Nancy Chen
Sandbox VR Office
Interior Design
2025
Located at 115 McCaul Street in downtown Toronto, this project reimagines an existing building as a VR game company that explores the threshold between physical space and virtual experience. Positioned within a creative and academic district, the redesign reflects a shift toward emerging technologies and immersive forms of storytelling.The project is driven by the idea of entering new worlds that already exist around us, accessed through sensory portals embedded within architecture. Spaces are designed to blur boundaries between reality and simulation, allowing users to move through environments that engage sight, sound, touch, and perception. Technology is not hidden but expressed, revealing its processes and potential while inviting interaction and curiosity.Materiality, lighting, and spatial sequencing work together to create a sense of anticipation and discovery. Moments of compression and release guide users deeper into the building, where digital and physical layers begin to merge. The environment reflects a constant state of becoming, where innovation, creativity, and experimentation are visible and evolving.This redesign positions the building as both a workplace and an experience. It becomes a space where creation is not only produced but felt, where the future is sensed in real time, and where users are fully immersed in worlds that extend beyond the limits of the physical.
“Approaching a new frontier and becoming boundlessly immersed into new world that are right in front of us and all around us via portals that speak to the senses. Technology and creation sings what it is capable of to you. You can see what it does and what it can do. You can taste the potential and small the future coming. Hope and excitement are so great and strong you can reach out and grab it.”