Loblaws - Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Canada

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, MLG, Toronto Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket

It’s not every day that a client asks you to design the “world’s best food store” and then backs the project to the hilt.

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Interior and Graphic Design

Launched in November 2011, our work with Loblaws in Canada has been seminal in the redefinition of the urban supermarket globally.

Multi-award winning and constantly visited by the world’s best retailers, Loblaws redefines its genre.

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer

"The new Loblaws in Toronto makes the design of the mighty Eataly look pedestrian and begs the question: is this the world's best supermarket? Our answer is yes."

– Howard Saunders, 22nd&5th

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Art

"Landini Associates have put the ‘super’ into supermarket."

– Powershop 4, Frame Publishers

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Butcher

Voted by Retail Week (UK) no. 3/10 'Top 10 Stores in the World, by design' beating Selfridges, Aesop and Hermes.

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Deli

"The new Loblaws at Maple Leaf Gardens has significantly improved my standard of living."

– Customer @Kitelife via Twitter

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Grocery

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Retail Design Designer, Open Kitchen

"Simply, mouthwateringly awesome."

– Echochamber

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Food

"The latest generations of Loblaws supermarkets by Landini Associates are from another stratosphere."

– Laureano Turienzo, CEO, Retail News Trends

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Patisserie

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Cafe

"Over my 17 years at Loblaws I have never worked with a design firm with as much knowledge as Landini Associates from strategy, branding, millwork, fixturing and truly understanding retail operations."

– Mike Angus, Senior Director, Design and Signage, Loblaws

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Sushi

"Landini Associates really push the boundaries of the supermarket retail experience."

– Sean Hatcher, World Architecture News

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Vitamins

"You guys are a Rockstar’s! I appreciate the time we spent working together. It truly was one of the highlights of my retail career."

– Michael Lovsin, Loblaws

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Local

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Checkout

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens, Canada, Landini Associates, Supermarket, Retail Design Designer Dining

"We must put a monument to the studio that is behind these wonders, the design team that increasingly surprise me, for good, the Australians Landini Associates. Possibly the most brilliant studio specialized in retail today."

– Laureano Turienzo, CEO, Retail News Trends

Loblaws Maple Leaf Gardens

It’s not every day that a client asks you to design the “world’s best food store” and then backs the project to the hilt. Engaged to design every facet of this new trading format, we continue to work with Loblaws, evolving and rolling this out across Canada whilst also helping to reposition other parts of their business and inventing new retail brands and formats.

The iconic Maple Leaf Garden in downtown Toronto was always a place of entertainment hosting major sporting, political and cultural events, from the beloved Maple Leaf hockey team and Muhamad Ali, to music such as the Beatles ad Frank Sinatra. We wanted to continue this. A place to meet, eat and fall in love.

The ground floor at Maple Leaf Gardens now consists of 4000 sqm's of fresh food. Multiple eating places surrounded by the theatre of food production deliver a place to experiment and learn. We utilised the visual scale and brutality of the building combined with a very urban palette of materials to create theatre, energy and colour.

We also chose to celebrate the buildings history through an integrated design approach and achieved this by making these specifications a dynamic part of the overall design - exposing the “ghosts” of walls past, commissioning a 12m x 12m Maple Leaf sculpture of old stadium chairs, reusing stadium lighting, murals, stencilling and much more. We used different signage treatments throughout. This includes signage of depressed in-situ concrete, blackened steel, copper plumbers’ pipe, neon, glass, wood, spot welded tin and paint on tile.

The resulting visual environment is very distinctive, differing from the bland generic of most North American supermarkets. Not only has our design delivered a new genre in food retailing, reinventing the vernacular for so many years defined by Wholefoods, but more importantly it has become a social hub, a place of and for the community, adding a richness to that part of the city whilst also honouring and celebrating the building’s past.

Above all else, MLG is still designed to make the food and the people making the food the heroes.