Canadian Interiors March April 2022

CANADIAN INTERIORS

CDN $8.95 MARCH APRIL 2022

March April 2022

More Power to You Where design supports clinics that support the self

www.canadianinteriors.com

Seating that fits home and office PM#43096012

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I N T U I T I V E. I M M E R S I V E. I C O N I C. The Statement ™ showering collection with Anthem™ controls and valves feature unexpected designs, indulgent spray options, and a range of universal forms. The versatile portfolios are meticulously crafted to fit all global plumbing standards, opening the door to truly seamless specification and unfettered creativity. Visit our virtual portal to explore the possibilities and unleash your imagination.

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ISA

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INTERNATIONAL 1976 - 2022

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STEM ECOSYS TEM FOR VIDEO CONFERENCING

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DESIGN PEOPLE ARCHITECTURE CONNECTIONS MUSIC PRODUCTS

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LINOLEUM At Gerflor, we believe that the built environment has the power to improve people’s lives. Nature is our greatest source of inspiration and with DLW Linoleum and our new patented Neocare surface treatment, we provide options that enhance the sustainability, cleanability and wellness of high performing space. Certified “Cradle to Cradle”, all our linoleum ranges are made of 98% natural materials including linseed oil, limestone, jute and wood flour. Check out our new Landscape, Flow, Urban and Arabesque ranges at gerflorcanada.com and connect with Nature.

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Pyrite by BOMMA

CUSTOM LIGHTING MADE FOR YOU Residential • Condominium •Hospitality

Visit us at our NEW location, opening up on April 1st!

80 Kincort Street York, ON M6M5G1 | 416.783.4100 | www.amstudio.ca

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03/04/2022 Features

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A HUMAN APPROACH TO LIGHTING Dental offices have always carried some negative association, made worse thanks to pandemic-related hygiene

29 ALL SMILES Dental offices have always carried some negative association, made

worse thanks to pandemic-related hygiene concerns. Two new projects aim to straighten those out through sensitive design interventions. By Megan DeLaire

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REFRESHING SPACES THAT REFRESH OURSELVES Four design firms faced similar challenges of how to carefully address creating a sense of place and using materiality to connect users to the environment while being sensitive to the needs and perspectives of different types of clients. By David Lasker

46THE MORE THINGS CHANGE Ray faced a myriad of challenges, both material and philosophical, in creating a modern workspace in a heritage building. By Peter Sobchak

Regulars

50 DESIGNING DECAY Andrea Shin Ling thinks that rather than fighting against decay, designers should embrace it. By Elsa Lam

16 CAUGHT OUR EYE 18 SEEN Highlights and insights from WantedDesign in New York City; and IMM in Cologne (sort of). 22 THE GOODS New seating as at home in the office as the home; and lighting’s fascinating potential to animate space.

52 OVER & OUT A new material leaves empathetic imprints of Earth’s oldest material.

COVER – For Reflet Clinique, IDEA Intégration created a space that was many things at once: chic yet familiar; minimalist yet warm; and most importantly welcoming. Photo by Jessy Bernier

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3/4 2022 CANADIAN INTERIORS

com Welcome to our podcast series, where we step away from the photographs and talk with interesting leaders about interesting ideas and issues facing the design world today. Available for listen or download on our website as well as a variety of streaming platforms, including:

The Stage is Set: Zeidler Toronto Studio

Episode 13 The Design Industry’s Representation Crisis w/ Ian Rolston

With pandemic concerns waning, Zeidler is keen to utilize their self-designed space to its fullest.

Draw Weight: Calgary Winter Club IT TA IO L N

E to xcl D o u ED IGI ur sive

S2 Architecture gives this private, member-owned Club a much-needed updating.

A Human Approach to Lighting

Garden of Education: Collège Notre-Dame Taktik Design makes use of a bright space to invoke the spirit of an indoor garden area.

Accentuate the Positive: Biodôme Boutique Design teams outfit the renovated Montreal Biôdome gift shop with modular furniture and storage units.

CANADIAN INTERIORS 3/4 2022

Visit the expanded digital edition at

www.canadianinteriors.com

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Adair® Sepia Splitface

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March | April 2022 / V59 #2

Senior Publisher

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416-441-2085 x4 Editor in Chief

Peter Sobchak Art Director

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Canadian Interiors magazine is published by iQ Business Media Inc. 126 Old Sheppard Ave, Toronto, ON M2J 3L9 Telephone 416-441-2085 e-mail: info@canadianinteriors.com website: www.canadianinteriors.com Canadian Interiors publishes six issues, plus a source guide, per year. Printed in Canada. The content of this publication is the property of Canadian Interiors and cannot be reproduced without permission from the publisher.

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Please send payment to: Canadian Interiors, 126 Old Sheppard Ave, Toronto, ON M2J 3L9 or order online www.canadianinteriors.com For subscription and back issues inquiries please call 416-441-2085 x2 e-mail: circulation@canadianinteriors.com, or go to our website at: www.canadianinteriors.com Canadian Interiors is indexed in the Canadian Magazine Index by Micromedia ProQuest Company, Toronto (www.micromedia.com) and National Archive Publishing Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan (www.napubco.com).

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Beauty Beyond Natural

+ Silestone® Kitchen - Ethereal Dusk with HybriQ technology

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cosentino.com

@cosentinocanada

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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

25th Best of Canada Awards, the only national design competition in Canada to focus on interior design projects and products without regard to size, budget or location!

All winners will be published in the Nov/Dec issue of Canadian Interiors.

Submission Deadline: Wednesday, Sept 7th at 11.59 p.m. PST

Saint-Jean-Eudes School Library, Québec City BGLA architecture + urban design Photography by Stéphane Brügger

www.canadianinteriors.com/BoC

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inside

What Works Best

As far as office property is concerned, the first half of 2021 got off to a dismal start, with sales down 37 per cent year-over-year from the same period in 2020. But according to the Morguard 2022 Canadian Economic Outlook and Market Fundamentals Report, Canada’s commercial real estate sector is poised for recovery and growth in 2022, with most employees expected to return to their physical office space. But what will the future of office spaces look like in 2022?

Before we answer that, it is useful to listen at what employees are actually saying and, maybe more importantly, how they are feeling.

