Aaron Taylor Harvey

Aaron Taylor Harvey co-founded Airbnb’s environments team, which looks after the design of its San Francisco HQ and offices around the world. Currently experiencing hypergrowth - doubling in size each year - Airbnb has opened six offices in eight months in different cities, from Singapore to London. The current model is to employ local practices to truly embed themselves in the cities and directly engage with the creative community. This extract is taken from a seminar chaired by Blueprint editor Johnny Tucker and held in Airbnb’s new London office, designed with Threefold Architects.

We are not in the business of stamping out the same Airbnb office all over the world in the same way that the travel experience should not be the same if you are in San Francisco as in London. The goal of travelling with Airbnb is variety; you want to engage with a uniquely London place when you are in London, and you don’t want to go to a Hilton - that could feel like you were in Minneapolis or something.

Airbnb’s Singapore office designed with local architecture practice Farm. Photo: Beton Brut

It’s the same with our offices. We’re searching for a sense of authenticity and texture and real engagement, and the belief is that if we hire a local company like Threefold we will skip the getting-to-know-you steps in the city and we’ll jump right into the middle of it and have access to things we would never have thought of. And then hopefully that creates a real design dialogue between us — we are all professionally trained, we are all designers. We’re trying to create a method of design debate that produces something fresh at the other end, something that’s a new idea, that’s not a prescribed idea, and that comes from a back-and-forth debate.

As an Airbnb traveller it is wonderful to be in the city in a neighbourhood with local shops, and in the same way Airbnb offices are always in the middle of the city — they are never in an office park near the airport. They are where people want to be anyway, and we always want to have it relate to the city and have local people make things in it.

When we open a new office I always give a tour and tell people about the office to explain to them for instance where the furniture was made and why we chose this desktop material over that. There is all this content in the offices that is real and considered and relates back to the city you are in, and that helps connect people to the office. And if you as an employee control that story that also connects you deeply to the office and then to decisions that are made. There is also no other way to design these offices so quickly. You have to have a very short chain of command to make it work.

One of the things that happens a lot is that in our offices we run out of space, and there is just not enough space for everybody to have a desk. That’s why we look at new ways of working. We look to see how is this working or how are people adapting to that, and then we take the moment of crisis and try and leverage that crisis into something positive; it’s a real mindset switch. If you are already used to sharing, then the benefits of sharing become clearer. Most of what we do though is in response to observed behaviours rather than telling people ‘Hey, you need to start doing this other thing…’

The London office designed with Threefold Architects. Photo: Jack Hosea

There are no individual desks; we have tables and those can fit one person, or four people. Tables are a space of opportunity and desks are not. When you leave a desk it’s dead. It does not invite other people to use it. By stripping out that individualisation you actually invite a whole different usage. We deterritorialise people’s workzones, but then try and create a sense of belonging to the whole space. It is incredible to watch how differently people then use a space.

We are perpetually in this research phase. Education is also a big part of all this and I think people who work at Airbnb are already passionate about sharing and making the product work, and I think that makes them very open to new ideas and ways of working. So it is a really great audience to push this design conversation forward with. JT