Inspired by the form of the city, Blanchette Architectes transformed an old carpet factory building in Montreal into a new office space for industrial automation company Vention. Vention’s signature blue is integrated harmoniously throughout, including in the tinted glass of the windows in offices and other closed rooms.
The company already occupied a portion of the existing building, with the addition adding more than 15,000 square feet of office space over two levels. The expansion aims to foster a harmonious variety of functions and is conceived as a building within a building.
With high ceilings and a large open floor area, the architects were keen to avoid the feeling of a ‘worker warehouse.’ Instead, inspired by the typology of older cities where settlement developed around a nucleus – often a church – the architects proposed to occupy the core of the space with the formation of a workplace community or ‘village core’ where team members are encouraged to work in a collegial and collaborative manner.
After inserting a volume at the centre of the space, the volume was subsequently divided to form different meeting rooms. The concept of urbanity is present here, too, with work and meeting rooms playing a role similar to the public and recreational spaces typically found in cities.
A monumental arch at one side of the space links two existing technical conduits, acting as a portal and animating the space as a place of interstices and informal encounters. Like in the city, areas throughout widen and narrow, with different functions rubbing elbows to create an environment where chance leads to unexpected opportunities and discoveries.