The Mental Health Index for January 2022 produced by LifeWorks was -11.3: the largest single month decline of Canadian mental health since October 2020, representing a level not seen in eight months and among the lowest scores during the pandemic. Interestingly, within the survey 55 per cent of working Canadians say that flexible work is most important to them, compared to 24 per cent indicating that career progression is the most important.

The pandemic has forced Canadians to take a good hard look at their priorities. “Many employees are now placing more importance on workplace flexibility — when, where and how they work — rather than career progression, which often includes compensation, promotions and professional development,” says LifeWorks president and CEO, Stephen Liptrap. But what does “flexibility” actually mean? An abundance of employee sentiment surveys may be revealing how everyone feels, but there are still gaps that separate those feelings from material solutions. “Hybrid collaboration spaces” comes up a lot, but does that mean a smorgasbord of private offices, workspaces with enclosures for visual privacy, reservable collaboration-only zones, single-person enclaves outfit with adaptable yet sustainable office furniture, and of course, the all-important informal spaces to connect with colleagues? That is a lot to expect from a space that will only be utilized some of the time.

As more of us return to the office, design will, as always, play a big part in how employers find the necessary means of supporting employees. Designers have always known the high correlation between levels of belonging and productivity in workspaces, but now they will have to find ways to connect with and understand what this evolving workforce values most in an office. After all, there is a growing chorus who say they’d rather work in spaces outfit with surfaces and objects intended for eating and sleeping than work in a space ostensibly intended to help them work better.

15 Peter Sobchak

psobchak@canadianinteriors.com

Construction Management General Contracting Site Assessment Leed and Sustainable Development Cost Contracting / Value Engineering

P 905-856-5481 • ex. 223 F 905-856-8160 • E aloumankis@pentacongroup.com • www.pentacongroup.com

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caught our eye DesignTO edition

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Photo by Sean Davidson

Ebb and Flow For the last six festivals, Sylvia Lee’s storefront lighting installations have consistently dazzled and impressed, and this year’s contribution was no exception. Seen in the window of LUMAS gallery, GEO is a cluster of hand-blown wall lights inspired by river rocks worn smooth by water, echoing Lee’s ongoing fascination with perspective and time. In the daytime the glass bowls look like dusty blue, wabi-sabi shaped stones, but at night with light, shadow and a silver-leafed bulb, the grey and iridescent forms change depending on the angle. www.sylvialeedesign.com / www.jeffgoodmanstudio.com Photo by Eugen Sakhnenko

Water Tight On display in the Erin Stump Projects gallery, the Slanted/ Enchanted exhibition curated

by Jamie Wolfond asked designers to think beyond their regular discipline and contribute a piece made without outsourcing or the use of digital fabrication techniques. In response, Paris-based duo Camille Viallet and Théo Leclercq took a non-descript object like the garden hose and by presenting it as part of an armchair forced users to reconsider its properties: smooth, flexible, curved and strong. www.jamiewolfond.com

What a Little Moonlight Can Do Housed in their new studio space, Mason Studio presented visitors with an eerie moonscape setting using commonly found materials such as foil thermal blankets and desk fans. As the title, Full Moon Reflected On The Ocean At 01:34, suggests, the experience is meant to evoke scenes of the moon reflected on water, an interesting metaphor for how we reflect on normally universal encounters when experienced at a time of isolation. www.masonstudio.com

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seen Compiled by Peter Sobchak

Get Up and Go

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After a 30-month hiatus, ICFF joined forces with WantedDesign to bring back an in-person event in November, which benefited from the melding of each brand’s strengths. For example, the latter’s typical focus on emerging design was on display with Launch Pad, a platform for new talent to introduce their concepts and prototypes.

Origin | Bizmuth This new furniture brand debuted both themselves and their Origin collection at the show. For both company name and product, designers Bronsin Ablon and Jared Scheib took inspiration from the transformational qualities of bismuth, a pure metal on the periodic table that when melted and cooled morphs into a spiraling, geometric crystal. Each piece is available in North American white oak or black walnut. www.bizmuth.nyc Quill Chair | Hali Barthel Studios Constructed from industrial materials such as braided tubing, carbon fiber and 3D printed TPU, this lounger is part of a collection that investigates “industrial materials as a proxy for contemporary luxury,” says Barthel. “High technology materials such as carbon fiber have been flaunted by automotive designers on million-dollar cars. These materials were engineered for their utility, but this collection asks whether they could be used as simulacra for old world grandeur.” www.halibarthel.com Providence Project | Lauren Goodman According to Toronto-born Goodman, the three pieces were “developed with the intention of highlighting under-represented models of production and undervalued material resources. Made entirely from salvaged, discarded material harvested from the Providence area, I aim to draw from my surroundings, a narrative of what Providence might look like as furniture.” www.laurengoodman.ca Sweet Gathering | Mana Sazegara Three new pieces debuted at the show from this multidisciplinary designer, including the Henri stool and Alice mirror both made of laminated MDF, and the Carole rug of finely woven flatweave wool. Clearly inspired by Memphis style, Sazegara says she situates her practice “at the intersection of architecture and graphic design: engaging, enhancing and empowering life.” www.manasazegara.com Jimmy chair | Jaeyeon Park Themes of existential anxiety, absurdity and longing are what Park likes to explore in his work, rendered mostly in a mix of installation art and furniture. For this series of chairs, inspiration came from the 1985 song La Ballade de Jim by Alain Souchon (specifically the 2014 cover version by Paradis), and a materials palette of blistering neon colours and coated epoxy clay were apparently needed to help deal with the pain of lost love. www.jaeyeonpark.org Sonia and René | Tomma Bloom Studio The new collection by the Boston-based surface design studio melds aesthetic inspiration from Art Deco luminaries Sonia Delaunay and René Lalique into a contemporary interpretation of upholstery fabrics, wall coverings and 3D wall tiles using recognizable features such as bold colours, exaggerated shapes, and small details. www.tommabloom.com

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seen Compiled by Peter Sobchak

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1 P.O.V. | Ton The new collection consists of almost 70 table variants, all of which feature a base made of three identical bent plywood panels. Designed by kaschkasch, the name references the organically shaped table base, which looks different from every angle thanks to its rounded triangular footprint. www.ton.eu

2 Tojo-angeber | Tojo This simple but ingenious hall stand can either be a freestanding piece or positioned against a wall and provides clothing storage space. The slots milled into the top panel accommodate clothes hangers while horizontal slits can hold metal hooks and shelves that can be slid into place, at adjustable eye levels. www.tojo.de

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3 Lento | Vincent Sheppard Enjoying la dolce vita is exactly what Belgian designer Bertrand Lejoly had in mind when creating Lento (Italian for “slow”).

