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Inside Aviva’s new “digital garage,” with a Steve Jobs portrait made out of floppy disks

By Jean Grant
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Inside Aviva's new "digital garage,” with a Steve Jobs portrait made out of floppy disks

What: Insurance company Aviva’s digital department Where: Almost half of the 49th floor of First Canadian Place How big: 14,300 square feet for approximately 135 employees

Aviva’s new digital garage looks more like a burgeoning tech startup than the home of a century-old risk assessment firm. After the company found success with similar spaces in London and Singapore, Aviva Canada enlisted interior design firm Figure3 to start creating a separate office for its digital department, and transferred over the entire team in mid summer. Even though it’s high up in First Canadian Place, the vibe is low-key and industrial—even the boss wears jeans to work. The adaptable, open-concept space is great for fostering innovation and running fun techy events like internal hackathons to test out new ideas. The only issue? It’s tough to prevent the non-digital staff, who work in one of the company’s traditional offices downstairs, from becoming envious of their upstairs neighbours.

The Figure3 team worked hard to make the space loft-like. They removed the ceiling tiles to expose the pipes and stripped away the carpet to uncover concrete flooring:

Inside Aviva's new "digital garage,” with a Steve Jobs portrait made out of floppy disks

In keeping with the floor’s garage concept, the space’s walls are adorned with tool-themed wallpaper. Whiteboards and chairs all have wheels, and there are no desk phones—the most common communication method is tapping someone on the shoulder:

Inside Aviva's new "digital garage,” with a Steve Jobs portrait made out of floppy disks

There are some meeting areas and workspaces made entirely out of brightly painted shipping containers. Others are named after superhero hideouts, like the Xavier Institute or the Batcave:

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Inside Aviva's new "digital garage,” with a Steve Jobs portrait made out of floppy disks

At the entrance, staff and visitors are greeted by a trio of custom-commissioned art pieces. The portraits of tech innovators Ada Lovelace, Steve Jobs and Susan Kare are made of painted floppy disks:

Inside Aviva's new "digital garage,” with a Steve Jobs portrait made out of floppy disks

The company has partnered with Ryerson’s DMZ business incubator, and recently hosted a “pitch day” where 10 local startups were invited to give 15-minute pitches to Aviva’s corporate venture fund (the team has $180 million it is looking to invest globally over five years):

Inside Aviva's new "digital garage,” with a Steve Jobs portrait made out of floppy disks

Cactus dividers from Belgian brand BuzziSpace serve as both cute decor and effective sound blockers. The colour scheme is a slightly punchier take on the firm’s official colours of blue and yellow:

Inside Aviva's new "digital garage,” with a Steve Jobs portrait made out of floppy disks

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Correction
December 6, 2016

A previous version of this post incorrectly identified Nick Gentry as the artist who painted the three portraits in Aviva’s office.

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