It’s hard to imagine two things more opposed than architecture and yoga. The goal of the former is to construct buildings that are sturdy and couldn’t move an inch if you wanted them to. The latter is about movement and flexibility as a way of improving the body’s mobility. So it’s a rather odd experience to walk in to the basement of Manasc Issac Architects in Edmonton, to see people practicing their down dog and warrior positions. Every Tuesday and Thursday a yoga instructor comes to the office for an hour long session for anyone who wants to attend.

It’s one of the cool perks employees of the Edmonton architecture company have in their office. The yoga studio isn’t the only room that seems out of place in their office. To get to the studio employees have to pass through the jam room, where charcoal grey drum kit sits on top of carpet samples, and guitars hang on the wall. Any employee is allowed to play the instruments, and every so often a few of them will get together for a collaborative jam.

Aside from the yoga studio, the office has other ways of promoting the health of its employees. They provide a $30 reimbursement on employee gym memberships. On top of that, there is indoor storage where bicycle riders can store their wheels. There is a pretty nice shower setup for employees who bike or jog to work too.

The folks at Manasc Issac pride themselves on the efficiency of their designs and their care for the environment. Plaques and awards for efficiency hang on the brightly colored wall in reception area alongside scale building designs of upcoming projects. A smart car is parked outside for employees to travel to job sites. Efficiency initiatives aren’t just for other buildings though; the office boasts some of its own efficient solutions to problems as well.

For those whose desks are near the back of the building, the bright midday sun was an annoyance, but not anymore. The industrious people at Manasc Issac came up with a nifty solution: they set up sunshades above the windows which line the back of building. It doesn’t sound like anything special until you see that the sunshades are made out of solar panels, which now supply some of the building’s power and occasionally kick excess power into the electric grid. When a worker at Manasc Isaac uses the microwave to heat up their lunch, if the sun is up those electrons came from the solar panel sunshades.

Donating blood can be a bit intimidating. A typical mobile donor clinic could be an unused office space, packed to the brim with medical staff, blood donors on chairs, veins open with little blood filled bags rocking back and forth as the hiss of pumps keep up a low but constant decibel level.

With a constant stream of story about the miracles of medical science it’s easy to forget about the importance of donating blood. It literally saves peoples lives. It’s also a fundamentally altruistic act; you’ll never meet the person who receives your blood but you can be sure they’re grateful that you donated.

So how does this relate to cool and interesting office spaces? Canadian Blood Services just recently unveiled a renovated, expanded permanent clinic in Red, Deer Alberta.

“Overall, it has a more modern, fresher design. There is lots of natural light coming into the clinic. It’s still a clinic space but we’ve done a lot to make it more welcoming and friendly. The old clinic, when you came into it, you could stand at the front door and see absolutely everything,” says Candace Korchinsky, a spokesperson for Canadian Blood Services.

It’s also been intentionally designed to move donors through the space with a maximum of comfort and privacy. It achieves this with more individual stations and seating as well as private rooms.

“It’s not going to look as clinical as it did before,” says Korchinsky. ““No one loves getting a needles but if you’re getting one you may as well have a nice environment to look at.”

Space was a big constraint in the old clinic with donors and staff crammed cheek by jowl. The renovated and upgraded clinic jumps from 2220 square feet to 3862 square feet. Staff now have their own meeting room, a larger break room and more storage space.

With an extra screening room they will be able to process more donors. The renovations cost $420,000. Construction started in August 2010 and the new space launced Jan. 17 2011.

With better visibility and improved signage they also hope to attract more walk-ins.

While all of these improvements should help the clinic get more donations it’s up to you to take the 30 to 60 minutes out of your day to donate. It’s easy and simple and it could save someone’s life. Give blood today.

Imagine going to a workplace where you’re sniffed, slobbered on or barked at. That’s what the staff and volunteers at the Edmonton Humane Society face every day.

The new facility, opened in May 2009, is constantly improving, whereas the old building on the brown, muddy edges of Highway 16 was cramped with critters, the new 46,000 square foot facility can hold about 400 to 500 at one time (depending on the types of animals and whether or not they can be housed together). While the 100 staff members and 500 active volunteers work very hard at the new location, working just as hard – at being cute and lovable – are the stray animals waiting for new “forever homes.”

