On the leading edges of urban indoor farming and workplace design
Through its design, Rambridge Wholesale Supply’s Calgary-based warehouse has become a Canadian hub for the VERA, a vertical farming system. As the site of the first North American expansion for this indoor agriculture company’s demo space and sales, it is just much a gathering space for employees as it is for potential clients to observe the leading-edge approaches to food production that define it daily.
Its interior embraces the site’s industrial context while subtly expressing agriculture, all with simple and effective touches to evoke a fresh start. In between polished concrete floors and open ceilings is a modernized space that both captures Rambridge’s black & white branding and offsets the fluorescence of growing lights, fertilizer, and nutrient mixers: Towering windows let sunlight in and onto a place of soft colours and earthy tones, black frames and trims, wood and leather, and dark carpets with subtle patterning. As the space is filled with the ambient noise of large industrial fans for ventilation and employees’ voices, light fixtures coated in felt and area rugs help to dampen distracting acoustics.
As one enters the space, they are immediately greeted by open collaboration areas that extend into closed offices, workstations, and meeting rooms—crafted with modular demountable partitions and timber support structures to create a malleable space—furnished with personal and custom sources for a variety of working styles and needs. Just beyond these coworking areas are glass partitions looking out onto a two-layered demonstration area for vertical farming systems, showcasing technology where herbs and vegetables can grow.
Growth is at the core of Rambridge’s facilities and 5,450 square-foot office—literally. Centered on employee comfort, sustainability, and the promotion of high-quality local produce, Rambridge’s approach to food production is as much about the plants that give the company life as it is about the people that give life to its office.
