Travel agency FlightHub’s Montreal location could have been an unremarkable office in a nondescript neighborhood near the airport, were it not for a clever intervention by ACDF Architecture. To contend with the building’s unusual octagonal floor plan, the architects created a central hub of activity surrounded by a ring of desk and meeting areas, forming a circular workplace.
Staffers work in four insular departments, or “tribes,” which all require their own spaces. The appearance of so many internal walls in an octagonal space could have been inelegant, but ACDF proposed the creation of a round core surrounded by radial workspaces. “It is the shape of the earth,” explains architect Joan Renaud, partner at the Montreal-based firm. “The client was interested in this idea of an interactive core, with different islands of color and function.”