The outdoor furniture collection features a mix of natural teak, tactile polypropylene rope and com­fortable cushions, brought together in a low-slung design. www.vincentsheppard.com 4 Mate | Wendelbo Designed by the prodigious Sebastian Herkner, this side table is evocative of a juggler balancing a plate on a pole. The solid oak circular tabletop floats above the conical veneer base like a helping hand, seeming to lean towards the user either wanting or giving attention. www.wendelbo.dk

5 Eclair Bold | Zeiraum Designed by Britta Nehrdich, this solid wood bed with a thickly padded headboard comes in various woods in soft outer contours. Everything about it is emphatic simplicity, starting with the footboard that sweeps slightly upwards and wraps around the mattress like an embrace that conveys a sense of security and support, while different depth options provide enough space for motorized slatted bases and extra-high mattresses. www.zeitraum-moebel.de

Pretend it Happened

Although IMM Cologne ultimately had to scuttle the planned January 2022 iteration, many would-be exhibitors decided to use the imprint of that lost timeslot to present their new products anyway.

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6 Kasual Collection | Essential Home With this collection of armchair, matching pouf and sofa variants for Essential Home and DelightFull, New York-based Canadian ex-pat Karim Rashid has once again dipped into his bag of tricks to balance comfort with cartoonish zest and organic forms in successful (if recognizable) ways. www.essentialhome.eu / www.delightfull.eu

7 Magnolia | Brühl & Sippold Designer Kati Meyer-Brüh was inspired by magnolia flowers for this soft seating collection. A rounded backrest wraps around the seat base in a U-shape, while the outside is divided into vertical segments and the strikingly curved inner surface is structured by an additional horizontal seam. www.bruehl.com 3/4 2022 CANADIAN INTERIORS

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the goods

Compiled by Peter Sobchak

Where Modern Meets Mood

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With home offices continuing to boom, plenty of employees are seeking seating solutions that adapt to spaces where kitchen tables have been turned into desks and dining areas into video-conferencing suites.

Marina | Andreu World Working from home can often come with the joys of transitioning to the patio, and chairs like this are ready when you do. Its comfort-oriented braided backrest and upholstered cushion on a tubular metallic frame can be easily disassembled when it comes time to recycle, and the components come in a range of colour options. www.andreuworld.com

Bitsi | Division Twelve Yes, as in “itsy-bitsy.” Designed by Los Angeles-based EARL, the small footprint and cylindrical, cushioned backrest of the café, bar stool and counter stool models make them ideal for anyone trying to find a way to work in a 500-sq.-ft. condo. www.Division12.com Cross Chair & Cross Table 120 | TAKT This new entry by Pearson Lloyd is an evolution of TAKT’s flagship furniture family that continues to embody Scandinavian design principles that were circular from the start: sustainable to produce, made to last, easy to assemble from flatpack, and properly repairable and recyclable. The chair is available in two heights (to suit kitchen or bar counter), with frames in either oak or black recyclable steel. And with everything in the home now doing double duty, TAKT asked Pearson Lloyd to take another look at their existing Cross table collection, and thanks to a simple intervention this piece of furniture can now shift from working desk to dining table for up to six people. That intervention? A single oak stretcher that separates the two sets of legs, elongating the ‘cross’ that gives the collection its name and allowing the structure to support the larger tabletop.

Eighty Two | Allseating The name looks back — a homage to the company’s 40th anniversary, founded in 1982 — but the materials look forward to a need for cost-effective home office furniture, with a variety of customizable options including colours with ‘80s names (Mixtape, New Wave, Arcade and Stardust), three different arm types, an adjustable width bracket, headrest and seat slider, and the newly launched M11 Mesh. www.allseating.com Kinesit Met | Arper Launched at Salone del Mobile and NeoCon, designer Lievore Altherr Molina has given the company’s first regulatory-compliant office chair a colour palette refresh for 2022. Built-in mechanisms are hidden under the seat, and an invisible, adjustable lumbar support is concealed within the backrest’s thin frame for additional flexibility. www.arper.com

www.taktcph.com

Liberty Ocean | Humanscale Building on its Smart Ocean chair, Humanscale has designed a new version of the Liberty that uses two pounds of recycled fishing nets and meets other stringent environmental protocols while also improving on functionality such as self-adjusting recline; pivoting backrest; form-sensing mesh back; self-adjusting lumbar support; and adjustable or fixed armrests that connect to the backrest instead of the seat to stay with the body during recline.

Circus Wood | EDITS This new collection from the Vancouver-based furniture design brand is a contemporary take on the archetypal Scandinavian wood chair.

The solid-wood frame and plywood seat and backrest are made with sustainability in mind: the European Ash used comes from FSC-certified sustainably managed forests in Eastern Europe, all lacquers and glues give no VOC emissions and are entirely non-toxic, and the collection is BIFMA compliant.

www.humanscale.com

www.editsdesign.com

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the goods

Compiled by Peter Sobchak

Flip the Switch

The lighting industry’s evolution is exciting to watch, as designers experiment with materials and technology both old and new in ways that demonstrate the fascinating potential of light to animate space.

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1 Cut ‘N Paste | Seletti Always good for a wink, the irreverent Italian brand presents a new collection

by Dutch designer Annebet Philips that includes a candelabra, desk lamps, clock, mirror, frames and shelves made entirely of recycled cardboard and tape.

“These materials, often used in the design process for making prototypes, actually turned out working pretty good for the end result,” says Philips.

