FOCUS & CREATE OFFICE SPACES

Clean and green design reflects updated image for Canada’s largest rental community

• Serina Fraser Oct 05, 2020
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Ferguslea Properties is the owner of Accora Village, Canada’s largest privately owned rental community. The Ottawa-based company, which is in the process of revitalizing the community, hired Clear interior design to launch the design process with a renovation of the corporate headquarters

Interior Designer: Serina Fraser, Clear Interior Design

Accora Village is a diverse west-end community of 2,400 rental garden homes, town homes, and apartments. The outdated work environment at corporate headquarters needed to be revitalized to better represent the community’s renewed brand and image.

The original headquarters space was anonymous and utilitarian, with low ceilings, fluorescent lighting, and sixties-era pink partitions between nondescript cubicles. It was banged-up and poorly designed.

Clear interior design’s focus was two-fold — to elevate the work culture by improving the structural flow of the office, and to incorporate features and finishes that emphasized a vision of Accora Village as a modern, environmentally responsible community.

To improve the structural flow of the headquarters, distinct “zones” were developed. Cubicles were replaced by a more dynamic office environment that incorporated an open work area, as well as closed offices, intimate meeting rooms, a more spacious boardroom, and a welcoming communal kitchen.

The redesign made for a more flexible workspace suited to the many types of meetings and encounters that formed each workday at this busy headquarters. Staff reported that the better flow resulted in an immediate improvement to the workplace culture.

Finishings throughout the headquarters subtly accent the company’s green focus. A thriving plant wall takes centre stage in the main boardroom, with barnboard feature walls and a striking wood veneer on office doors completing the theme. Concrete wall tiles and charcoal hexagonal floor tiles further accentuate that connection to nature and natural products. Taken as a whole, the colour palette is sophisticated and calming, a subtle coming together of greys, browns, black and white.

The redesign of the corporate headquarters marked the first stage in the company’s rebranding of both itself and its community. Clear interior design built this first phase, with a detailed strategic design plan to revitalize the homes within the greater community.