Location / Vancouver
Project Type / Renovation + Retrofit
Size / 43,000 sf
Photography / Ema Peter
The Main Street Tech Hub is the home of a coworking office space company that is part of a global network providing shared workspaces where companies can grow together. The 43,000 square foot space at 2015 Main Street in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver is located within the M1 Building, the former Royal Bank of Canada processing and storage centre. The single occupancy bank building was originally designed to accommodate a large company – a sea of office cubicles, as per a typical larger company headquarters. Responding to the global shift in the culture of working, the space now focuses on the transformation from large company to small start-up, with spaces designed to reflect the spirit of entrepreneurs and changing nature of work.
The office covers two floors and opened in February 2019. This location marks the start of a large-scale development, dubbed the ‘Main Alley Campus’, that is a collaboration between local developers and a social media management platform company. Our intervention included converting the interior of the building to warm shell, expanding the lobby, refinishing the existing cladding, adding cantilevered balconies and wrapping the building in a perforated screen. The screen envelops the entire exterior of the building, providing privacy for the balconies and solar shading for the building. At the south east corner of the building the screen slopes up to identify the entrance.