Good enough that what started as limited-edition pieces are now part of the Seletti family. www.seletti.it

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2 Oplight | Flos A wall lamp that illuminates a whole room, Jasper Morrison envisioned this as future-proof and thoroughly recyclable at its end-of-life. The embodiment of Super Normal (a recurring theme in Morrison’s work), Oplight looks like a musical note on a pentagram, or, as the designer describes it, “the most obvious, definitive shape a wall light could be.” usa.flos.com

3 Volum | Lodes The company’s first collaboration with Snøhetta, the new modular pendant collection pays homage to an Italian glassblowing tradition that morphs glass into naturally imperfect globeshaped lamps. Each diffuser and frame appear as a single form, achieved by cutting the upper part at a 45-degree angle, allowing for a lid made of translucent methacrylate to provide an airtight seal. The lid houses a light source and features an exposed element in the form of a small opening where the cable slides through to balance the globe. www.lodes.com

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4 Seaforth Pendant | hollis+morris A new addition to the Seaside Collection, this pendant was inspired by founder Mischa Couvrette’s two years refurbishing and sailing a sailboat around Nova Scotia (from which the name is taken). The bent solid wood fixture resembles the boat’s skeletal structure and is highlighted by inlaid LED and capped off with brass, copper or stainless. www.hollisandmorris.com

5 Hymn | Ambientec Hiroto Yoshizoe’s new portable lamp is a contemporary interpretation of a traditional chamberstick candle holder.

When switched on, the electric current activates two magnets which brings movement to the pendulum lens.

These tiny oscillations, along with the refraction of the 2000K LED light by the lens, create the appearance of a real candle. www.ambientec.co.jp

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Lights shine bright in L.A. For many office towers, their lobbies are their billboards, and when asked to revamp the Watt Plaza lobby in Los Angeles, STUDIOS Architecture wanted to make it shine with a massive decorative light display. To do this, they collaborated with lighting design specialists Banks Landl Lighting Design to create a striking constellation using 350 individually mounted P1M LED luminaires by Vancouver-based Archilume.

The P1M is the company’s marquee pendant product and is designed to evoke an inverted lit candle effect.

Banks Landl designed a 15-ft. by 19-ft. lighting cove in the ceiling, in which each P1M was mounted at a different cable length. “Given this component is the focal point of the lobby project, the element needed to maintain a certain, specific mass for it to carry the stature it needed to have an impact,” says Matthew Landl. And P1M’s low wattage, low output fixtures in a large, focalized quantity allowed for the surrounding connective spaces to have reduced power consumption. www.archilume.com

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As we look to shape 2022 and beyond, it is important to recognize the achievements women have made within the lighting industry, especially when considering how important the built environment is to our health and wellbeing.

By Dayna Bradley and Nawleen Kaur

We were both raised to question why things are a certain way and challenge them if we do not agree. Through our work in lighting, we have experienced firsthand that much of the design and lighting industry is rooted in systems that have “stood the test time.” We believe that if we disrupt the status quo, and it can help just one person, then it is a win for all.

The pandemic opened the eyes of many to acknowledge how much work a person takes on, in terms of childcare and home life. With everyone at home balancing these aspects of life, more employers have realized that it is possible to balance all three if you have the support of your employer. If we, men and women, are open with employers about personal needs for childcare in particular, companies can foster a supportive culture and build trust amongst everyone.

Not having support prevents women from thriving.

Our mission at TPL Lighting and The Adelaide Project is to shift a very old school narrative around lighting by adding needed transparency and moving the conversation from a commodity approach to selling, to one that focuses on the human experience of lighting. Our human approach not only includes the person who sits under the light but also the experience of each human who touches each part of the process in the path to market. Through our work, we aim to inspire, educate, and collaborate within the lighting community. By working together to support everyone’s best interest, our clients and their clients will ultimately be happier and more satisfied with the end results. The experiences we’ve had in our careers have proven to us that approaching people as humans results in better relationships and overall better outcomes for everyone involved both personally and in achieving business goals.

Women are also often criticized for being too emotional or letting their emotions get the best of them. Being able to guide with your emotions is actually a strength. Through our work, we have seen that there is nothing wrong with tapping into your emotions and relating to people on that human level. It has helped us gain new business and retain lifelong clients. This also means that you need to have the confidence to ‘punch back’ when you’ve been belittled or ignored.

You should always lead with kindness and positivity, but there comes a time when you must meet someone where they are and stand up for yourself in a way that forces them to take you seriously. Having the confidence to not always step aside is where we have found success, and steadfast colleagues who wholly support that same approach make all the difference in those critical moments.

The opportunity to work with other design professionals to disrupt industry standards has also provided us with the support that women in the field don’t always receive. Before we met, early in our careers, there were times we would walk in a room and instantly be judged, our suggestions second guessed or ignored. Historically, the lighting industry has been male centric, and we have had our fair share of trials to prove ourselves as equals. Relying on a strong network of mentors who have helped us get to where we are today, we can work towards shifting that imbalance and finding solutions that help us open more doors for women.

As in many professions, when men and women enter their careers, men are often promoted for their “potential” and women are evaluated based on their “proficiency.” This approach is often the case with promotions: a woman will have to prove her skills before she is promoted. Overall, this creates about a five-year promotion gap. Women are always more than capable, but they are required to prove it first. The first step to workplace equality is understanding that doing a good job has nothing to do with how you identify your gender. It is also uncommon for a man to be asked whether he can balance more responsibilities at work and also be a parent. Conversely, it is automatically assumed that a mother will have to take time out of her career to focus on raising children. We must evolve as a society to understand that a child is not just the mother’s responsibility.

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The final piece to the disruptors puzzle is a plan. Hope is not a strategy: you either will do something or you won’t. At TPL Lighting we implemented a 2030 strategy that not only outlines company goals but also industry goals. This strategy has placed guiding with the “Human Experience” at the center of all decisions. In day-to-day practice, this means always giving the benefit of the doubt in all things, and creating a transparent culture of inclusion, diversity, and respect. We support asynchronous work, which provides our team members flexibility in how, when, and where they work, ensuring workstyles align with our client’s and company’s needs. We have also added coverage in our health benefits plan to allow for mental health support, recognizing that people come to work as whole selves and this important part of health and wellbeing can’t be overlooked. This means supporting principles, not policies, in order to empower people to make the best decisions for the way they want to work.

At the center of everything we do, we lead with the Human Experience. We are building a working environment that drives collaboration, energy, excitement, and engagement. These strategies, combined with confidence in our ability to lead and our knowledge of the industry, is the best path forward in disrupting the lighting and design industry.

Dayna Bradley is president of TPL Lighting, a family-owned architectural lighting agency based in

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Toronto, and Nawleen Kaur is a Creative Lighting Specialist at Toronto-based The Adelaide Project.

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Dental offices have always carried a certain amount of negative association, made worse lately thanks to pandemic-related hygiene concerns.

Two new projects aim to straighten those out through sensitive design interventions.