Were it not for executive director Stephanie McDonald, the new facility would still only be a pipe-dream. When McDonald and a new board of directors came along, they resurrected the idea of a new building and began researching and visiting humane societies in the United States and using the best features at the Edmonton facility. Now humane society officials across Canada visit Edmonton for ideas.

New features in place include neighboring with the city pound. While the humane society is distinct from the pound (and does not receive any ongoing government funding), it does take in animals from the pound. The two organizations thought it would make sense to eliminate travel time for the animals if the two buildings were next door to each other.

Another important element for the society is its on-site hospital. The previous facility required the veterinarians use an improvised off-site location to which staff and animals had to pack up for a trip across a busy highway. Now, at the new facility, staff and animals need only travel a few feet down the hallway.

Even the adoption area is brighter, thanks to natural lighting and an open and clean floor plan to welcome visitors. Dogs are no longer cramped up in a wall of kennels to bark across the hallway at each other; each has its own room with toys and a bed to lay in and volunteers arrive several times daily to take them for a walk outside on the trail.

For its cats and kittens, the society offers specially constructed kennels that separate food dishes from litter boxes (because cats tend to stress when one is in close proximity to the other). Adults cats expected to have a longer stay co-habitate with other felines in glassed “cat chalets,” furnished with plush beds, various toys, carpeted condos for climbing and scratching and even an entrance to the caged and heated outdoor patio to enjoy laying in the sun – definitely an improvement over most human living spaces.

Aside from fundraising, the programs and services offered at the society are the primary revenue generators. Katrina & Friends Dog Day Care, the membership-only Central Bark off-leash club, training sessions, child and youth summer camps not only support the cost of maintaining the Edmonton Humane Society, but also provide the public with learning opportunities for caring for their pets. Future plans include the addition of a kennel, but that remains a few years away.

“We’d like it to be a destination place,” says Shawna Randolph, media relations and communications for the society. “We want the public, including our volunteers to really want to be here and visit, and either take in the programs and services or help socialize with the animals as volunteers do.”

For more information, or to pay a visit to the Edmonton Humane Society, go to http://www.edmontonhumanesociety.com

Subtle signs of the once bustling days of commerce remain at the corner of 99th Street and Jasper Avenue in downtown Edmonton, even though the longtime bank building is now occupied by new businesses, including a restaurant.

From the metal spandrels marked with the logo of the Imperial Bank of Canada on the building’s exterior, to two bank vaults that have been repurposed as private dining rooms, Ruth’s Chris Steak House has embraced the storied history of the building it now calls home.

“We get a lot of ‘wows,’” says Brian Welsh of customers’ reactions to dining in the former bank vaults located in the restaurant’s basement level. When Welsh, general manager of the Edmonton franchise of Ruth’s Chris Steak House, first saw the vaults before the restaurant opened in October 2006, his feelings of claustrophobia outshone any envisioned potential for the space. By tearing out the ceilings to add height to the rooms – not an easy task considering the 24 inches of concrete with rebar reinforcement every three inches – the vaults were repurposed for use as two separate private dining spaces.

Original details from the class 10 vaults remain (a designation due to the fact that they were safe enough for gold bullion), including a six-tonne bolted door, complete with self-closing mechanism, time locks and an escape hatch.

While the vaults provide a unique dining experience for customers, the overall feel of Ruth’s 10,750-square-foot space is one of authenticity. “This was the epitome of what a steakhouse meant,” says Welsh, seated in the main floor’s lounge and gesturing around a space characterized by alabaster shades and wood and leather furniture in deep, rich colours. Welsh describes the restaurant, designed by Rob Dingman, as one with a very luxurious feel. The spot above a massive fireplace hosts a large black and white portrait of restaurant founder Ruth Fertel, while high ceilings and an expansive staircase are part of the upscale decor designed to put a person in a relaxed state.

