When commissioned by Gruppo Campari to design their new Toronto office, the architects' brief was simple – ‘create a space which captures the spirit of the company and inspires the people who use it’.

To achieve this mandate I-V looked to the past to inform the future. Initially captivated by Campari’s iconic posters – particularly those designed by Italian Futurist’s Fortunato Depero and Bruno Munari – the design aspires to create a spatial and visual language reflective of the brand's rich cultural history, while concurrently making it unmistakably contemporary.

Located within an old warehouse, the space was previously used for commercial film and television shoots. Originally painted all black and devoid of any natural light, it presented a unique set of challenges and opportunities. In many ways, the interior design project attributes this project's success to its original faults.

Designed around 3 principle tenets: indirect natural light; volumetric separations; and bold aesthetics – the project objective was to marry a typical commercial office program with an atypical space. It's this relationship that pushes convention and articulates a future-forward office landscape layered in pattern, texture, colour and form, while still facilitating the evolving needs of a contemporary workplace.