Photos:

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All Smiles

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By Megan DeLaire

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Bold and Engaging: Superkids

Shortly after the pandemic brought most indoor services in Canada to a halt, dental and orthodontic clinics were some of the first of those services to resume. Often guided by new sanitation and safety standards, they had to safely care for clients in an environment where the risk of COVID-19 transmission could be high.

Two clinics that opened near the beginning of the pandemic managed to attract new clientele and set them at ease at a time when a routine visit could be fraught with anxiety. They did it, in part, with help from interior designers.

With Superkids Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics in Toronto’s Junction district, Plant Architect Inc. gives dentistry a bold, fun and dynamic treatment, while designer Mohammad ​​ Eimar abandons the cold, sterile design common to dental offices in favour of curves and warm tones for Braces Plus Orthodontics, in Airdrie, Alta. Both designs have earned positive feedback from happy patients, and both clinics have come safely through the pandemic.

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Colours — red, orange and two shades of blue — partly inspired by the clinic’s logo stand out against a white backdrop with a crisp, clean quality that extends throughout the clinic. “The colours are not that subtle but they’re not baby colours either,” says Rapoport.

“They’re sophisticated and they’re quite well saturated so there’s a crispness against the white.”

Steven Evans Photography

On one hand, Superkids channels comic book energy through bold colours and engaging graphics on the walls, floors and ceilings (and even the name). On the other hand, Plant’s partner-in-charge for the project, Lisa Rapoport, says her team took care to keep the space sophisticated and appealing to a range of ages, a key stipulation of the clinic’s owner, Dr. Karen Stallaert. “[Karen] had this very strong and clear vision that the space should be quite sophisticated, that it should be something where you could still see your dentist when you were 16 and even after you went to university,” says Rapoport.

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Previous page and this spread Vibrant accent colours, a striped-andslatted feature wall that is visible from the street, and super-graphic numbers on the treatment room doors make utilitarian materials such as drywall and painted wood look futuristic and fun. From the main entry, the patient lounge opens up as a bright, lively environment for kids to explore. In the entry vestibule and the lounge, the high, exposed ceilings are painted in colour blocks that wrap down over mechanical bulkheads and beams to give a cohesive look. Suspended acoustic baffles dampen sound in this active, kid-friendly space, and in tandem with long, narrow LED pendant lighting fixtures, they add a linearpatterned overlay to the colourful ceiling.

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Opposite Employing a hybrid structure of wood and metal studs, the interior structural system allows for dynamic walls expressed in poly faceted surfaces in order to ensure visibility and efficiency. The wooden surfaces along with customized furniture gently mark off spaces, while incorporating important functions utilized in the operation of the clinic.

A large fluid space extends close to the windows to maximize natural light, while smaller enclosed rooms are positioned in an intermittent manner to create rhythm and orientation in the open plan.

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The façade is painted with the same colour palette in a pattern resembling laser beams that wraps around to the interior. “We wanted to create a very dynamic procession from the outside to the inside, to draw children inside and get them excited about coming into the building,” says project manager Patricia Joong.

Furniture in the reception is upholstered in easy-to-sanitize PVCfree faux leather. Beyond the reception area, a clinic hallway lined with treatment rooms forms a loop around the sterilization and xray rooms, allowing Dr. Stallaert to enforce a one-way flow of traffic for better physical distancing. Large windows looking into the sterilization room give clients a view of the cleaning process. “It’s kind of reinforcing to parents, ‘You can watch us do our sterilization,’” Rapoport says. “The proof is here, it’s not in a back room where you have to hope they’re doing it right.”

Melissa D’Souza

Oriented on a diagonal, the reception area breaks down into pockets of space that serve as clustered seating nooks, so families can sit together, separate from other groups. The reception and circulation areas are spacious and bright but not hollow or echoing, thanks to suspended acoustic baffles. All these details add up to create a space that is cool, colourful and tidy, with room to spread out.

The project was designed in 2019 and completed early in the spring of 2020. Thanks to design choices made before the world learned about COVID-19, Rapoport and Joong believe it’s proving resilient at a time when hygiene and space carry so much value.

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Warm and Curvy: Braces Plus

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Where Rapoport and Joong took the concept of a traditional dental office and animated it, architectural designer Mohammad Eimer took that same concept and softened it.

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and obtuse angles predominate over right angles. In the clinic’s one large orthodontic room, the ceiling curves down to the tops of the windows, which span most of the length of the room on one side.

Above The faceted ceiling curves down towards the shared window, creating a three-dimensional space in the main open orthodontics area. This unifying gesture creates a big common room where staff and patients can all share the prairie light and view.

Throughout the clinic, warm fabric light pendants and wood panelling, floors and shelving soften and counterbalance white walls and ceilings. From the chamfered façade to the undulating interior, curves CANADIAN INTERIORS 3/4 2022

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While Eimer’s client and brother, Dr. Hazem Eimer, initially expressed trepidation about having the chairs in one open room, they stuck to the design plan. The clinic opened during the first wave of the pandemic and the response from clients has been overwhelmingly positive. “Sometimes I check Google reviews and people say, of course they like the service, but they say it looks beautiful,” says Eimer. “I’m quite happy that people are feeling positive about it.”

Melissa D’Souza

Like Superkids, Braces Plus Orthodontics was designed before the pandemic and opened in the pandemic’s early days. Fortunately, it benefits from an open floor with the reception desk and enclosed brushing areas serving as islands around which traffic can easily circulate. Even the orthodontic treatment area is open, with all four of the office’s dental chairs sharing one space, albeit at intervals of more than six feet.

Eimar had never seen a dental clinic he found pleasant. So, when he set out to design Braces Plus Orthodontics in Airdrie, Alta., he decided to create something that was in opposition to the clinics he’d seen before. “We decided to go far away from this typical image of clinics in the 20th century that is kind of too much design, and very white and bright,” says Eimer, a Palestinian-Jordanian who now works in Kengo Kuma’s Tokyo office. “This design is kind of the opposite. It’s very casual and you don’t see any right angles. Everything is very soft. The wall is folding, so it responds to the contemporary human body, because humans these days are very sensitive.”

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Riley Snelling

Refreshing Spaces that Refresh Ourselves Four design firms faced similar challenges of how to carefully address creating a sense of place and using materiality to connect users to the environment while being sensitive to the needs and perspectives of different client types.

