La Shed Architecture

Sébastien Parent, Renée Mailhot and Yannick Laurin met during their years studying architecture in university.

Eager to experiment, the three friends bought a duplex on Plateau Mont-Royal’s de Bullion Street in 2008, turning it into their laboratory of sorts. "We experimented a lot with the place, tried different things It was sort of our test grounds," admits Sébastien.

Quickly, their work on the duplex caught attention and was featured in many specialized publications. Enjoying great visibility, the trio became increasingly solicited by Montreal’s homeowners.

Everything snowballed from there: the trio multiplied contracts, working on only one at a time. "We had to work on evenings and weekends because all three of us had jobs at architecture firms. We did that for about three years, and then we had so many contracts that we all quit our jobs and launched La SHED in 2010."

Sébastien, Yannick and Renée all live in the same triplex, which is where they worked out of in La SHED Architecture’s first months, establishing their office in a different living room from one week to the next. Then, they hired their first employee and moved out of their living rooms to their current Rachel Street office. The company now has a team of seven.