Jo Lee Magazine - Luxury Edition 2020

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Canada
Shopify
By Susan Berger
New York / San Francisco / Hong Kong / London / Tokyo /
Rome / Toronto
With an ecommerce platform that lets the user create, grow and manage a
business, Shopify enables sales in numerous places including the web,
mobile, social media, online marketplaces and in-person locations. It is
available in almost every country in the world, facilitating sales wherever
your customers are located.
The goal in designing Shopify’s corporate headquarters in Ottawa was to
build a creative innovation hub focused on employee health and wellbeing.
They aimed to redefine the normal workday by blurring the boundaries
between business and play. Each floor had a different theme that explored
parts of the city from back alleys to urban streetscapes and cabin retreats.
There was a sauna-themed meeting room, a snowboard-themed executive
space and a mountain floor containing cedar and copper tents. Believing
that creativity is fuelled by accidental collisions where employees can share
ideas, a staircase was designed that ran through all the floors, encouraging
people to cross paths, with integrated seating alongside to pull off and have
discussions. A gourmet kitchen provided free breakfast and lunch.
Shopify understood that an office should be designed for both introverts
and extroverts, and so a variety of workspaces accommodated all working
styles, from groups of unpartitioned workstations to enclosed boardrooms,
from semiprivate nooks and alleys to comfortable armchair salons and
climb-in upholstered pods with no doors – meant to symbolize the concept
of never closing your mind to anything. With a go-kart track, a yoga room,
an employee lounge with video games, foosball and ping pong, the
emphasis was on encouraging relationships among the employees.
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