Ste Marie Gives Monos' Vancouver Headquarters a Residential Feel

Canadian interiors studio Ste Marie has completed the Vancouver headquarters of luggage brand Monos, designing the workplace to emphasise simplicity and shift mood throughout the day.

The office sits in Vancouver's Mount Pleasant neighbourhood. Monos commissioned it to reflect the brand's development so far and to leave room for continued growth.

Ste Marie received an open-ended brief. That let the studio build a "flexible framework" for a company that is "still exploring what it could become", while giving its team room to collaborate, experiment and host.

"Monos is a brand grounded in design, mindfulness, human connection, and we understood this as an opportunity to create a place where those values could be put into practice," said Ste Marie. "A place where their people could come together to work, create, exchange ideas, test new things, host events and gather as an extended community."

How does the layout work?

Ste Marie, which previously designed the interiors of a Monos store in Toronto, treated the workplace like a residential project and split it into three overlapping areas.

"Like an apartment, it accommodates everyday activity as naturally as moments of hosting," the studio said. "The residential quality also supports Monos' culture of openness."

The breakdown:

• A lounge zone with low, soft modular sofas for conversation, plus enclosed banquettes under conical pendant lights for personal exchanges, small meetings or shared meals.
• A central, elongated communal table in the open plan that serves as a flexible surface for meetings, product development, testing, dining and gathering. Custom millwork here is arranged in perpendicular planes, forming vertical supports and horizontal overhead light boxes.
• A kitchen and tea room at the back, with solid-surface counters and handleless cabinets that continue the minimalist schema running through the whole space.

"These areas can expand and contract as needed: a meeting can become a meal, a work surface can become a display, and a lounge can transform into an event space," Ste Marie said.

What does the design change for the people using it?

Mostly, how the office feels hour by hour. Polished concrete floors and rift-cut timber millwork (timber cut to expose a straight grain) give the space structure, while soft furnishings, natural-fibre rugs and sheer curtains soften it.

Dimmable lighting carries the day's rhythm: early-morning focused work shifts to casual afternoon meetings, then to evening events — all within the same footprint.

"The result is a workplace that feels considered but not overly designed, with the warmth and informality of a personal space and the flexibility of a creative studio," said Ste Marie.

The project extends a working relationship between the studio and the brand, following Ste Marie's earlier Toronto retail interior for Monos.

Ste Marie was founded by Craig Stanghetta and has built a reputation for cinematic hospitality spaces across North America. Its other recent work includes a trio of atmospheric venues in Edmonton, amenity spaces inside a renovated 1960s office tower in Chicago, and a Vancouver restaurant influenced by Hong Kong's "love motels". The Monos headquarters points to where the studio is heading next: translating hospitality's shifting moods into everyday workspace design.