That sense of grandeur is mirrored in the building, which housed the former Imperial Bank of Canada. Construction on the building as it stands today began in 1951, but the bank’s presence on the location goes back to 1893, when it was the first bank to open a branch in Edmonton. The building, listed on the Register of Historic Resources in Edmonton, illustrates a modern classicism architectural style, with details like black granite trim finished with Indiana limestone creating a powerful presence on Jasper Avenue. The location, which now houses the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce as well as Ruth’s, served as a Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) branch until 2000.

Welsh and the rest of the management team maintain a fine balancing act inside the building, operating a place that is a refuge from the office for dinners and also an office for restaurant employees. Employees have to understand there is a job that has to be done and done properly every time, says Welsh, noting there’s no second chances in the restaurant industry.

The dining areas, including the main dining room with capacity for 70 people, 40-person lounge and five private dining spaces spread out over two levels, are where service staff work. A kitchen and communal office with four workstations round out the space. “It’s a very busy place,” says Welsh of the office, used mainly by managers. “It can be annoying at times because you have to listen to other people’s conversations. But it also helps you stay in tune with what’s going on.”

Despite his stiff suit and the grandeur of his surroundings, Welsh maintain an easy, relaxed confidence as he tours the restaurant. “This is a very comfortable place for me,” he says. “I love every wall, I love every seat, I love everything about it. I saw it being built from the ground up. It’s not just a workplace for me, it’s my second home.”

“In fact,” he adds as an afterthought, “I probably spend more time here than I do at home.”

Office space at the Alberta Conservation Association can be a sight reminiscent of mankind’s earlier roles as hunter/gatherers.

Wildlife biologist Shevenell Webb’s office is filled with natural artifacts she found during her field work in Alberta’s wild lands. There’s a bighorn sheep skull next to her computer monitor and full grouse tail feathers decorating her whiteboard.

“It’s a conversation piece,” she says, noting that other biologists like her find items on trails. Surrounding Webb’s desk, pine marten, badger and eastern coyote pelts hang from the walls which she says inspires curiosity in the people who visit her indoor workstation.

The ACA is a not-for-profit with eight offices across the province from St. Paul to Lethbridge to Cochrane. Webb’s indoor office is in Sherwood Park. The associaiton’s long-term research projects are funded in large part by levies put on hunting and fishing licenses which allow the ACA to publish studies on the health of wildlife populations.

For every wildlife biologist, Webb says, there’s a necessary division of time between the data entry of the chair and desk and the research work in the province’s mountains, forests and rivers. She laughs as she says that she’d rather be outside, “We obviously get into this work we like being outdoors.”

You’ll find her other office – her outdoor office – shelved neatly in the console of a truck, a helicopter or a small six-wing Cessna airplane. Webb might also work out of a tent trailer for longer stints in the field. These highly mobile outdoor offices for wildlife biologists require clipboards, filing folders, compasses and binoculars. Everything, she says, needs to be wrapped with brightly coloured flagging tape: “We’ve all lost pretty much everything in the field that you can lose.”

With a laugh, she adds bear spray to the list. She has seen every type of animal in her work, including the very shy ones like wolverines and the Canada lynx. During a bird survey a few years ago, she came within 30 feet of a black bear which, she says, was a bit too comfortable spending time near her group.

ACA biologists like Webb mix their time between the indoor and outdoor office through every season. Webb conducts bird surveys in the early morning hours of the spring and works on interpretive trails and vegetation surveys through the summer. During winter, her office goes aerial as she climbs aboard helicopters and small planes to count ungulate populations – definitely one of the cooler parts of her job.

Data entry and analysis, however, is done behind a computer screen at a conventional desk. It’s the other half of her job, which means coming down from the mountain top and doing the hard science on Alberta’s wildlife populations.

Offices like Webb’s show what happens when an outdoorsy worker is cooped-up inside. The shelves are filled with books on wildlife and photos taken in breath-taking mountain ranges. Much of the typical office grey is replaced with green as the artifacts and their stories get carried in from outside.

Webb, who will be going on maternity leave in September, will return to ACA to work both indoors and outdoors. “That’s ultimately my connection and why we have passion for what we do,” she says of her own work and that of other ACA biologists.