By David Lasker

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Riley Snelling

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Opposite page and this spread At the entrance of art&fact in Calgary, visitors are greeted with white oak walls and cabinetries contrasted against a monolithic marble reception desk and bench. The circular route around the floor plan takes advantage of the well-lit front to act as a natural way finder from within, while intricate wood slats and illuminated display niches further enhance the natural colour of white oak.

Everyone wants to look good, feel good, and, quite frankly, there hasn’t been a time in common memory that we’ve needed it more.

Now with lockdowns easing and service industries opening up again, more and more of us are booking appointments and sliding into chairs for a bit of “me time.” What follows are a variety of clinics specializing in health and aesthetic procedures that approach this interesting yet oft-overlooked interior typology with the aim of encouraging inclusivity and empowerment and use modern design as a tool to help us all consider and admire our unique innate beauty.

neon “set your own beauty standard” sign visible from the street, and the “You are a Work of Art” sign on the washroom wall, reversed so that customers can see it through the mirror, certainly qualify as lighthearted, humorous touches.

However, he also uses the term to describe the project’s design motif of openness and transparency. Because the clinic front-faces north, Chieh took pains to bring natural light into the reception area and the front corridor. The light-toned materials palette ekes out the natural light with white oak veneer on the walls and neutral-toned tundra marble from Turkey for the reception area’s monumental desk and bench, their rigorously linear forms softened by the marble’s soft-focus, cloud-like patterning.

See and Be Seen: art&fact At this medical aesthetics clinic in Calgary, architect Anthony Chieh, formerly in solo practice as AC-AD Studio and now a partner in Los Angeles-based Vivo Design, aspired “to champion beauty in a lighthearted way,” he says. The cursive script of the

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where medical apparatus tucks away in panelled drawers to give the clinic a neat and welcoming aesthetic.

As a sign of the times, the neutral colour palette signifies inclusivity. “The client told me at the very beginning to include all tones of skin colour as part of their branding. If you go to their website you’ll see a range of tones,” says Chieh. “They work with all sorts of people. It’s hard to select one single colour to represent a variety of ethnicities.”

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In the 1951 film Royal Wedding, Fred Astaire famously dances up the walls and ceiling as the room rotates. Calgary interior design firm Copper 8 conjures memories of that dance sequence in its design for a combined beauty and barber boutique in the city’s University District.

Copper 8 added a sense of intimacy to a cavernous 3,240-sq.-ft. space

MJAY Photography

Neutral and Sensitive: Curious Hair Skin Body & Denim and Smith

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This spread The scale of the new Curious/Denim + Smith space was a challenge for the design team, which they addressed by creating a central hub for both brands: a design focal point that centralized the shared functions but also visually delineated the space into salon, gathering space and barbershop. The use of positive and negative forms in the millwork allowed for visibility throughout the three zones allowing staff to connect with each other and their clients, and the neutral finish of the wood was sensitive to both user types and softened the strong concrete floors and columns and black storefront details.

with 19-ft. ceilings, by inserting a ceiling-suspended wooden boxwork grid and similar grids rotated 90 degrees that stand upright as room dividers and display shelving while adding a frisson of Astaire-like ambiguity about which grids are wall and which are ceiling.

shared reception and waiting area. The reception desk worksurface extends to provide a small staging area wrapped in vertically stacked floor-nosing strips. Here, the receptionist can receive and unpack deliveries while greeting customers.

Vertical units demarcate the two zones and act as a wayfinding device. The millwork alternates grids closed with back panels and backless, see-through voids, helping customers navigate the interior. The millwork adds acoustic control and budget-sensitive detailing (along with industrial-aesthetic, wire-basket pendant lighting) to the space.

To the Point: Les Ongles Diva Nails

Another challenge was how to pack two distinct retail brands into a single commercial rental unit while providing customers with an experience they recognize from visiting each businesses’ single-store locations elsewhere in the city. The solution was to provide two entry points along the storefront with signage identifying each business.

Inside, branded retail displays adjoin the entries. Passing through the retail area, clients are greeted by a single, brand- and gender-neutral

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This Montréal-based bilingually named manicure and pedicure salon (“ongles” translates to “nails”) approached local firm Issadesign with a mandate for not only beauty services, but also “to offer its clientele a temporary escape from urban life.” So says Issadesign founder Marie Eve Issa, adding that her work respects the principles of sustainability and contributes to a greener society. The sentiment finds expression here in the selection of materials (ceramic tile, laminate, wallpaper) that “don’t go over the top,” she says, and aesthetically by exploring the theme of the lotus flower, a nod to the client’s Asian background. “Patterns, furniture shapes, lighting and other components have been selected in the spirit of biophilia,” she adds.

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David Boyer

Opposite and above For Les Ongles Diva Nails, two areas of activity were developed due to technical constraints and special ventilation needs: a nail application area, as well as a second area focusing on manicures and pedicures. Lotus flower motifs recur throughout, as do references to fingernails, seen prominently in display area arches.

Above Balance and linear symmetry prevail in Reflet Clinique, starting with (and perhaps dominated by) the project’s main room: the wall evoking copper in the reception area, which is overhung by a granite counter.

The most arresting feature in the irregularly shaped, 1,460-sq.-ft. space is the de Chirico-like arcade of fingernail-shaped retail display niches showcasing nail polish in a wide array of colours. Indeed, the interior plays variations on the fingernail theme. The shape recurs mirror-imaged horizontally as lozenge-shaped worktable surfaces, and again in the wallpaper’s cascading fingernail pattern. The wallpaper’s dusty rose-taupe colourway repeats in the seating upholstery and the vases throughout the salon filled with sprays of lotus flowers.

Balanced And Linear: Reflet Clinique

Above the worktables, suspended pendants provide daylight-balanced illumination close to the business at hand, so to speak, for accurate colour rendition of nail polish. A big sliding gridded glass window, a foil to the project’s many organic biophilic shapes, keeps chemical odours generated in the nail-extension area from permeating other spaces.

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This Québec City clinic, by local firm IDEA Intégration Design et Architecture, is the province’s first and only combined, public and private health practice. Its 2,500 square feet are apportioned equally to non-invasive cosmetic treatments and to medical procedures for gynecology, pregnancy monitoring and hormone therapy.

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Fortunately, the private-clinic aesthetic prevails. Reflet looks tailored, minimalist and high-end compared to the typical public clinic with its “rows of aluminum-framed plastic chairs, walls covered with public-service announcements and weathered magazines in a room bathed in stark neon lighting,” explains IDEA founder Elsa Vincent, who is also senior designer at parent company STGM Architecture, an architecture firm with 150 employees in Montréal and Québec City.

