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It's tough to tell, at first, exactly what Bruce Mau Design is. Inside the high-ceilinged loft space on the edge of Toronto's Chinatown are tall metal bookshelves, drafting tables, digital-video editing suites, architectural models, and scores of hard-working professionals. The deadline pressure is palpable, and couriers make breathless entrances and exits throughout the afternoon. Even as 6 PM approaches, not one employee makes a move to head for home. Instead, everyone on staff clusters around a tray of fresh fruit brought in by Cathy Jonasson, the firm's vice president and managing director.

No wonder. Bruce Mau Design Inc. is handling more projects simultaneously than ever before: a massive, eight-screen multimedia installation called "Stress" for an art festival in Vienna; a corporate-identity campaign for a chain of storage facilities in England; signage for the Seattle Public Library; a master plan for a new park in Toronto; and a book called Life Style. But BMD is not an architecture firm or a book publisher. And it doesn't employ a single graphic designer.

BMD is a studio in the purest sense of the word. "The word 'studio' derives from 'study,' " says BMD founder Bruce Mau, 40. "We're all about studying things -- business problems, design problems -- with our clients. Usually, clients want to study something very specific -- a new identity, or a new product. Ideally, the studying benefits both of us. Our object is not to know the answers before we do the work. It's to know them after we do it."

Mau's studio is an ongoing experiment in the best way to design an organization for long-term creative growth. Employees jokingly call the place "Bruce Mau University," both for the intellectual freedom that it gives them, and for the support and the gentle prodding that Mau himself provides. Most of the people here could earn more at one of the city's Web-design shops or commercial-architecture firms, but they stay at BMD because it affords them the ability to work on a wide range of high-quality projects. Indeed, Mau refuses a lot of work because, as Jonasson, 49, puts it, "the studio is populated by a bunch of restless minds. We are pushing one another constantly. We learn from one another. Here we have the chance to do really good work without having to deal with politics or corporate bureaucracy."

It's not easy managing a stable of filmmakers, architects, writers, and artists -- all of whom have direct client contact; collaborate with world-renowned architects such as Frank Gehry and blue-chip cultural institutions such as the Getty Center, in Los Angeles; and expect (as Mau does) to be exploring new terrain every day.

"The project of the studio is its own design project," says Mau, who has a pensive, low-key air that is occasionally punctuated by a burst of laughter, and who wears his loose, long-sleeved shirts untucked. "It's largely a social project," he continues. "It's 90% about people and 10% about selecting the right business. You have to ensure that the work -- and the time that people spend on it -- is meaningful."