It’s been business as usual the last few months at Toronto’s TBWA Chiat/Day, although lately, the sounds of construction have been as much part of the agency as account directors with portable phones.

By the end of this month, construction will have finished and the agency’s transformation to a virtual office will be complete.

TBWA Chiat/Day Toronto is the third office in the agency network to undergo this redesign.

The first virtual office was constructed in Los Angeles in January 1994. Six months later, New York followed with an even more radical renovation.

tbwa c/d has always been one of the most technology-driven agencies and while the new office will have some desktop computers, the most mobile staffers will have laptops so they can choose their work space.

Ironically, says Steve Hancock, agency president, the least flexible people are those in the creative department because they function better in a familiar place. The media department is also built around stationary computers and phones.

The agency has been occupying the sixth and seventh floors of the same building on Spadina Road, across from Lake Ontario, since 1988.

With the redesign, it will appear that the agency dominates the building as it moves its reception area down to the ground floor.

Murals will be painted on the windows of the glass storefront to provide privacy and to give passersby a sense of the company within.

Five project rooms have been dedicated to the agency’s accounts, including one to Shoppers Drug Mart, one to Toronto-Dominion Bank and Microsoft, which share account people, and a third to Nissan.

‘The Pond’ dominates the space outside the elevator on the sixth floor. It is a long, free-form desk with a divider down the middle which will accommodate a dozen people, their phones and computers.

Hancock says it easier for tbwa c/d to operate with the virtual office concept because it does not have the same hierarchy as other agencies; the agency has never had secretaries or an executive office.

Hancock’s space is a small shared cubical exactly like all the others built around the perimeter of the seventh floor. The only concession to status is that his space is one with a panoramic view of Lake Ontario.