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This page Colour, material coding and a recurring use of straight lines is also central, with matte black, copper accents, granite and the implementation of hidden doors leading to treatment rooms for men, while more refined touches have been incorporated to resonate with female customers, such as white marble, golden accents, curves of the furniture and lighting.

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To add a sense of privacy, doors to treatment rooms, doorway mouldings and corridor walls are uniformly black. The doors are also concealed from the reception area. The clinic’s IDEA-designed logo, mounted on the gridded, copper-coloured Octolam wall behind the reception desk, represents the human face reduced to an abstraction of straight lines. In turn, Vincent says, the logo inspired the clinic’s “balanced and linear design.”

Jessy Bernier

The reception area’s positive-negative materials palette features a desk fronted with African fusion granite (white veins on a black field) on a floor of Calacatta marble (black veins on a white field). The same materials clad, and gender code, the treatment rooms: black granite for men and white for women, along with matte black and copper accents for men and golden accents, curving lighting and yellow club chairs for women.

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Global Agribusiness Company Ash plywood topographic feature wall with LED illuminated bodies of water Designed, developed & delivered by eurOptimum

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design / develop / deliver

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The More Things Change

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Ray faced a myriad of challenges, both material and philosophical, in creating a modern workspace in a heritage building.

By Peter Sobchak

Photography by Vincent Lions

“Like geological layers, the flooring […] is hardwood over concrete over the original hardwood of a heritage building. This is significant. Like the building, these layers have come full circle: A heritage building from the past has been renovated to become a heritage building for the future.”

had no way of predicting, is how the evolution of the building and its occupants would continue to be significant (to borrow the word choice) for the next 33 years, right up to and including its newest inhabitant, Rose Rocket.

Those were the opening lines to a cover story that appeared in the November-December 1989 issue of this very magazine, written by B. Prosser Thomas, about the new (at the time) showroom for Steelcase in Toronto and housed in what was known as the Beardmore Building. In the article, Thomas goes on to describe how the design teams (consisting of Steelcase in concert with then-named Quadrangle Architects Limited) transformed a space originally built for manufacturing into something that was “distinctive – even stunning – but not overpowering.” What is interesting, and what the author

A Canadian transportation management software company, Rose Rocket has seen considerable growth since its founding in 2015 and needed new space to support that growth. The unique characteristics of the historic Beardmore Building (now known simply as 37 Front Street West) caught their eye as the site for their new head office in 2020, and they tapped Toronto-based Ray Inc. to chip away the layers of time, much like a sculptor removes the unwanted bits of marble until they are left only with a work of art.

Decades of tenants and numerous renovations during that time left many layers of materials to chip away at, layers that were very representative of the times in which they were built: a lot of false columns and undulating drywall ceiling details that just screamed late-1980s and early 1990s. For Rose Rocket, the space was completely stripped bare of those layers, the ceilings opened up, the false columns removed, and extensively remediated just to bring it up to today’s codes and standards. Ultimately, and in working

Opposite The daylight-filled atrium is used for town halls as well as evening functions. The suspended globe lights replicate the feeling of hanging out on a fun outdoor summer patio. “Monumental, but classic as opposed to ostentatious” is how B. Prosser Thomas described it in 1989, and that still applies today.

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Even full rooms represent this comfortable flexibility, such as a cozy library and even a music room where jamming sessions occur on a regular basis. Rose Rocket also chose to ditch the traditional reception area in favour of a “coffee shop” where a co-worker barista prepares specialty coffee for colleagues.

Change is Constant In surveying the new space, one cannot ignore how active the “layers of history” narrative still is. In the late 1800s, George Beardmore used the building for leather and fur manufacturing: fast forward nearly a century and Steelcase was using it to showcase another manufactured product, modern office systems; fast forward another few decades and that manufacturing ethos is still present, but in the modern form of software. These evolutions in products parallel an evolution in workspace philosophy, made even more manifest thanks to the pandemic, where phrases such as “flexibility” and “hybrid collaboration spaces” dominate boardroom discussions and are primary research topics for companies like, unironically, the previous tenant Steelcase.

“Flexibility has always been a very important component of workplace design; every client wants a flexible space to weather the evolution of their business. A hybrid environment is just flexibility on steroids!” says Talbot. Of course, in today’s language that typically means employees having the ability to work from home or the office, a choice that then often falls on designers to create spaces that support similar choices. And therein lies a key word in this discussion: support. As more workers consider returning to the office, a dominant question has become in what new ways will employers support them? The answers often fall to designers.

closely with general contractor Mform and Allied Properties, Ray was able to bring the space “close to its original glory,” says Isabelle Talbot, principal at Ray.

“Interior design has always played a critical part in supporting how staff work and behave in their office environment, but now we have found ourselves at a critical time where it matters more than ever before. Office spaces have been sitting empty for two years, rent has been paid every month and now that restrictions are being lifted employers want their staff back,” says Talbot. “To draw staff back to the office and support newly found work patterns, we recognize that it must offer a much greater variety of work settings and social spaces in addition to the traditional desk, which is in much less demand.

Employers need to support not only their staff back in the office but those who work remotely and keep everyone engaged all at the same time. Who had heard of a “Zoom room” before Covid? It’s now become part of our everyday language and our new reality. [While] we all want to go back to our normal lives and crave interaction with our co-workers, many feel uneasy returning. Our role as interior designers is to create solutions that foster well-being and inclusivity.”

This “original glory” is seen immediately in the building’s signature feature: a spectacular three-storey atrium, once a boat slip in the original waterfront warehouse. This is the heart of the facility and where today’s hallmarks of progressive office environments take place: meet, eat, play, collaborate and work. To support these hallmarks, a “bring the outdoors in” concept was achieved using LVT flooring reminiscent of wood decking, outdoor furniture, and a fullsize live tree encircled by a wooden bench.

Surrounding the atrium is a U-shaped office space where today’s promise of “workplace flexibility” is on full display, starting with an intentional and judicious patchwork of furniture choices: from functionally recognizable office pieces such as height-adjustable desks by Knoll; to furniture that makes staff feel “at home,” like vintage chairs reused in meeting rooms; to modular soft seating juxtaposed against games tables and phone booths (ironically, Thomas describes “phone coves in lieu of phone booths” in the 1898 Steelcase showroom design).

