
One highlight of IIDEXCanada in Toronto last week was a tour of Scotiabank Digital Factory, the innovative new fintech hub created by IA Interior Architects for Bank of Nova Scotia, Canada’s third-largest bank by deposits and market cap, with assets of nearly $1-trillion, serving more than 23 million customers in 55 countries.
We interviewed one of the tour leaders, Beverly Horii, IA Toronto’s managing director and principal, at her firm’s office to chat about why Scotiabank’s Digital Factory has stimulated such interest within the A&D and business communities, and more generally, how IA’s first Canadian branch is doing.
She came to the project with banking credentials, having masterminded the redesign of all the Greater Toronto Area branches of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, another of Canada’s “Big Five” banks, while leading the in-house design team there.

OI: IA’s mission – “the first global architecture firm dedicated exclusively to the practice of interiors” – seems like a more European than American approach. Whenever I visit European trade shows, I’m struck by how many designers’ business cards bear the title “interior architect.” In North America, never the twain shall meet: you’re either an architect or interior designer.
BH: That’s right, you don’t get a lot of interiors people in architecture here. [Company founder] David Mourning gathered up a lot of great interiors people and architects who prefer to do interiors rather than core and shell, and want a place where they focus solely on interiors and not dilute the service.
OI: They don’t have to worry about the curtain wall. Is there an optimum body count you want to reach?
BH: Most of our offices cap out at about 50. Once you get bigger than that you get a bit unwieldy. I like the intimacy of being able to know everybody.
OI: There’s no arguing with the Toronto office’s growth under your leadership.
BH: We were two when we started two years ago. We’re now up to 15 and outgrowing our space. We just won an ARIDO [Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario] award and REmmy [from the CoreNet Global Canadian Chapter] award for Scotia. We’ve completed new offices for tech company Bluecat, [financial firm] Fidelity and [law firm] McMillan.
At this point in the interview, we were briefly joined by Suzanne Campbell, project director and senior associate at IA Toronto.
SC: IA established such traction in Toronto so quickly because of its global nature and outreach. There were already significant local projects from IA offices in Chicago, NY and Atlanta that gave us a presence in the market. The IA Toronto office was established to do the contract admin; that was the foot in the door. Then, based on Beverly’s and my reputation in the industry, and because of the stability of the IA brand, we started to gain access to a substantive client list. The sharing nature and culture of IA allows us to bring a much broader bench strength both in knowledge and personnel than most other firms.
OI: Is it harder these days for a Straticom, where you used to work, to land these plum jobs?
SC: Very, very much so. I was the head of workplace strategy at Straticom, but I had to do it all myself, whereas here we share a division that is workplace strategy. I can come together with my peers and pick their brains and joint venture.
OI: With another IA office?
SC: Yes, it’s a completely shared platform.
BH: If a project requires a special product-knowledge expert in Chicago or NY or wherever, we form a team based on what would be best based on the client’s requirements.

OI: That seems like an unusual business model for the industry.
SC: Very unusual. That you have this level of collaboration is due to our being an employee-owned organization. It’s about the culture.
OI: So it’s not about everyone wanting their own turf and building their own empire?
SC: That’s right, and siloed, and competing: the Chicago office with the Toronto office.
BH: Well, there is a bit of friendly competition.
SC: Yes, but in the service of the greater good. It’s a very Canadian model.
OI: Presumably, the client would rather have the local office as the main contact.
BH: As managing director, I take the IA culture and the standards they’ve created for everyone and integrate them with our local culture and way of doing things. They rely on the management of the local offices to bridge the gap between what’s happening on a corporate and local level. They give a lot of that responsibility and decision-making power to the local offices. We have weekly meetings here within our office, and I have weekly meetings with the larger IA. This keeps everyone connected so we never feel like we’re abandoned. It’s the best of both worlds.
OI: You have a fascinating pedigree. To use a systems-furniture term, your resume shows a great deal of churn.
BH: I don’t want to settle. I’d rather do my own thing.

