The technology company Wise invited students from the Estonian Academy of Arts to take part in designing the interiors of its new office in Tallinn’s Krulli quarter. The result: two meeting rooms that combine the deep-blue serenity of Mexican cenotes with the calm of the Mediterranean — spaces that are functional, cosy, and artistically bold.
“We wanted to create something that wouldn’t feel like a typical meeting room,” say Kenneth Pert and Hanna Milk, both third-year students of product design at EKA. Kenneth studies industrial design, while Hanna focuses on digital product design. “It was the winter break, and we felt it was the perfect time to do something creative together. We actually saw the competition call quite last-minute, but there was nothing to lose,” Hanna recalls.
The goal of the student competition was to work with the local community in the shaping of Wise’s largest office – art and design students across Estonia were invited to propose distinctive interior design concepts for two of the company’s new meeting rooms in the Krulli office.
Ideas Inspired by Latin America and the Sauna
At first, the students were guided by the themes of the office floors — Southern Europe and South America — but they quickly decided to interpret them in their own way. “We both agreed right away that we didn’t want to create standard meeting rooms. We wanted something fresh, comfortable, and pleasant to be in,” Kenneth explains.
The result was two rooms: Carpe Diem and Carnaval! The first is quiet and calm — a space for focused conversation or a moment of solitude. The second is open and energetic, inspired by the natural underground water caves of Mexico known as cenotes.
“Carpe Diem is small and has no windows, so we had to think about how to make it inviting,” Hanna says. “I remembered an experience from my first internship where all the meeting rooms were booked, and the only free space was the sauna. We ended up having a one-on-one there — the heater was off, but the atmosphere was warm and relaxed. That sparked the idea of creating a kind of hamam at Wise, a place for real conversations.”
A recurring idea was to bring nature into the office — something both students value highly when doing creative work. “We remembered reading studies showing a link between creativity and exposure to nature. Plants in workspaces also have a positive effect on people’s well-being,” the students note.
The concept for Carnaval! evolved from personal travel experiences. Hanna was preparing for a trip to Mexico, and Kenneth had been there before. “We started talking about our favourite places, and suddenly it hit us — why not take inspiration directly from Mexican nature?” Kenneth recalls. The result is a space where limestone walls, deep blue tones, and lush greenery evoke the feeling of being underwater in a cenote.
A Bridge Between Company and Community
According to Liis Reisner, Wise’s Krulli Office Project Manager, the student project was part of the company’s broader goal to connect its new office more closely with the local community.
“We wanted our new work home in Krulli to reflect both Wise’s values and the mindset of local creative people. Kenneth and Hanna’s work is a wonderful example of how young design talent can bring both aesthetics and meaning into a workplace,” Reisner says.
Collaboration between the students, Wise, and the interior architecture studio Lävi went smoothly. “They were very open and supportive of our ideas. We did make a few adjustments to the materials — for example, in Carpe Diem we replaced the original tiled surfaces with warmer, more sound-absorbing materials — but the final result stayed true to our vision,” Kenneth and Hanna explain.
“You Never Know When Luck Strikes”
The students say the project taught them courage and confidence above all. “It was a bit of a risk, since we deviated slightly from the original brief, but trusting our intuition really paid off,” they say. “You should always give things a try when the opportunity arises – you never know when luck strikes.”
Both students received a €1,000 award for their work, and their designs are now part of one of Estonia’s largest office spaces, home to more than 2,200 employees. Kenneth and Hanna are proud of the result. “We’re really grateful to the team at Lävi, who embraced our ideas from the start. They were open to finding solutions that brought our design to life with minimal compromises. It was awesome that Wise organised such a project – their brief was short and simple: go wild. We hope these rooms will pass on the same feeling we imagined when creating them,” they say.
