MONTREAL -- Cossette, a leading Canadian ad agency, turned to LAAB architecture to develop a strategic design of its new 35,000-square-foot office that would accelerate back to the office in a dynamic way.

Following a temporary lease at WeWork during the pandemic, Cossette and its parent corporation Plus Company formulated an ambitious agenda for change: to reunite its Montreal workforce in a single downtown campus and attract remote workers back to the office. The opportunity arose when Shopify vacated one its floors at 525 Viger Ouest, near Old Montreal. Cossette encharged LAAB to reboot its workplace to go beyond hip design features and the ubiquitous foosball.

The keenest insight came from their shared focus on UX design to model the new workplace around the staff experience and the shared culture, rather than strictly from upper management’s perspective. The result is a workplace environment crafted around the agency’s work culture and ethos. As such, the spaces were then organized around the requisites of their creative vocation, and the thrust was to provide a superior level of functionality to enhance the creative flow of the teams.

Thus, one of the prerequisites became to provide each team with a workplace customized to its business model, working habits, and creative practices. Some preferred open spaces, other required more closed rooms, and some sought more hybrid configurations.

Beyond profiling the business model in the layout, the team also wanted to create a work environment that would avoid a "home-like" look or rehash the ubiquitous playful office tropes like swings. The challenge became to create a deeper overarching design signature that would celebrate Plus Company’s various business units, while also embodying Cossette’s brand promise around the concepts of “creative sheen” and “inclusive diversity.”

To break with the typical corporate office look, the design brief drew inspiration from hospitality and wellness destinations. To materialize the vision, LAAB proposed a surprisingly hushed lighting scheme with a dramatic and darker palette that channels a distinctive lounge vibe. The hotel-like circulations provide a variety of lounges, nooks, and meeting spaces to service an infinite range of tasks and interactions.

Upon arrival, the reception desk is a true signature piece, wrapped with a mysterious dichroic and mirror envelope, lending it a mutable coloration shifting with the viewer’s position. It is a subtle nod to Plus Company’s multicolored logo, its inclusive culture, and its nuances of creative services.

At the south corner of the floor, the bistro emerged as the hub of workplace culture: a social condenser, meeting place, and relaxed work area. It was given the choicest location with a breathtaking view of downtown Square Victoria. Situated at the crossroads of circulations, the recording studio hub emerged as a must-see destination for clients, with its varied hues of studios ranging from white to charcoal, and its brightly lit portals (to signal On-Air status). Lastly, the award-winning Club Cossette office pop-up installation was relocated along the visual axis of McGill, its curved mirrors magnifying the city’s kinetic movement and evoking the Silo no5 in the background.

Key Suppliers
QMD inc. (general contractor)
Lumigroup (lighting)
Allwood (millwork)
Chagall (millwork)