s just the one person managing all of this alone, on top of their 9-to-5 job.

Our ‘360’ service removes this hassle from the equation altogether.

Over the past fifteen years, we’ve carefully curated a network of contractors who we genuinely believe are among the best in the business; our diverse portfolio of design and build projects — all with our trusted contractors involved — speaks for itself. Having worked with these teams for so long, we know exactly what to expect; we can be confident the job will be done on time and to the highest standard. We truly enjoy working with them, and have gotten to know their ways of working inside out.

Special mention goes to our site manager on this project, Alex Pereira, and project manager Ailsa Cary, whose efforts were key to keeping the building management team on side. Their expertise and collaboration are what make challenging projects like this run so smoothly.

Doing it differently

We’ve got a huge amount of respect for young entrepreneurs like Dmitri and Nargiza, who were both in their early twenties when they founded Enigma Quests, having come from Moldova and Uzbekistan, respectively. Aside from being lovely to work with, they share many of our values as a business, putting people, quality, and creativity at the heart of everything they do. We wish them all the best going forward and can’t wait to see how their new Fetter Lane site — just around the corner from our Farringdon office — compares to their escape rooms in Shoreditch (which we thoroughly enjoyed on a team day out in summer last year!).

Leading up to the entrance of Enigma Quests Holborn are these gorgeous murals which were designed and hand-painted by the team — we love to see spaces with a bit of soul.

Crucially, an end-to-end service like ours ensures seamless project execution from start to finish. By handling each and every aspect of the design and build process, we take the stress out of complex, hard-to-manage projects like this one. Our trusted network of expert contractors guarantees high-quality results, saving time and reducing risk.

You’ll often hear us say we handle all things office space — search, lease (re)negotiation, design, build, and everything in between; putting in a staircase for Enigma Quests is just one example of those ‘in-between’ projects we took on in 2024. If you think we could help with your next office construction project, let’s chat.