
Complexities of the marijuana industry are plentiful right now. Many states in the U.S. have taken the step to legalize medical and/or recreational marijuana (recreational marijuana is now legal in 10 states; medical marijuana is legal in 33), and the entire county of Canada legalized the substance in October 2018.
The marijuana industry is seeking to legitimatize itself, and decriminalize and reshape its reputation and its culture.
Challenges in product safety, legitimacy, education and research abound, and those challenges are proving excellent opportunities for companies that have the resources to offer solutions.
In Toronto, a young start-up called Lift & Co. specializes in cannabis education and market research. The young industry leader is rapidly expanding, and it tasked Lebel & Boulianewith crafting a new headquarters to support its growing team.


About Lift & Co.:
“Lift & Co. helps Canadians explore, understand and make better-informed decisions around cannabis with product reviews, events, and data.”
“Since 2013, Lift & Co. has connected the cannabis community in Canada. Launched by our founder Tyler Sookochoff, Lift & Co. was designed to be an online meeting place to share experiences, read industry news and discover strains. We were also Canada’s first website for product reviews that helped people find the right products for their needs.

Lift & Co. grew like, well, a weed. We realized it was time to bring our online community face-to-face with the cannabis companies they were reviewing. Our events team introduced the Lift & Co. Expos and the Lift & Co. Cannabis Business Conferences. But this was just the beginning – we also presented the Canadian Cannabis Awards, the first nation-wide event to celebrate cannabis excellence. Then we rolled out Lift & Co. Rewards, the first program in Canada to reward cannabis reviewers with product discounts. Our latest venture is Lift & Co.’s Cannabis Retail Certification Program, which helps public and private retailers educate and train their staff.
Now that recreational cannabis became officially legal in Canada on October 17, 2018, Lift & Co. is blazing ahead with our mission to help Canadians make better-informed decisions about cannabis products through superior information and data. We provide both crowdsourced and unbiased expert information about the cannabis industry, because that’s what Canadians deserve.”

In advance of its move to a brand new headquarters office, Lift & Co. redefined its brand identity, choosing to focus on a “relaxed and fresh take on Southern California beach culture.”
The start-up’s restrained budget required a design team savvy enough to properly deliver on all of a growing company’s needs and wants within specific limitations. In an officeinsight interview, Mieke Stethem, the project’s lead architect from Lebel & Bouliane, spoke about providing Lift & Co. with a headquarters office that would support its leadership aspirations amidst a “budding” industry.
For its new headquarters, Lift & Co. selected a four-story building formerly owned by the Church of Scientology at King and Peter Streets in Toronto. The ground level of the building remained a retail space, and Lift & Co. took levels two, three and four. Inside the historical wood and brick structure of the exiting building, Lebel & Bouliane offered a contrast of white space complemented by brilliant pops of color.
“The building already had a lot of great character,” said Ms. Stethem. “It had a nice industrial, blank, warehouse feel, with a lot of wood structural elements. It’s a very long, narrow building with a lot of natural light streaming in, we had nice high ceilings to work with.”
Notes the project description: “The clean and quiet workspaces are punctuated with colourful social and collaboration zones, and flanked with closed-door offices and private meeting rooms. Looping banquettes are a visually-grabbing motif throughout the space, making reference to the company’s new logo: the laughing ampersand. The same banquettes organize the otherwise regular volume, offering bleachers and seats for all-company meetings, presentations and educational sessions.”

Upon entering the offices on level two, visitors and staff proceed up a main staircase to the third level, which houses meeting rooms and a large central commons. In this central gathering area, two areas of bleacher seats act as an informal presentation and event space, and a kitchen and bar are located along one of the street-facing window walls.
“The main entry into the offices is on the second level, but they were very interested in creating an experiential moment for their clients – a space that their clients could walk up into to experience their culture when they have a meeting,” said Ms. Stethem. “We located the central gathering spaces on the middle level, and then ancillary spaces above and below that, to create more movement and cross-interaction among the staff.”
Lift & Co. provided a branding color palette of coral, emerald and navy, and Lebel & Bouliane transformed those colors into “informal way-finding tools, cueing staff and visitors to the moods of each space, from social to quiet and contemplative.”
Noted in the project description: “Throughout the other two floors, quieter branded moments act as backdrops for filming and photographing social content. The resulting space is bright and dynamic, with ample room for Lift & Co’s growth and development.”
“We took their laughing ampersand shape and those bright pops of color in the branding palette and spread them throughout the space, against a white backdrop,” said Ms. Stethem. “And we added some curves in the architecture to soften it up more.”
Lebel & Bouliane designed the space move-in ready for about 70 people, but the offices can expand to accommodate up to 120.

“Certain collaboration areas with loose furniture – there’s a big farmhouse table in one space, for example – that can be adjusted to become primary work zones.”
“There are just six private offices, and the open office was a big change for them, so we wanted to provide some flexibility in primary work-zone orientation,” said Ms. Stethem. “A handful of small meeting rooms are the same size as the private offices, and can be converted if they find they need more leadership in enclosed offices.”

The design team noted that early on in the design process, Lift & Co. communicated its desire to include natural plant materials within its new offices.
“Lebel & Bouliane designed banquettes with built-in planter boxes to increase comfort and create a vibrant atmosphere, a local nursery was selected to provide robust and well-scaled planting.”
Lift & Co.’s new offices are a direct reflection of a young company on the move.
“It was great timing for them – they’re growing rapidly and outgrowing their space, but also solidifying and growing into their own culture,” said Ms. Stethem. “We were giving them a space that was branded to them – a space that felt like them, and something they could be proud of.”