Earlier this month, hipages opened its new state-of-the-art headquarters in the Sydney CBD.
The office is rather unconventional, with the design brief calling for the space to be “home inspired”.
“From the outset, we had a very clean vision of how we wanted the office to look,” says David Vitek, co-founder, CEO and executive director of hipages.
“We wanted to create a home-like space for our employees through an unconventional workplace design – bringing the home to the office. We also wanted to de-corporatise the office space and allow our employees to be immersed in a space that was a constant reminder of our mission – to seamlessly bring together tradespeople and Aussie homeowners.”
hipages enlisted workplace design specialist, Axiom, to help ‘de-corporatise’ the space.
“The most important thing was in the selection of the details – things that you would see at home,” says Axiom’s senior workplace strategist, Annelie Xenofontos.
“To break the feeling of working en masse, workstations were put on angles and arranged in odd combinations. They’ve got various finishes to them, and all the joinery in the general open floorspace is different so nothing feels like it’s been done in bulk. Everything is individual.”
hipages also sought to create a memorable experience for staff, clients and visitors when entering the main arrivals floor. Design inspiration was drawn from the exterior of a typical house – with brick cladding – combined with state-of-the-art technology and other enhancements, such as shutters around the lifts.
The heart of the hipages office – the kitchen and ‘family’ rumpus room – has multiple touch points to avoid traffic congestion, and an extended bench to ensure there is space for catering to be laid out during the company’s team functions. The rumpus room is attached to the kitchen and doubles as the ‘town hall’ space with tiered seating, multi-coloured and patterned cushions, framed t-shirt mementos on the walls and games to play. These spaces are positioned away from work areas to facilitate relaxation and ensure conversations won’t distract those who are working.
“You walk in there and it really feels like hipages,” says Xenofontos.
