Kinaxis Headquarters

Kanata, Ontario

Kinaxis’ headquarters at 8700 Campeau Drive is a five-storey, 160,000-square-foot building in the Kanata West Business Park, designed by CSV Architects around a single organizing idea: employee health and wellness. Flux Lighting designed the lighting and the controls for both the base building and the fit-up — the fixture selection, the layout, and the photometry, calculated to the budget the project had to meet.

That idea is not decorative, and the building has the certification to prove it. Kinaxis’ headquarters is WELL Building Certified — and it is the largest project in Canada to have received one. WELL is, to a significant degree, a lighting standard. It asks hard questions about glare, about daylight, and about whether electric light supports or fights the body’s circadian rhythm across a working day. Meeting it means treating light as something that acts on people, not merely something that makes a room visible.

So the building was not lit by repeating one luminaire across five floors. Flux ran photometric calculations for 202 separate zones — 36 phone rooms, 33 offices, 27 meeting rooms, and the rest — each calculated to what actually happens inside it.

The stair

WELL rewards buildings that make people want to climb rather than ride, and the usual response to that is a sign beside the lift. Kinaxis’ response was to make the stair the best room in the building. Its raw board-formed concrete core is hung with a 70-foot cascade of Vibia Palma globes — blown opal glass, falling on long cables through the full height of the building — and the Palma is a luminaire that carries a planter. So the light and the greenery descend together, on the same wires, past the concrete.

And the same globes hang in the ground-floor lobby, over banked planting and moss, directly beside the elevators. So at the moment you choose — lift or stair — you are standing under the fixture, and the stair is where it goes. Nobody takes the lift to avoid that. It is an active-design strategy solved as a piece of sculpture.

The Hive

Kinaxis’ cafeteria is not a lunchroom — it is an expansive space with a broadcast-equipped stage, where the company runs a monthly live-music series and where Blue Rodeo played the building’s opening. It is also a hard room to light: enormous, glazed on two sides, and required to feel civilised at noon and still worth lingering in at four. Above it hang eighty-two A-N-D Button pendants — broad, soft discs in two sizes, staggered at different heights against the exposed structure, so that a room the size of a dining hall reads as a sky rather than a grid. Repeating one fixture on a spacing would have made a cafeteria. Eighty-two discs at varying heights make a room people choose to eat in.

The lobby

The lobby announces the same intent more quietly. Its ceiling is a folded timber canopy, faceted like origami, and rather than hang fittings beneath it, the 3G Lighting downlights are set into the facets — so the ceiling reads as one sculpted plane rather than a surface with things screwed to it. Below, a curtain of Vibia Match pendants drops over the angular reception desk, its repeated cable angles echoing the geometry overhead. The canopy carries through to the town hall and drops over tiered seating.

The fixtures

Elsewhere the fixtures are allowed to be the object. Large black rings — Delta Light Superloop — float over the white oval tables of the café counter and the boardroom, staggered so they read as a composition rather than a row. Delta Light Metronome cones in Flemish gold warm the coffee bar. A Vibia Wireflow, a geometric cage of black steel with its lamps suspended inside it, marks a small leather-and-glass conversation room. And in a curved corner, the white version of Vibia Match falls in a tangle of slender cables against a preserved moss wall.

The quiet details do as much work. Recessed Delta Light Femtoline slots run inside the timber slat rafts over the glazed meeting-room spine — light in the ceiling, not on it. A concealed Ecosense cove washes the underside of a curved bench so the seat appears to hover, and the same concealed strip runs the stair’s concrete walls beneath the globes. And in the fitness centre and the yoga studio — because a wellness brief is not only about desks — Luminart Kalispera globes hang in clusters against blacked-out services.

The working layer

Beneath the signature pieces sits the layer that lets them read as special. Recessed Cree and Liteline downlights carry the general and circulation light; Modular Trapz spots pick out accents; Atlantic fixtures handle the base-building floors; and dedicated emergency and exit lighting covers the life-safety requirements to code. It is deliberately quiet — the globes and the Hive get to be the loud part.

The controls

Underneath all of it is a Lutron Quantum total light management system — and Flux designed it. Our team produced the zoning, the submittals and the shop drawings, and commissioned the system alongside the electrical contractor. Daylight sensors, occupancy sensors and motorized shades work together so the light in any space responds to the daylight already in it rather than fighting it. The fixtures run on Lutron Hi-lume 1% drivers, so they dim smoothly to near-darkness rather than dropping out.

People control it through custom-engraved Lutron keypads, engraved to a consistent scheme across the building so a keypad reads the same on any floor. Kinaxis themselves name it: asked what makes the building work, they list the workstations — “as well as the automatic sensor blinds and LED lighting.” On a WELL project that is not a convenience feature. It is the mechanism by which the building keeps its promise.

Architecture by CSV Architects.

Photography by Photolux Studio.

Small conversation room at Kinaxis headquarters lit by a Vibia Wireflow geometric cage pendant in black steel

The Hive dining hall at Kinaxis headquarters lit by eighty-two A-N-D Button pendants at staggered heights above the tables

Glazed meeting room spine at Kinaxis with recessed Delta Light Femtoline linear fixtures inside timber slat ceiling rafts

The lit central stair at Kinaxis headquarters seen through glazing — Vibia Palma globes descending a board-formed concrete core

Close view of Vibia Palma opal glass globes with integrated planters suspended in the Kinaxis stairwell

Vibia Match pendant cluster above the reception desk at Kinaxis headquarters, Kanata, against a faceted timber feature wall

Reception at Kinaxis headquarters, Kanata — faceted timber origami ceiling with recessed downlights and Vibia Match pendants over the angular white desk

Town hall at Kinaxis headquarters — tiered seating beneath a faceted timber origami ceiling with 3G Lighting downlights set into the facets

White Vibia Match pendants cascading from a perforated timber ceiling over the moss wall lounge at Kinaxis, Kanata

Meeting room at Kinaxis headquarters with large hexagonal felt acoustic pendants in black and amber above soft seating

Collaboration lounge at Kinaxis headquarters — illuminated ceiling panels interleaved with grey acoustic baffles above sculptural seating

Fitness centre at Kinaxis headquarters with suspended linear lighting above the weight floor and blacked-out services

Café nook at Kinaxis headquarters with white disc pendants above banked planting and a timber banquette

Café counter at Kinaxis headquarters lit by three suspended Delta Light Superloop rings above a white oval counter

Coffee bar at Kinaxis headquarters with Delta Light Metronome cone pendants in Flemish gold beneath exposed concrete and black acoustic baffles

Vibia Palma globes and hanging planters descending the board-formed concrete stair at Kinaxis headquarters, Kanata

Yoga and spin studio at Kinaxis headquarters with clustered Luminart Kalispera opal globes against a blacked-out ceiling

High-backed green chairs beneath a Delta Light Superloop ring pendant and moss wall at Kinaxis headquarters, Kanata

Boardroom at Kinaxis headquarters, Kanata, with Delta Light Superloop ring pendants suspended over a white oval table

Quiet focus nook at Kinaxis with a single Delta Light Superloop ring above high-backed chairs set against a preserved moss wall

Ground floor lobby at Kinaxis headquarters — Vibia Palma globes above moss walls and planting beside the elevator bank

Curved lounge at Kinaxis headquarters with a white Vibia Match pendant cascade falling over a preserved moss wall