Airbnb’s Portland Office

For Airbnb’s new Portland office, the design team worked very closely with the employees to co-create the space to conceive and execute their own ideas and designs.

The Airbnb’s new Portland new Customer Experience (or CX) center, that houses more than 200 employees, has been co-created by the design team – Aaron Taylor Harvey and Rachael Yu in collaboration with Portland-based architecture firm boora – with the employees.

The employees not only helped create the listing rooms (similar to the ones at HQ in SF), but were also given free range over other rooms, to conceive and execute their own ideas and designs. These range from a “hive” full of honey, to the captain’s quarters on a historic ship. They also worked with local makers in Portland to design and fabricate custom furniture specifically for the office.

There was extensive amount of research (both observational and research-based) for the project – field trips and brainstorms with the staff that will be working there, company-wide surveys, etc. Without individually assigned desks, the space gives employees options to work how they’d like, from standing desks to lounge areas to more task oriented spaces.