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NESTLED NEAR THE BACK OF THE TRAVEL CENTRE, the Toronto flagship of Flight Centre Travel Group’s international empire, is a DVD copy of Wes Anderson’s 2004 film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Like the copies of National Geographic that lie in stacks around the room, it could just be something for visitors to pass the time with (nearby is a large-screen TV), but, in reality, the movie is a kind of skeleton key to the design of the whole space. Anderson’s droll, bittersweet portrait of an aging ocean explorer served as the chief inspiration for the Travel Centre, and the resemblance between this place and one of Anderson’s impeccably art-directed, pointillistically detailed films is pitch perfect. One half expects Bill Murray to come wandering out of the boardroom.

The 10,000-square-foot Travel Centre, which opened in July 2017, spans two storeys of 425 King Street West, a 1910 former garment factory now owned by Allied Properties REIT. Taking a cue from Flight Centre’s Manhattan office, the first such Travel Centre, it brought together under one roof the numerous brands that constitute the Flight Centre Travel Group: its well-known retail arm but also divisions dedicated to small and medium enterprises and large multinational corporate travel as well as a meetings-and event-management agency called Cievents. “The original idea was to showcase our corporate culture,” says Flight Centre Canada president John Beauvais of the desire to open the flagship, “and to bring a heightened awareness of our offerings beyond the retail brand.”

To that end, Beauvais enlisted the Toronto architectural and design firm Quadrangle. With associates George Foussias and Andrea Hall, he conceived of a space that would simultaneously host events (both their own and corporate clients’), provide offices for customer-facing staff and house a street-level retail kiosk. The offices occupy a serene basement level that Gavin Miller, Flight Centre’s vice president of leisure, calls “the engine room of the business.” The kiosk, meanwhile, is more luxurious than Flight Centre’s typical Toronto outposts, with the building’s original wood beams and pillars visible and a floor decorated with oversized passport stamps. As intended, prospective vacationers get a glimpse of Flight Centre’s larger universe: A boardroom, enclosed in a black glass box, hangs suspended over the travel counter like a repurposed Donald Judd sculpture.

Communal tables, flex space and old-school travel paraphernalia contribute to a fluid, collaborative environment.

“To see something tactile in a digital age is so important.”

that was inspired by 19th-century explorers’ clubs and, yes, the films of Wes Anderson. “The Life Aquatic is a particular favourite of mine,” says Beauvais. “I’ll always remember the research library in the film. And that’s a kind of whimsical thing that we brought in.” The room is principally decorated with bespoke floor-to-ceiling cabinetry, rollaway desk-cabinets that convert into leather steamer trunks (Beauvais found them at Restoration Hardware) and old-school travel paraphernalia: globes and atlases, wooden airplane propellers, manual typewriters. “It’s an homage to the glamorous travel of bygone days,” Miller says. “To see something tactile in a digital age is so important.”

Even more important, though, is how the whole space personifies the company’s culture, reminding visitors that travel can be both an adventure and a responsibility. “We’re in the business of travellers,” Miller says, “not tourists. We believe travel makes the world a better place.”

BY JASON MCBRIDE

PHOTOS BY LORNE BRIDGMAN