Westminster Savings’ head office was located in two buildings, spread out in many small pockets of space. Their vision was to consolidate and integrate everyone into one building, to increase inter-department interaction, reduce meetings, and enhance communication.

Departments for the most part were in their own ‘domains’, with a large number of people in offices. In the new space, several departments would share a floor and there would be fewer offices. The challenge was to create spaces where each department would feel like they had their own sense of community and provide a more open workspace to facilitate increased communication and collaboration.

The floor plates in the new building were 15,000 square feet each and shaped like a football with a side core! We approached planning by creating neighbourhoods for each group with a dedicated collaboration zone so they still had a place to celebrate birthdays and other team events.

Another challenge was to retain and reuse as many existing improvements, both to save filling up landfills unnecessarily and to save on costs. We were successful in retaining many of the existing offices, the plumbing locations for the café and several break-rooms, some training rooms, as well as, a portion of the structure for high-density filing.

Photographer: Kim Muise