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McKinsey & Company Office

This is a project by Hariri Pontarini Architects and it is located at Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Project's program: Office building. There are eight images for McKinsey & Company Office.

: © Darius Hines

Project details

Project name: McKinsey & Company Office
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Program: Office building
Area: Built-up area: 75,000 sf
Year: Completion: June 2001
More details: Cost of construction: $15M
Client: McKinsey & Company
Project by: Hariri Pontarini Architects
Team: Principal designer: Siamak Hariri

Project images

Designer's statement

The architecture of McKinsey & Company is an expression grounded in the latent qualities of urban campus conditions, but adaptable to the changing needs of emerging office cultures. The architecture aims to provide—at both a macro and micro level—careful and sensitive attention from initial massing and organizational planning through to detailing and workmanship.

Positioning McKinsey at the edge of a university campus provides the opportunity for a mutually beneficial relationship between McKinsey and a renowned institution. Located on the Victoria Campus, part of the University of Toronto, McKinsey & Company headquarters participates as a model citizen in urban design, while establishing an individual identity as a refined composition of carefully designed details.

The three-storey building is thoughtfully designed, conveying a high level of craftsmanship through strong architectural vocabulary. Stretched from the neo-Gothic Burwash Hall to The Colonade, a 1960’s residential and retail building on Bloor Street, the architecture emphasizes natural light and materials. The building boasts a palette of rubble and cut stone with teak and mahogany windows accented by copper detailing, inspired by Burwash Hall’s materiality and scale.

The collegial atmosphere is emphasized internally through the large, clerestory windows, framing views of the college’s notable buildings. With careful massing, McKinsey acknowledges campus planning traditions with gentle walkways, axes with structured views, and a courtyard. The low-rise scale and compressed entry sequence at Charles Street set up an armature for a complex built around natural light.

The two main wings of the building interface at a three-storey high open interior court. At ground level, this naturally-lit internal court¬—called “The Hive”—unites all significant wings of the building, both vertically and horizontally. While framing the north face of the courtyard on its south side, “The Hive” also introduces a social focal point, serving as a meeting place.

The fundamental attitude of the ‘new office’ space was the willingness to reduce the number of private areas with walls, in order to create collaborative and communal spaces. As a result, corridors were eliminated in an effort to instigate circulation and team building amongst employees. A team of designers were dedicated to internal development—from programming to custom millwork. Starting with individual workstations, models were developed and combined into ‘clusters’, each of which represent a vertical selection of the McKinsey hierarchy. Workstations are grouped around partner offices, reflecting the desired model of an artisan studio. The building has achieved a sense of community and removed any doubts about the significant role that architecture can play in bringing about a change in how people interact.