A trail of rainbow-coloured cables, which match brightly hued walls and seating, threads through the Toronto offices of tech company Slack by Dubbeldam Architecture + Design.
After starting up in San Francisco, Slack ? which provides cloud-based tools for collaborative work ? has grown rapidly and opened offices in Vancouver, New York, Melbourne, London, and Dublin.

"Each office occupies a former industrial building with interiors that honour the property's legacy, renew its productivity, and reflect Slack's values of empathy, solidarity, and craftsmanship," said a project statement.

The same is true for the new Toronto outpost, which occupies 23,000 square feet (2,140 square metres) over three storeys of a former knitting and textile factory in the city's Downtown area.
Taking the building's previous use as a starting point for the design, Dubbeldam came up with the theme of "threads of communication" to guide the project.

This resulted in several linear installations through the space, including light fixtures that zigzag across the ceilings and a collection of networking cables that follow a route around the work areas.
These cords, which match Slack's brand colours, are used to create patterns on walls in some areas and run along the ceiling as a group in others.

"These enliven the space in an homage to the lines of yarn that were used in the mechanised knitting process, while also referencing the communication service of the messaging appl...