“If you lost your connection with the field, then you might lose that connection with how things work in the environment, so it’s important to get outside.”

“It’s all about the people, so why not give them the best views? The principals are entitled to offices but when we moved into the space, they decided to sit out in the studio close to the windows and be a part of the team,” says Dean Matsumoto, a principal with Kasian who directed the interior design of the office.

Their democratic approach to office space helps promote equality and team building while making it easy for people to move around after projects are completed.

Built in a soft loft style with around 20,000 square feet, the architecture, interior design and planning firms’ Toronto office is a light-filled collaborative space. The walls are free from fancy prints and motivational sayings. Instead every wall in the office is magnetic, whiteboard or tackable and covered in the work of the moment.

“We’re always pinning up work to look at it, study it. The walls serve a purpose.”

A favourite feature of Matsumoto’s is the “Touchdown” area. It links the boardroom to the reception area with a long glass table. A multi-use area, one day it could be home to a standup project presentation, another it might double as “the best bar in Toronto.”

The first thing you see when entering the office is the view of downtown Toronto.

It’s located west of downtown, near the trendy and newly converted to mixed use Liberty Village. Surrounded by artists and fellow creatives, Matsumoto is very happy with the location.

“There is lots of live-work space around us. It’s a very vibrant neighbourhood. It’s helped us to attract people.”

The open kitchen is incorporated into what Matsumoto calls the “marketplace.” You’ll find the copy machine, fax, printers and office supplies as well as the research library all in the same place. If you have to go up and get some “stuff,” this is where you’ll be going.

Matsumoto, who designed the space, loves how it came together.

“The fact that it’s so bright is energizing right off the bat. One thing about our office is that there is nowhere to hide because it’s so open. The people that you’re working with are immediately accessible.”

Cameron Smith does not bring home the bacon. In fact, he makes it himself. For up to 100 hours a week, six month per year, Smith and Dana Ewart, his partner in both business and life (they sign emails from their work account “Cam and Dana”), make pretty much everything themselves – from peach galettes with fruit that was just plucked from the tree to elaborate al fresco dinners at wineries sprinkled through the Okanagan.

Originally from Ontario, the pair were kitchen competitors at top restaurants such as Toque! in Montreal and Scaramouche in Toronto before ditching their high-stress jobs to take a semi-sabbatical. After a stretch as tree planters, the 30-something pair set up Joy Road Catering in the basement of their home near Penticton.

Cameron Smith and Dana Ewart of Joy Road Catering

The work is still high-stress, and the challenges these entrepreneurs face is a little unusual. “It’s a lot harder dealing with hippie farmers,” Ewart says. As Smith puts it, “In a restaurant there are multiple deadlines and they can seem life or death at the time, but if a farmer has something more important to do they will bring that lamb tomorrow. Or if the raspberry field is wet, they won’t go out and pick the berries even though we’ll be pulling our hair out because we have a dinner that night with a dessert that needs raspberries.”

The perks of self-employment, however, outweigh the frustrations. “The restaurant industry is very fickle. You get a good review one day and the phone rings off hook. But if you don’t get reviewed for two weeks, your restaurant is dead,” Smith explains. “There was a real opportunity for us here. The ingredients were here, the farms are here, the wine is here and the clientele have educated palates and are excited about what we do. I think we’d still be successful in the city, but people here they get it. They see the vines, see where the wine came from, we see the person who grew the carrots.” Lower start-up costs and overhead make catering a smart business move for a chef. The ability to, as Smith puts it, change a menu on a dime, rather than sticking to a stale two-month old menu, for instance, is another benefit.

Ewart and Smith only operate when they can get fresh local food, which packs a year’s worth of revenue and work into half the time of a traditional catering company. They start up in May when the first wild watercress and peas become available and shut down when frost hits in November.

