McKinley Studios Infuses Imagination Into a Vancouver Office

Architect Walker McKinley, the founder and CEO of McKinley Studios in Vancouver and Calgary, doesn’t believe offices are going anywhere any time soon—but they are changing. “What’s fun about offices right now is that there is this question of ‘Why office at all? Why are we doing this?’” he says. “In some ways, that sounds like it would lessen the opportunities, but I think it’s done the opposite for a lot of our work. We can look independently at the culture of the people we’re working for.”

That translates to more thoughtful and imaginative designs that reflect a company’s ethos, especially since the functional components, such as ergonomics and lighting, are second nature to McKinley’s team. In the iconic 320 Granville building in Vancouver’s downtown, one of his latest projects, an office for Serein, a human-centric real estate development company, exemplifies this with quiet panache.

From the outset, Serein’s CEO, Betsy Wen, wanted a space that embodied the company’s core values: ambition, collaboration, differentiation, and being artist-led. And while that last order was relatively straightforward (enacted by a slew of artwork and furniture throughout), bringing physical form to the others required creativity. “The idea of everyday extraordinary, that rang and became a through thread,” he says. “Nothing’s going to just be a workplace. Everything’s going to be extraordinary. And it’s going to be a theatre or backdrop to your life.”

McKinley and Wen, an artist herself, conceived the space as a sort of sculpture garden, with each piece as a separate entity. “They’re all in dialogue, but none of them are matching or coming off each other,” McKinley explains. “Even physically, they’re all independent and function as objects in the space.”

Walking off the elevator, guests face a wall of smoked mirrors, a towering door with a slotted handle that lets in light seamlessly integrated into it. The sleek entrance, which could easily be for a luxury spa or a chic nightclub, lends itself to the sense of what McKinley calls “magical thinking” throughout.

Pass through the cleverly sliding foot-thick door, and the next surprise awaits. Rather than a typical reception desk, the ever-imaginative Wen requested a cocktail bar where she could whip up creations for guests (and yes, that has included her take on an old-fashioned for McKinley on a recent visit). With a smoked mirror front, the sides of the bar—along with wall and backlit shelves behind it where all the tools are housed—are clad in richly veined black marble.

Nearby, a contemporary sitting area is situated beneath an ethereal hanging sculpture, Rain From a Cloudless Sky, created by local artist Shirley Wiebe using industrial knitting. “We spent a long time trying to find the right sculpture. That’s where we started for the project, with this idea that there’d be one piece that sort of defined the entry and the tone, and it ended up being that piece,” McKinley says. “It’s beautiful. It’s kind of diaphanous and light. A lot of people think it’s a light fixture because it picks up the light so much.”

Moving through the 2,300-square-foot office reveals a meeting room cocooned in curving glass, a digital theatre for presentations, offices, and a stainless-steel staff kitchen. Expansive views of Vancouver are a constant.

Furniture—stone benches by Kelly Wearstler, Tacchini’s low Elephant chair, and a custom sofa designed by McKinley Studios—is modern and textural and afforded plenty of space to shine. “Everything is just really independent, very sculptural pieces of furniture,” he says. “In each case, they’re personalities in and of themselves, and they all sort of talk to each other.”

Ultimately, when someone walks into Sereine, McKinley wants them to feel as if they’ve stepped out of the everyday. “There’s a nice sense of disorientation—it doesn’t feel like what you expect,” he says. “I think it opens people up when you’re in a space like that, and your expectations are taken away, and there’s a bit of a sense of awe as you figure out where you are. I think it changes the kind of conversations you can have.”

With each project he works on, McKinley strives to understand how it will fit into the social and cultural fabric of the community, and working with Wen was no exception. “There’s something so extraordinary about the ambitions of this young woman and her development, and so unusual for Vancouver, which is very much a pro forma-based development,” he says. For McKinley, bringing those values and big ambitions into this little office is a chance to demonstrate to the development community that creative and human-centred design packs a big punch—especially when paired with one of Wen’s cocktails.

Photographs by Ema Peter.

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