ACDF Architecture Transforms Railway Station into Lightspeed’s Montreal Headquarters
Back in 2015, ACDF Architecture began transforming parts of a long-abandoned 19th-century railway station into new Montreal headquarters for Lightspeed, a rapidly growing, point-of-sale software developer. Now, in phase three of the ongoing project, the ACDF team has turned an additional 10,000 square feet of attic storage on the top fifth and sixth floors into characterful, modern work space. Predicated on a moody, chiaroscuro scheme, the lower level is dominated by a training center with a dark ceiling, gray carpeting, exposed brick walls, and soft lighting. It’s flanked by super-white barrel-vault corridors with gleaming epoxy flooring and drywall arches referencing the original station architecture. Lined with glass-fronted meeting rooms, the corridors lead to open zones with workstations beneath attic beams. Meanwhile, the sixth-floor rotunda houses the boardroom, its centerpiece a 30-foot-long, quartzite-topped table sitting below a dropped ceiling of fabric-wrapped panels. “We wanted to enhance the historical value of the building with a bold and edgy intervention,” ACDF principal and senior architect Joan Renaud notes. Mission accomplished.
