Returning to work after Christmas and New Year can be a bit of a struggle. To help beat the January blues in the Viking office, we decided to ask our team to decorate their desks with fun and creative things.

However, we were totally unprepared for what they did: not content with simply bringing in small decorations, our creative team decided to build a giant castle - right in the middle of the office.

Continue reading to discover how the creative team made this into a reality.

Step 1: Preparation

When we all got into the office after New Year, we had an email from our boss containing one simple task: do something to decorate our desks to help the team get over the January blues. Being the creative team, we decided we needed to do something special. So we decided to build a giant cardboard castle in the office.

After we sourced our materials, we drew up some simple blueprints so we had a good idea of how to join everything together. This also gave us a good indication of how big the castle was actually going be. After we had determined the size of the castle, we decided on the details.

The first thing we wanted was the bricks, as without bricks the walls would have looked flat and boring. We swiftly calculated the amount of bricks we would need: roughly 500. Then we opted for our own flag, because every castle has to fly a flag!

Step 2: Construction

We started with the walls. Each wall was created using two panels, both 2m x 1m in length. These panels were then attached in an overlapping manner to add strength to the walls. We attached these panels using glue guns. You will be surprised how quickly you get through the glue sticks and in total we used around 80.

When we started making the bricks, we realised we needed a production line, otherwise we weren't going to finish in time to surprise everyone the next morning. Two of the team cut and prepared the brick panels while the other two stuck them on the walls. In the end, we made over 480 bricks.

Step 3: Completion

In the end, construction took around seven hours, with planning and prep taking a further two hours. We were tired but it was all worth it when we saw our colleagues faces the following morning.

You can read more about our Office Fortress project on the Viking Direct blog.