Looks like Tido Pesenti and his team at Airbnb may have managed to reach workplace nirvana with their newest office at 8 Hanover Quay in Dublin's Grand Canal district.
It's incredibly difficult to strike the optimal balance between open office and individual heads-down space, or to provide team or "neighborhood" amenities while also promoting collisions and collaboration. The overwhelming majority of office designs fail in one or more of these four categories.
According to this blog post, Airbnb has found the sweet spot on "the first time [they were] able to pre-determine the architectural layout of an interior space".
At the same time, room-level design customization and high levels of staff engagement can both present challenges to timeline and budget.
Airbnb completed a lease in October 2015, taking 3,574 SqM for a 20-year term with a break option at year 7. First year headline rent was about 1,475,000 EUR (412 EUR/SqM, or 38.34 EUR/SF) - all according to this article by Jack Fagan of the Irish Times.
A 15-month lead time from lease completion to office launch is not unusual in Dublin - especially when landlord "core & shell" or "Cat A" work is left to be done, as appears to be the case here.
Airbnb has plenty of hip neighbors down along the Grand Canal Quay. The area has been heating up steadily since 2011. More recently, companies have been jumping for old warehouses including Google in January 2015, and Zoolando in May 2016.
INFO
Interior Designers: heneghan peng architects (Dublin, Ireland)
Source Credits: retaildesignblog.net, which is published by the interior design and shopfitting company Artica of Budapest, Hungary.