Collaborative, scalable, sustainable, practical: A transformed studio
In an ever-changing professional world, offices are seeking out the driving forces which create truly collaborative, scalable, and practical spaces that can change the way we think about work. At Lemay’s Calgary Office, creating a place to spend time in with enriching intent—offering what remotely working from home could not—began with a collective process by and for people.
Beginning with a unique, iterative, and incremental design process that incorporated input from its teams, the engagement-forward approach to this transformed studio was designed to demonstrate what the next generation of workplaces can be. The key to this lies in the improvement of the well-being and overall experience of the people working there, based in comfort, a sense of belonging, and diffusing inspiration.
Strategic in what was kept and removed from its pre-existing space, the office uses precise sustainable strategies such as careful materiality, adaptive reuse, and biophilia. Careful consideration was given as much to the acoustics and creation of a range of workstations dedicated as much to shared and focused work as they were to aesthetics: Functional facets like versatile cardboard partitions, various furniture configurations, and retractable power cords hung from the ceiling are made engaging through plant life, cozy materiality and texture from fabrics and wood, and a warm, nature-inspired colour palette of honeycomb and tarragon. Laid out in such a way to embrace southwestern daylight, the studio looks out to beautiful vistas of a surrounding park, the cityscape, and distant mountains.
Reflecting the creativity and fresh energy found in its surroundings of Calgary’s vibrant, pedestrian-friendly Design District neighborhood within the Beltline, the result is a place of identity and creativity, focused on flexibility and choice to meet a team’s needs no matter how they shift. With its new layout, the studio shows that simple, cost-effective gestures can make a budget-conscious, transitional, easily replicable, and high-impact space.
