The new office for the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, the giant pension fund known as OMERS, integrates the different working styles of 1,500 employees who had previously worked in separate locations.

The planning strategy increased density and reduced private offices. By providing a range of solutions, from acoustical sound masking to increasing the variety of work settings, employees benefit from that sense of belonging to a closely knit group that an open plan provides without losing access to private spaces when the necessity arises.

Introducing a single centralized reception desk—delineated above by a boogie-woogie of lighting troughs and below by a herringbone parquet flooring sector—and conference centre to serve the office’s three storeys fosters chance encounters and collision points between the business units, further augmenting corporate esprit de corps.

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