Tasked with unifying a collective of independent agencies under one roof, Lebel & Bouliane reimagined Plus Company’s Toronto office as a 4,645 m² (50,000 sq ft) creative campus, driven by visioning workshops, user data, and iterative testing. The result is a hybrid workplace designed to draw people back for the moments that matter most: collaboration, creativity, and connection.
Housed in a historic munitions warehouse on Atlantic Avenue, the campus rejects the limits of hot-desking in favour of adaptable, expandable environments tailored to each agency’s evolving needs. This flexibility allows teams to scale, pivot, and share resources, sparking the cross-pollination that fuels creative culture.
The design supports a spectrum of workstyles, from quiet focus to high-energy exchange. Shared spaces: the Forum, Café, Lounge, Plus Co Park, and Reception, encourage informal encounters, while over a dozen digitally branded meeting rooms serve 600+ employees. Purpose-built amenities, including a photography studio, editing suites, and a print shop, support the agencies’ creative output.
The Forum, a flexible double-height gathering space, anchors the campus. Here, cross-agency meetings, town halls, and client pitches play out against a backdrop of warm materials and bold digital branding. Secluded booths and acoustic retreats balance this energy, while quiet zones meet the growing demand for focus space.
The interior design was shaped by key objectives: minimize demolition, humanize scale, enhance flexibility, simplify wayfinding, and embed brand identity—all while respecting budget and leveraging existing infrastructure. Structural elements were painted to sharpen geometry, while compressed transition zones open dramatically into destinations like Plus Co Park and the Forum. Floating meeting rooms layer the plan and divide open desking, as suspended and floor-level planters soften acoustics and define zones.
Wayfinding is intuitive and architectural: a central spine, 'The Street,' organizes circulation, intersected by curved and geometric forms that guide movement. Digital billboards double as navigation points, reinforcing the company’s identity throughout.
A warm maplewood palette provides a calm, neutral backdrop to exposed steel and dynamic digital displays. This neutrality lets each agency personalize its own space, while supporting client-facing activities anywhere in the building. Staff-created murals and vivid colour accents in shared zones celebrate the company’s collaborative, inclusive spirit.
“With room to grow, shift, and pivot, the Creative Campus is a leading example of the future of advertising and media, where digital and social experimentation are the new foundations,” says Luc Bouliane.
More than a workplace, this is an engine for creative exchange, designed to foster connection, spark ideas, and make the return to in-person collaboration not just possible, but irresistible.
