Red Bull Toronto’s Custom and Inspirational Offices
Expanding the footprint created by the Red Bull Music Academy, architecture firm Johnson Chou recently completed an inspiring and original workspace for Red Bull Toronto.
Beyond simply making the office space larger, the main goal was to create an inspiring space for administrative staff who are normally relegated to bland, impersonal spaces. The company also aimed to use predominantly reclaimed materials.
From the architects:
“The design focuses on four main components: a bar/lounge area, a linear open workstation concept, a wool felt-clad form and a boardroom. As Red Bull is host to many social gatherings, from art openings, parties and receptions, the bar/lounge area functions to anchor the public areas of the space.
The custom workstations, composed like a ribbon, transforms from a floor surface to a work surface to a ceiling plane, providing colour, texture, warmth and a sense of enclosure. A defunct elevator core is re-formed and clad with varying colours and thickness of felt, utilized for its sound absorption qualities. The organic form is evocative of the natural contours of a mountain or the muscular torso of a bull. A new meeting room composed of felt, blackboard and tamarack wood strips positioned in a random pattern is another vessel or “primitive hut”.
The lighting and the wood strips in the ceiling are intending to evoke the effect of light filtering through branches. A long boardroom table fabricated from a cherry tree felled on the millworker’s own property anchors the space.
Private offices situated behind what was originally an exterior wall feature custom-designed workstations made from oak veneer that are similar in detail to the offices recently completed in the first phase.”
Design: Johnson Chou
Photography: Tom Arban Photography