OI: You started at Barton Myers Associates in Toronto after graduating with your B. Arch. from the University of Waterloo, then stayed on when the eponymous Myers decamped to California in 1987 and four of his former associates formed KPMB. In 1998 you were appointed Director, Advanced Concepts at Teknion. How did you get that gig?
BH: During the dot.com boom, all the major manufacturers had an advanced concepts designer. Teknion decided they wanted one too, so they advertised for a Rocket Man.
OI: That was the branding campaign by San Francisco-based designer Michael Vanderbyl featuring a businessman model with a retro sci-fi rocket strapped to his back.
BH: It was the coolest job ad I had ever seen. I thought, this is my job; it was meant to be. They wrote this crazy ad that said, “We want someone from the future who comes to the present. We want someone with interstellar navigation.” I answered in the same [tongue-in-cheek] way, saying I’m excellent at that. They had over a thousand applicants, including chemists, because the ad didn’t say they were looking specifically for a designer or architect. So, I guess I caught their attention and they liked the way I thought.
I created their Advanced Concepts program, which involved research on trends and working with designers outside as well as inside Teknion to respond to those trends. I wasn’t so concerned with “competitive”; I wanted to understand what was out there so I didn’t just regurgitate. We took our inspiration from very wide sources.
The only thing that went into production from that program was Outpost [a multifunctional line of office products]. We worked with several local architecture firms. One Advanced Concepts project, by Kohn Shnier, is in MOMA’s [Museum of Modern Art, New York] permanent design collection. Third Uncle’s project won an IIDA [International Interior Design Association] award.
These were prototypes and never went into production. The economy slowed. There are a lot of issues when you do a business case around a conceptual product and there’s nothing to compare it to. It takes a lot of risk to launch those kinds of products.

OI: Sounds like a dream job. Why did you move on?
BH: I was there six years. The market was collapsing. This was in the mid-2000s. They didn’t need Advanced Concepts; it wasn’t a necessity.
OI: And you didn’t want to move to Grand Rapids [Michigan] to assume a comparable position at Herman Miller or Knoll, say. In Canada, they only have a sales force.
BH: They’re doing great workplace research, but they don’t have a conceptual designer.
OI: Then you were Director of Interior Design at B+H Architects for four years.
BH: B+H asked me to get my ARIDO registration just because it would look good.
OI: That was diplomatic, because interior designers are always sensitive about architects encroaching on their domain. Then, after a year as VP Advanced Strategies at HOK, you went out on an amazing limb. Your LinkedIn profile shows that you were President, CMO (Chief Mookie Officer) at custom-cookie company Jinja Ninja, “Jinja” being a pun on “ginger.”
BH: I did a buttery sugar cookie, a shortbread, but mostly gingerbread, because it was structural. I did a Barcelona Pavilion [Mies van der Rohe’s iconic structure for the 1929 International Exposition in Spain] cookie.
OI: Then you were principal at design firm M Chi Squared.
BH: I worked at the Ontario Science Centre as well, managing the exhibit design team. I’ve worked with many different types of designers: architects, interior designers and industrial and graphic designers. I’ve seen what each profession focuses on, and I understand design from their point of view. It serves me well to understand the bigger picture of design. It’s interesting to see the limitations and strengths of each design profession. We have benchmarking and expertise in these and other subjects to tap into and bring to Toronto.