This spread The 26,324-sq.-ft. space is filled with a variety of furniture choices from height adjustable desks to phone booths, couches and vintage pieces. A four-storey building, Rose Rocket occupies floors two and three and have also secured the fourth, with the ground floor given to retail.

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Completed in September of 2021, Ray was able to achieve this at Rose Rocket, whose objective from the start was to provide a space where any of their staff could experience a workspace that is unique, flexible and intentional. Or put another way: layered. And there’s that word again, which makes B. Prosser Thomas’s original opening line just as relevant today as it was in 1989: “Like the building, these layers have come full circle: A heritage building from the past has been renovated to become a heritage building for the future.”

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Designing Decay

By Elsa Lam

Andrea Shin Ling thinks that rather than fighting against decay, designers should embrace it.

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Gabriel_Li

By Elsa Lam

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This spread For this year’s Rhubarb Festival at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto, artists such as Louise Liliefeldt (below) were asked to respond to and even engage with Ling’s large-scale tree stump installation, which experiments with designed decay in organic objects in an effort to explore the coupled nature of rot and regeneration.

In the installation Calculus of an Infinite Rot, Part 1, created for this year’s Rhubarb Festival in Toronto, Ling selected 35 tree stumps and had them shaped in various ways to host fungal and bacterial cultures. Some were left virtually untouched; others CNC-cut at the Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design into bulbous, volcano-like sculptures. Others were shaped with a chainsaw into tall, totemic objects reminiscent of Brancusi sculptures.

Gabriel_Li

Months before the festival, Ling and Rhubarb Festival director Clayton Lee set up a makeshift greenhouse behind the stage at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre to prepare the stumps. Borrowing equipment from the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine research labs, they soaked the stumps in water, and inoculated them with a variety of fungi and bacteria: from pleurotus ostreatus, which produces a carnivorous blue oyster mushroom capable of digesting animals, to streptomyces griseus, the source of the antibiotic streptomycin.

The resulting sculptures became the backdrop for a series of performances in February, as restrictions started to lift following the Omicron wave of the pandemic. Artist Jesús Hilario-Reyes carefully walked on stilts through the installation; Louise Liliefeldt lay prone on the central tree stump. In a collaboration between artists Claude Wittmann and Serena McCarroll, the sculptures were the only visible presence on the stage: Wittmann and McCarroll dialed in from the adjacent room, holding a conversation on the housing crisis. They noted how the tree stumps were treated better than most people living on social assistance: the stumps had food, water, shelter, people to care for them.

Henry Chan

When I visited, the stumps were a quiet, majestic presence in their own right. Spotlighted in the dark theatre, they were smeared with different colours and textures: the fuzzy white of mycelium networks; the green of a trichoderma viride mold used in agriculture as a natural fungicide; a darker green mystery mold that arose from a stump contaminated during the fungal growth process. A musty, wet rain smell hung in the air (both Ling and Lee had hoped the installation would have an even stronger, funkier olfactory presence). The sculptures hung between life and death, destined to degrade, but made beautiful in that process.

Designing for the circular economy is one thing, says artist and researcher Andrea Ling. But how do you deconstruct a product like a window, set in a vinyl frame and contaminated with sealants and glues? And what about that more pernicious reality: that all materials ultimately break, degrade, and decay?

Ling, a former architect, thinks that rather than fighting against decay, designers should embrace it. Her own work experiments at the intersection of living and dying organisms: work at MIT’s Media Lab, shown in 2020 at MOMA and in 2021 at SFMOMA, involved robotically fabricating natural artifacts from the molecular components found in tree branches, insect exoskeletons, and our own bones. A residency at Gingko Bioworks resulted in a series of artifacts designed for decay — “garbage that retains some sort of functionality or desirability as it degrades within our lifespans and in our homes,” as she puts it.

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Ling’s current work is circling back to architecture proper: she is currently completing her PhD in the Digital Building Technologies Lab at ETH Zurich, developing a method of inoculating a concrete-like surfacing material with algae. If the algae can be kept alive, it can continuously sequester carbon.

“In 10 or 15 years, when we’ve reached our carbon limit, what will architects do?” muses Ling. She reflects on the Shinto shrines of Japan, which are ritually rebuilt every 20 years, with trees planted in advance for that purpose. Designing in a way that mingles living organisms with inert materials, and that accepts — and even values — degradation, will surely have a place in our future.

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Elsa Lam, FRAIC, is editor of Canadian Architect.

3/4 2022 CANADIAN INTERIORS

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Studio Pararaum

over & out

Peeling Back Time

A new material leaves empathetic imprints of Earth’s oldest material.

In our era of environmental sensitivity, should we give any consideration to rocks? Studio Pararaum thinks we should. To our collective consciousness they may seem like the very definition of “everlasting,” but even rocks wear down, normally due to geological processes over time. Yet to some, there is an argument to be made that modernity is quickening their erosion thanks to the harvesting of stone as construction materials for rapidly expanding cities. In effect, mountains are being depleted.

ity of the mountain through its texture and form, even though the mountain isn’t physically present,” say the pair. “It mediates between ‘a fragment of the mountain’ and ‘a building block,’ aiming to reconnect the collective consciousness with the consumption of resources and extraction processes implicit in production.” The imprints of rock surfaces are “captured in time,” with the latex leaving them “untouched” — what Li and Zhang call “an act of resistance against depletion.”

Meng Li and Linda Zhang, the founding duo of Studio Pararaum based in Zürich and Toronto (Zhang is a registered architect and an Assistant Professor at Ryerson University RSID), saw part of the problem resulting from a “detachment between building and sourcing.” In response they developed Rock Skin, a bioplastic latex film applied to and then peeled off the surfaces of rock formations, capturing surface imprints in a reusable mold that carries visible traces of the geological formation. “We can still experience the real-

First exhibited at the Seoul Biennale of 2021, Rock Skin is intended to be used to form architectural elements, giving the feel of natural rock without destroying the rock, with colourants for the bioplastic sustainably foraged onsite. One of the first product prototypes to be made using the new material is a series of pendant lights, the designs for which are being further developed and slated for release in the fall of 2022 with support from the Ikea Foundation of Switzerland and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

By Peter Sobchak

CANADIAN INTERIORS 3/4 2022

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