Harkel Office Furniture

Ubisoft:
Collaborative Studio Sparks Ubisoft Creativity

Collaboration plays a pivotal role in organizations. Effective collaboration requires space, technologies and furnishing to support individual tasks and interactive group work. Finding the right balance is the key.

"With knowledge-based work and a younger demographic, the new studio needed to be both highly cognitive and social, an environ ment enabling creativity and imagination but at the same time encouraging interaction and communication among groups."

SDI Interior Design and Project Coordination were engaged by Ubisoft Canada to find the balance for their new studio in Toronto. Ubisoft, head­quartered in France, is a leading international developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products. With knowledge-based work and a younger demographic, the new studio needed to be both highly cognitive and social, an environ­ment enabling creativity and imagination but at the same time encouraging interaction and communication among groups.

By eliminating walls and barriers, the majority of the studio space remains open to encourage visual access and communications. In order to prevent distractions from nearby conversations, dedicated project rooms were included in the design for specific functions ranging from presentations, sound testing, press discussion and team meetings.

These project rooms provide privacy and separation from the general work area. Technology also played a vital role within the design. Each Ubisoft staff member requires a large number of dedicated connection points to the servers for information transfer. With numerous wires to each station, the design team utilized Global’s Bridges System to house all of the technology requirements and avoid the mess and clutter of multiple data lines. By extending the work surface, each staff member is also able to place a minimum of three monitors.

In order to achieve effective collaboration, SDI worked with Harkel Office to identify Global’s system furniture which would best apply to the following solutions:

• Space with groups of six work­stations interspersed with open casual meeting space. These spaces are surrounded with writable surfaces and furnished with removable seating for informal gatherings and spon­taneous brain storming sessions.
• Layout counters were created by ganging storage units together and surrounding them with counter height stools.

DESIGNER SECRETS

Using Design to be Cost Effective

by Joanne Chan
SDI Interior Design and Project Coordination

Joanne Chan, Principal, led her team from SDI Interior Design and Project Coordination on the Ubisoft program. Construction costs for the technology sector can run very high because of extensive cabling, audio visual and security requirements. For Ubisoft, the construction total was 35 per cent less than the average market cost.

Project savings were achieved through a design process that was highly collaborative; featured clean architectural details; stressed effi­ciency with high density; incorporated energy efficiency and ergonomic lighting design; and specified system furniture suited for a technology work environment.