OI: Such as?
BH: Legal expertise, high-tech expertise, fintech expertise.
OI: “Fintech.” Now there’s a buzzword du jour.
BH: It’s a hot topic. “Fintech” means financial and technical. It means that banks are starting to consider themselves as high-tech companies rather than banks because those are the people they need to attract. They say to themselves, “We’re a high-tech company that happens to be in the business of banking” instead of “We’re a bank that utilizes high-tech.”
They’re after the same employee base. They have to compete in the same way as Google, Twitter or LinkedIn. They compete by designing the workplace in a way that appeals to that generation. I remember doing this kind of research when I was at Teknion back in the 2000 high-tech boom. There was all kinds of stuff happening to attract and retain Generation X to the workplace.
OI: That’s why Teknion recruited Carl Magnusson to do that 30-foot collaborative worktable, Marketplace. Because the Gen X’ers want to be together, not in a corner office.
BH: That’s right.
OI: What differentiates design for fintech versus other kinds of high-tech?
BH: Most fintechs are tied to a larger entity, whereas tech companies, large or small, are tech companies. Fintech is specifically dedicated to servicing the financial market, whether it’s Capital One, who we’re doing work for in the U.S., or Scotiabank.
OI: Who are some of IA Toronto’s other clients?
BH: We’ve done various LinkedIn locations. At their 60,000 square foot Toronto office, the Toronto culture as well as the LinkedIn branding, is huge. We did a culture survey in their office: “I like to relax up north,” “I love Kensington Market.” Some of the imagery from Kensington Market we used is a row of those colorful little peaked-roof houses. Then there’s the topographical map of Toronto as you come in, a big feature wall. Boardrooms are named after neighborhoods in Toronto: Rosedale Room, Distillery Room. There are settings reminiscent of the outdoors: backyard barbecues, a firepit and picnic benches. And there’s a clothesline with peoples’ pictures on them, an employee wall. It’s a way to connect people. Putting up personal pictures of your kids or dogs is a morale builder, a bonding activity. Did you see our employee wall when you came in?
OI: HOK does a lot of financial work in Toronto. Do you have an approach that differentiates IA from HOK and other big players?
BH: We think of ourselves as partners with our clients, so we’re highly collaborative. We don’t come in professing to know all the answers. Our attitude is that we like to do a deep dive into the culture and business objectives of our clients and then guide them to translate those business objectives into a workplace strategy or design.
We like to think of ourselves as highly strategic partners, not just to make a pretty office, but also to respond to today’s business needs. Business changes all the time, you can’t remain static. How do you do that in the built environment, which is usually built to be static? How do you future-proof an environment? How do you make an environment that people want to come to? How do you attract the best and the brightest? There are strategic questions that we incorporate into our designs.
OI: How is your methodology different from everyone else’s?
BH: I led HOK strategy, so I know about their process. Ours is more integrated. Our approach takes the strategy, design and change management and integrates them so that you get an end-to-end-to-end process.
OI: You have more consultants around a bigger table.
BH: It’s a bigger table and a more integrated process. More issues are identified up front so that you’ll have continuity at the end.
We also offer virtual reality to our clients, which is extremely helpful in the change management process. Because many clients, even if you show them a lot of images, find it difficult to understand what their space will be like. Virtual reality goes a long way to ensure that understanding.

OI: You give clients walk-through tours with 3D goggles?
BH: Yes, they can walk through a space in grayscale or color. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, boom, it suddenly becomes color. Groups often have to convince their executive management team what their new design will be like. Comparing the understanding they get through the series of perspective drawings you normally do to the understanding they get with virtual reality, it can be tenfold. Even [just] fly-throughs on the screen is a very different experience. Clients really enjoy it. It helps them understand what you’re doing.
OI: Virtual reality goggles are a good way to relate to the highest level of management, who don’t know how to read plans and drawings.
BH: That’s not what they do everyday. Sometimes as designers we forget that.
OI: Give us a run-through of what IIDEX visitors will see when they tour Scotia Digital Factory.
BH: There’s a figure-eight path through the whole facility because they’re keen on giving tours to outsiders. On the upper left-hand side of the floor plan is the Plant, because this was the Toronto Sun [newspaper] building, with the printing press there. It will be a green space filled with plants, a quiet zone and a bowling alley. Then there are team areas for small groups. Experts from Scotiabank can land here and work with a team on an assignment for several weeks or months.
OI: Why didn’t they accommodate their fintech folks at Scotia Plaza? [Five minutes away, the 902-foot-tall headquarters, designed by WZMH Architects, is Canada’s third-tallest building.] Because the new premises holds more appeal for Gen Y’ers?
BH: That’s right. We’ve taken out all the ceilings. A lot of places are taking out the dropped ceilings to give a loft feel, even in regular office buildings and in suburban markets. They’re taking down ceilings to attract people, and exposing all the guts of the building.
OI: What’s Armstrong going to do?
BH: Good question.
OI: IA does podcasts. Have you contributed?
BH: We like to tap into local expertise in the different offices, whether from directors or staff members interested in certain subjects. My podcast was on fung shui. We did a fung shui analysis of the Scotiabank project. We used it to choose colors.
OI: Colors? I thought it was just space and door and window openings, to let the evil spirits out.
BH: It’s based on the energy, the vibrations. I call it acupuncture of a space because feng shui removes blockages and increases the circulation of good energy and flow within the space. As designers, we are trained to understand flow from a physical sense. Feng shui uncovers energy in a non-physical sense, energies you can’t see, gravitational energies, energies from the moon that affect our waves [tides]. Feng shui uncovers all that and charts it out so you understand how to enhance or maintain those energies.
OI: It sounds New Age-ee. Do clients request it?
BH: We told ScotiaBank we were doing a feng shui analysis. They were fine with it and put it into their marketing material.
OI: Feng shui is an extra amenity that attracts the employees ScotiaBank wants?
BH: There’s a big Asian population in the high-tech industry.
David Lasker is President of David Lasker Communications in Toronto and Associate Editor of Canadian Interiors. He can be reached at david@davidlaskercommunications.com.