Project: Booking.com Headquarters
Lead Interior Architect, Workplace design: HofmanDujardin
Architect: UNStudio
Project Management: CBRE
Area designers: CBRE Design, HofmanDujardin, i29, Linehouse Design, Studio Modijefsky, UNStudio
Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Area: 65000 m2
Year: 2023
Photo Credits: Matthijs van Roon, Hufton+Crow
Let’s meet in Tuscany, grab a coffee in Panama City and talk strategy in the Serengeti! All this is possible in the innovative new urban campus of leading travel platform Booking.com, which opened its doors in Amsterdam. A unique collaboration of multiple interior architects and design firms has resulted in an inclusive workplace that is home to over 6,500 employees.
The brand new Booking.com working environment offers a diverse variety of spaces. As Lead Interior Architect, HofmanDujardin designed an interior masterplan for the 65,000m² campus building, while the building itself was designed by the Architect UNStudio. The Booking.com headquarters combine the work of international design firms Linehouse Design, i29, Studio Modijefsky, CBRE Design, UNStudio, HofmanDujardin, Powerplant, Mijksenaar, MOSS, Scholten & Baijings, and Studio Rublek. Together, they created an inspiring environment where employees and visitors will meet, collaborate, live, work and play.
Interior Masterplan
Formerly spread over several locations in Amsterdam, the truly global company Booking.com is powered by employees representing more than 100 nationalities. The interior masterplan was designed around the concept ‘Booking Home’ and aims to create a home for all workers. Every place in the world, every travel destination, is someone’s home. Because everyone has a different idea of home, HofmanDujardin developed a masterplan to embrace diversity. It defined a set of principles and mood boards for several uniquely themed areas. Different area designers were invited to follow those principles but also put their individual design stamp on those areas. Additionally, specialist layer designers were selected to create greenery, lighting, wayfinding and graphics, carpets, and food and beverage throughout the campus.
Diverse journey
The campus journey starts at the main entrance, which is flanked by digital walls showing travel movies and slow-motion travel mood scenes, such as running water or leaves in the wind. It also offers views up a sweeping staircase and green corridor of plants to the light-filled upper floors. Everything about the entrance says “come in and explore the world with us”. The route leads up to the 1st floor meeting point and recruitment, research and learning centres, and fluently continues to the central atrium on the 2nd floor. This bright and vibrant connecting space offers physical and visual relations with all upper office floors.
Meals are taken in one of three restaurants: the 2nd floor Market (designed to give a sense of being in a spacious European market hall), the 5th floor Five Islands (designed as five joined but individually themed zones or ‘islands’) and the 9th floor High Garden with its lush roof garden and panoramic views over Amsterdam.
Even the car parking and bike parking areas are designed to reflect the wonder of travel. The former invokes the ice sheets of Antarctica while the latter has a large, colour-changing ‘sun’ light, giving bicycling employees a nice surprise each morning.
Designed to connect
Throughout the building are 28 ‘micro-holiday destination’ breakout spaces, each themed on a place. People can stroll through New York City and Rio de Janeiro, chill out in the Greek Islands and visit the Amazon. Together with the larger connector spaces, they offer breaks from computer screens, allowing workers to collaborate, reset their minds and helping them to increase creativity and productivity. Employee photographs and souvenirs from around the world provide more reminders of travel and get people more involved with the building.
Designed to connect people and places, the novel campus is a real destination with a rich diversity of spaces that aims to create a vibrant inclusive community. Filled with lush green plants and awarded with a BREEAM excellent certificate, the office is also a front-runner in sustainability. It offers a great working environment for Booking.com and provides the company with a new home in the heart of Amsterdam.
