Detsky Mir is the largest children's goods retailer in Russia, opened in Moscow as a department store in 1947. Today it is a nation wide chain with over 500 stores throughout Russia. Continual expansion led the company to relocate its headquarters to a former printing factory that would facilitate an open layout. The task was to accommodate a demanding program of interaction between numerous departments and allow for future team expansion. Two central ideas characterise the project: distorted proportion and the workplace as a board game. Distorted proportion explores the sense of largeness and altered perception that we experience as children. This was used in the approach to form, furnishings and decorative elements across the office. The board game is used as an analogy for conceiving the office layout. Its constituents of field, grid and playing figure become tools to develop various typologies of space. The reception zone marks the starting point of the game, with cues that gather the entire idea of the office in one place. Open plan seating is interpreted as field, with navigation signs becoming a pattern on the floor used to direct flow. Central volumes housing storage and meeting rooms are considered as playing figures, which work as focal points within a neutral interior. The grid becomes a lighting system that spans the entire work area. Used as a colour-coding element, each floor is assigned a colour of the Detsky Mir logo — red, yellow, blue and green.