A typical day goes something like this: Wake up at 7 a.m., answer emails, make phone calls and write up shopping and prep lists. Create a schedule for that night’s event, assign staff tasks for the day, and write lists of what equipment and special ingredients they’ll need. At 10 a.m., the four full-time staff arrives (they also have a bunch of part-timers) and everyone preps food until 1 p.m. The staff takes turns cooking for the daily sit-down lunch – no brown bag lunches here – which is often the only chance they have in a 16-hour day for a proper meal. Later in the afternoon, they pack up the vans, triple-check their checklist and head off to the venue, where Smith and Ewart have 10 minutes to make themselves at home in a foreign space. The day ends sometime around 11 p.m. when they drive home, unload coolers, wash dishes and go to bed. Then they repeat that almost every day for the rest of the season.

“It’s pretty nuts. In summer, we’ll stay up all night Friday baking, go to the farmers’ market on Saturday, have our crew prep all the produce we bring home that afternoon and then it’s show time: two different weddings on Saturday and dinners at wineries on Sunday,” Ewart says. All told, they feed about 500 people on a given weekend, then spend Monday – their busiest day – ordering food and clearing through paperwork. “We crash in November.”

Like their schedules, the Joy Road Catering “office” – actually a basement kitchen retrofitted to accommodate Smith, Ewart, four full-time staff and a bunch of part-timers – is unusual. We counted nine pairs of prongs, for starters. Below, Ewart and Smith describe their space.

Ewart (far right) and Cameron Smith (in chef's white) preside over the Joy Road HQ

Anatomy of  a Kitchen

+ The pair went to an auction sale and, as Ewart puts it, “set ourselves up on quite a dime.” The chopping blocks ($75 each) came from an old butcher shop. “They have a history. They’re made with gorgeous piece of wood and have railway ties going through them,” Ewart says.
+ Big French doors lead to the garden and chicken coop. “We have a rocket launcher out back that we bought from our dear friend Angus An at Maenam restaurant in Vancouver. We use it to sear meats and make huge stocks and batches of steamy jam,” says Ewart. Every piece comes with a story. “There’s a crew who moved west and opened our own businesses at the same time. It was neat going through all those growing pains of opening our own business.”
+ Posters from numerous events Joy Road has worked at decorate the walls. Other art includes an oversized photo of an unlikely source of culinary inspiration: Albert Einstein. “It’s says something like great spirits have always encountered violent opposition,” Smith says. “It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek, but it symbolizes how you need to go your own way, do you own thing, you cannot care what the establishment will say.”
+ The best part of the Joy Road headquarters is the view of the Okanagan – not to mention the outdoor beer tap. “That’s also where we keep our fridge,” says Smith.
+ “We prep in this kitchen, but our office is wherever we’ve been hired to go,” Smith explains. “The challenge is to haul around an entire kitchen of equipment and the food that goes with it.” U

As the green bean in your office, you of course know (from experience) that small, meaningful changes work better than big, freak-out-your-colleagues ideas. So instead of sticking a worm composter in the lunchroom, take control of the coffee pot by insisting on an ethical grind. (No cubicle-dweller is gonna gripe about a tasty, premium brew.) But with all the claims out there, which coffee do you choose? Unlimited asked Calgarian Adam Tindale, who contributes to the online mag Coffee Crew, for help wading through the BS (bean stuff, that is).

Genus Genius

There are two main varieties of coffee plant, Arabica and Robusta. Robusta, as the name implies, is easily grown in diverse conditions. But it’s considered a cheaper alternative and produces low-end coffee. Go for the more finicky but higher quality Arabica.

Learn the Labels

“Organic” is actually a moot point. Many coffee farmers use organic practices but can’t afford the expensive certification process. “Fair Trade” pays farmers a decent price but only after the trade organization and the cooperative have taken their share. “Direct Trade” with individuals means farmers get even more – and usually implies a top-notch bean.

Country of Origin

Look for regions that could use your dollars. Guatemala, for example, is a small country that produces great coffee but has been decimated by Vietnam getting into the industry and low-balling the price.

Roast The Middleman

Get your coffee from a shop where raw beans are roasted in-house. It makes for a fresher pot and eliminates one link in the bean-to-cup chain.

Certify Yourself

More important than certifications (there are tons: organic, fair trade, rainforest alliance, certified responsible, bird friendly and shade grown) is to ask about the coffee’s origin, its socio-economic impact on the area, and how it got to the roaster. A good coffee shop will have the answers. U