What: Axiom Toronto’s Office Warming Party
Where: Axiom, 225 Richmond St. W.
When: Wednesday, November 9, 2016
The mantra of legal innovation over the past decade might as well be this: don’t waste money.
Corporate clients are, quite simply, fed up with the weight of their legal bills. And one sure-fire way for lawyers to charge lower rates is to ditch the gilded downtown offices for a brick-and-beam alternative — and pass the savings onto their clients.
This is precisely what Axiom, the American legal disrupter that embeds corporate lawyers into in-house departments on a project-to-project basis, did when it set up shop in Toronto earlier this year.
Axiom’s Toronto team decided to rent office at the corner of Richmond and Duncan Street, a few blocks west of the financial district. But before moving in, the space needed plenty of work: the previous tenant, after all, was a garment factory.
“It wasn’t too pretty,” recalls Bruce Stratton, the interior designer that Axiom hired to remake the office alongside his business partner Stephanie Kamburis. “When we found it, the space was right down to the bare bones. There weren’t even light fixtures.”
The pair got to work on making the space look terrific without, of course, wasting money.
“We did spend money where we needed to,” says Stratton. For instance, they dug deep for high-end furniture and for the bright-orange acrylic panels they affixed to the ceiling. “But we pulled back in other places. The walls are basic drywall. And the sliding glass walls that divide up the office were really cost effective.”
Axiom was delighted with the result and, last week, threw an office warming party to celebrate.
“Axiom is really shaking things up in the legal market,” says Kamburis. “And we wanted our design philosophy to reflect that.”
Photography by 5ive15ifteen Studio