Google expands Montreal office, pimped out with a games room, workout room, music room and daily meals

Google has 3 office locations in Canada: Kitchener, Montréal and Toronto. The 34,000-square-foot Kitchener office was opened last May and features a slide – that alone is cool.

Today, Google announced an expansion of their Montreal location, which originally opened in 2004, and now fully occupies the space at 1253 McGill College. Similar features are embedded into the Montreal office: a full kitchen with prepared meals, a rock climbing wall, a sun & garden room, a games room, and a music recording studio. There’s currently 50 people in the office and according to an email we received it says they’ll be working “with agencies and advertisers to help them discover the power of the Internet and Internet advertising. Also, Montreal engineers are making significant contributions to make the web faster, better and more secure”. No specific details about any mobile initiatives, but they possibly could be working on Google’s “Bouncer” that has a goal to take on “potentially malicious software” in Google Play.

For your reading pleasure, here’s a breakdown of what the office experience is like:

In the Reception:

1. Chairs in the waiting area were made from skateboards, recuperated by the Quebec artist, Janie Belcourt
2. The table of the waiting area was made from a steel plate recuperated from the former reception desk of GOOGLE MONTREAL office by the same artist
3. The felt  wall is made of recuperated wool furniture padding and wool (renewable material) and was made by the Canadian artist Kathryn Walter
4. The wood of the reception desk is recuperated from a dismantled grain silo from the COOP of the Lac Megantic.  The wood pieces were joists which supported the main floor for more than 100 years.

In the coffee room:

1. The big wooden tables were made from former paths of bowling alleys by the Montreal Artists of l’Atelier 3/4 fort.
2. The micro kitchens and the service area wooden shelves are also old joists form the former COOP of Lac Megantic
3. The rubber floor in the coffee area is made of recycled rubber from Italy and Portugal
4. Near the games room, you will have recognized both autographed seats that we got back from the Montreal’s old Forum.

In the offices area:

1. The wooden floor of the Library is made of reclaimed wood from old barn boards from southwestern Ontario
2. All the office and meeting room glass fronts are supply by a Quebec company, Muraflex, who locally fabricated all the components of those partitions.
3. Materials and finishes used in this project are part of the Google’s “Heathy Materials” list and meet the Pharos program criterias
4. Furthermore, we are aiming at LEED Gold certification for the project

Chris O’Neill, Google Canada’s Managing Director, stated “The games room, workout room, music room…make this one of the best places to work in the country.”