Photo above: The 192 Group recently installed a discreet L-Acoustics Soka-based loudspeaker solution for iQ Offices’ flagship 302 Bay Street location in Toronto
The grand banking hall at 302 Bay Street was built to impress in 1917, and it still does today: a bank in the temple style of the period, with a richly decorated plaster ceiling, Tavernelle marble wall cladding, original metalwork and stonework, and an ornamental spiral staircase climbing to the mezzanine. Canadian workspace operator iQ Offices now runs the whole of the 14-story Financial District tower it sits in as the company’s flagship location, with amenities across the first three levels and private offices from the fourth floor up. The building has been a designated heritage property since 1976, and in 2025 it reopened as the flagship location of Canadian workspace operator iQ Offices, after a multimillion-dollar adaptive reuse turned the 60,000-square-foot tower into a hotel-inspired workspace with a direct connection to Toronto’s underground PATH.
iQ Offices describes itself as more than a co-working space, and 302 Bay Street is where the company made the case. Co-founders Kane Willmott, CEO, and Alex Sharpe, President, have built the business on premium office environments and thoughtful amenities across Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Toronto counts five iQ locations, and demand for flexible, well-served workspace of this kind continues to climb: the global co-working market was valued at $22 billion in 2024 and is forecast to pass $93 billion by 2035. At 302 Bay Street, that thinking runs to stylish lounges and breakout areas, a rooftop terrace, a thermotherapy room with sauna and cold plunge, and a staffed barista bar in the lobby itself.
The lobby was also where the project became challenging. iQ Offices wanted music in the banking hall, and a DJ position for live sets, in a protected interior where the marble cannot be drilled and where anything bulky would have undone the restoration it sat in. Toronto integrator The 192 Group took on that challenge. “This building was intended to be quite special,” says Corry McGibbon, founder and owner of The 192 Group. “They wanted to make a statement.”
Soka and 5XT Go in with No Fixings in the Heritage Stone
L-Acoustics Soka is a colinear source less than four inches deep and 20 pounds in weight. It delivers line source output from an enclosure that reads on the wall as a slim vertical line rather than as a loudspeaker. Those proportions opened a mounting method that heavier enclosures would have ruled out. With nails and screws prohibited in the marble, The 192 Group fixed the system using silicone adhesive together with a vertical pipe mounted to the floor, so that nothing was driven into the protected surfaces.
“All of the speakers appear to be floating, which really adds to the effect,” McGibbon says. “There’s a DJ station to plug into, as well, because they wanted to be able to have live music in there, but didn’t want the presence of large traditional speakers that would clutter, so the Soka worked perfectly in terms of both performance and aesthetics. The Soka being high output but small and discreet allowed us to mount them in a creative way, and that was really the selling point.”
Three L-Acoustics Soka cover the banking hall, each paired with an SB10i subwoofer. Three ultracompact 5XT coaxial enclosures, mounted in the banquettes on the mezzanine above, fill the upper level. Two LA2Xi amplified controllers drive the whole system.
Soka is Heard but Not Seen in the Grand Hall
The result is a heritage interior that gained a full-range system and lost none of its detail. The banking hall now works as a social space and as a venue, with the restoration, ceiling, marble and staircase still carrying the room, and the loudspeakers reading as part of the architecture rather than as equipment added to it.
“They have that whole barista bar right there, and that really makes the space,” McGibbon says. “People are drawn to work and hang out in this beautiful space, and with L-Acoustics Soka, it now feels like an incredibly cool place to collaborate, create, and chill.”
But the final metric of a project’s success is ultimately measured by the client’s satisfaction, and the new system and integrator ticked all of the right boxes. “Working with The 192 Group and L-Acoustics on our audio needs has been an exceptional experience,” shares Carly Bedini, iQ Offices’ VP Operations “They are incredibly responsive, reliable and consistently deliver a high level of service and expertise. Over time, they have become much more than a vendor to us—they truly feel like an extension of our team. We have complete confidence in them, know we can count on them when we need support, and genuinely love working with their teams.”
For more information on iQ Offices, visit www.iqoffices.com. The 192 Group can be found online at www.192group.com.
Please visit L-Acoustics at www.l-acoustics.com.
