Minimalissimo

Lightspeed Offices

architecture

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Location
Montréal, Quebec, Canada
Architecture
ACDF Architecture
Photography
Maxime Brouillet

ACDF Architecture, a firm renowned for its design-savvy commercial, residential, hospitality, and institutional projects, is proud to unveil Phase 3 of an innovative four-phase office design for Lightspeed, a company dedicated to helping entrepreneurs with their work.

Located in Montréal and in the historic Gare Viger building, the project was conceived to maximise space to accommodate more than 640 employees working at the company headquarters. ACDF's mandate for Phase 3 was to transform a large storage space, located on the building's 5th floor, into a functional network of training rooms, meeting facilities, and work zones.

Completed in January 2020, ACDF transformed the space into an architectural journey, rich in contrasts and experiences. Bold contrasts in lighting and colour embody the firm's approach to creating desired moods and highlighting spatial transitions. Upon exiting the 5th-floor elevators, a dark environment lends itself to a subtle game of transparency and reflection, courtesy of three bronze-tainted boxes delimiting the elevator hall from the adjacent training room.

The elevator hall's black background immediately contrasts with the warmth of the training room's white oak bleachers, and the rich texture of its exposed brick wall. To the east and west of the elevator hall, the firm's approach to transitional contrasts emerges in the form of bright white geometrical corridors. The passages accentuate a transition between the cavernous dark zone and the enveloping, residential ambiance of exposed brick walls and wooden beams that characterise the company's meeting rooms, services core, and unique workspaces located at each end of the corridors.

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