The challenge for Calgary-based Modern Office of Design + Architecture was to renovate a 21,500-sq.-ft. office for a robotics start-up into a space that encourages innovation and collaboration. In order to work with a modest budget, off-the-shelf materials were used and the properties of the given material helped inform the design.
The designers quickly became enamoured with the possibilities afforded by simple polyester rope. Not only were they interested in the tactile quality of this material, but perhaps most importantly that when hung, it produces loose parabolic forms that can react to programmatic and spatial requirements with ease. A parametric script was utilized to produce a series of pavilions that serve different collaborative spaces – a board room, a café, meeting rooms and game rooms. These were strategically placed throughout the space in order to create a subtle ordering of the program, producing an ephemeral choreography between program, light, shadow and view.
In the spaces around and between each pavilion the company’s various work groups were loosely interspersed, allowing people to easily flow between departments and collaborate. This was critical to the operations of our client, as they wanted their various divisions to flow together, encouraging interaction and the cross-pollination of ideas.