Canadian Internet Registration Authority

Ottawa, Ontario

CIRA, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, operates the .ca domain. Its name is a piece of punctuation, and when 4té Inc. designed the two-floor office at 319 McRae Avenue, they put that punctuation on the wall: the letters .ca, cut through the café millwork and lit from behind.

Holding a mixed colour

Every backlit element on the two floors is Nova Flex RGBW LED tape rather than a fixed-colour source. There is no CIRA-red LED — the colour is mixed, channel by channel, and a mixed colour drifts: between runs, between power supplies, around a curve, through a cutout where the distance from the source to the face of the millwork changes every few inches.

So neither surface was wired as one thing. The red looks continuous. It is not. Reception is four separate runs of tape, each on its own controller, so the colour can be trimmed run by run until the eye cannot find the joins. It follows the curve of the walnut header, turns the corner and reappears under the desk: one colour, three planes.

The .ca wall is a different problem. It is not holding a colour. It is choosing one. Because the tape is RGBW, the letters can be any colour CIRA wants, driven from wall controls at reception and at the wall itself. The price of that freedom is that every section has to move in step, or one letter reads pink while the letter beside it reads crimson.

The quiet layer

While the red draws the eye, the rest of the lighting is deliberately restrained. Thirty-three 3G Lighting recessed downlights carry the working light across the open floor, with six suspended units where the ceiling lifts, and five Arancia surface cylinders sitting directly on the walnut ceiling raft. None of it competes with the colour. That is the point.

The café and the tables

Eleven A-N-D Orb pendants, an opal globe held inside a slim black loop, run the length of the café window wall, with three A-N-D Button pendants over the tables. Above the meeting-room and boardroom tables, Aaline luminaires light and absorb at once: in a room of glass, concrete and hard millwork, the acoustic fixture is doing two jobs, and the second one is why people can hear each other.

Most offices hang their brand on a wall. At CIRA the brand is the light.

Design by 4té Inc.

Photography by Kevin Belanger.

Illuminated wall art with large letter 'a' in a modern kitchen setting.

A-N-D Orb pendants running along the cafe window wall at CIRA, Ottawa

Decorative zebra head wall art on red tiled wall.

Cafe lounge beneath the walnut ceiling raft at CIRA, Ottawa

Conference room with red and white wall, table, chairs, and TV.

Nova Flex RGBW cove lighting in red, wrapping the curved walnut millwork header and the underside of the reception desk at CIRA, Ottawa

Aaline pendant over the meeting room table at CIRA, Ottawa

Training room with an operable partition and window wall at CIRA, Ottawa

A-N-D Button pendants and suspended acoustic fins over the cafe tables at CIRA, Ottawa

Pendant light fixture with white shade and warm light.

Boardroom with a red-grid acoustic panel behind the display at CIRA, Ottawa

The backlit .ca feature wall seen from the cafe collaboration tables at CIRA, Ottawa

Conference room with wooden ceiling and large windows.

Kitchen island beneath the wood-slat ceiling at CIRA, Ottawa

Reception lounge with red banquette seating beyond the desk at CIRA, Ottawa