OFFICE SPACES workplace design

This Calgary office interior holds a wealth of inspired and elevated design

• Jerilyn Wright Aug 24, 2022
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Working closely with Scotiabank, our Toronto-based client, we were tasked with bringing ten traditionally-isolated business line groups together into five floors of contiguous office space. Each of these business lines brought forward their own distinct priorities, expectations, work styles, and standards. In addition, the parent company was midway through implementing new global best practices for accessibility, sustainability, and an activity-based work model.

Interior Designer: Jerilyn Wright, ARIDO; Colleen Baldwin, ARIDO

Design Firm: Jerilyn Wright & Associates Interior Design Consultants Ltd. 

Photographer:  Caleb Salomons

The programming and planning strategy locates shared reception, meeting, and gathering spaces on the central floor. This shared space extends through all five floors at the southwest corner of the floorplate with the best views, via a small pocket of meeting spaces and a “corner-office” staff kitchen.

An internal stairwell and strong finish palette tie these shared spaces and the various operating companies together. Elsewhere an adaptable planning model allows the interior to be tailored to individual group requirements while remaining consistent in the design intent.

Conceptually, our team of designers needed to create a balance between timeless and progressive, classic and contemporary, subtle and bold, luxurious and conscientious, which we managed to achieve through intimate interaction with the client’s Design Team, and a back-and-forth exchange of both inspiration and design critique. Without a doubt the design meets the functional criteria of the project. 

The design team, both from the consultant and client side, championed elevated, inclusive, healthy, and inspired design wherever possible. Exterior circulation, gracious corridor widths, expansive runs of windows, and a highly-reflective finish palette were used to maximize daylight penetration and create a sense of breathing room. 

We incorporated a colour infusion and way-finding strategy based on the topographical layers of the Canadian Rockies ecosystem, and the secondary marketing palette, large-scale, black and white imagery adapted from historic company photos were placed throughout along with an extensive representation of contemporary Canadian fine art. By doing so, the various user groups, once isolated and fragmented, now have common ground and a shared path forward.

The elevated design solutions for this office space enhance cross-functionality as well as the guest experience, and contributes to better collaboration by bringing together the different business lines and their individual work styles, sensibilities and priorities.