commentEdmunds.com
BusinessWeek/Architectural Record Awards Winner
Until 2006, the staff of automotive-pricing-guide publisher Edmunds.com was spread over five floors in three separate buildings. The company had grown so rapidly during the dot-com boom, “It had no essence, no spirit. They didn’t know their coworkers in the other buildings,” says STUDIOS architecture design principal Christopher Mitchell, AIA.
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In short, the company’s offices inhibited open communication, which was counterproductive for a Web-based firm specializing in information sharing. After seeing the New York offices that STUDIOS had recently designed for Bloomberg [RECORD, March 2006, page 138], Edmunds.com’s leadership commissioned the architects to create a new corporate headquarters in an existing development in Santa Monica.
When the company’s owners met with the design team from STUDIOS, they made one thing clear to Mitchell’s team: The space was “not for clients, and not for the car companies. It had to be for the employees first. Drop dead, bottom line.” Mitchell and his colleagues got input from some 40 Edmunds.com employees, and the resulting headquarters features open space that encourages collaboration. There are few doors and no private offices.
A new staircase, connecting all three floors of the headquarters, and a spacious great room, complete with a 70-foot Corian coffee bar, allow employees to move freely and congregate.
The building is at once spare and stylized, with zippy, horizontally banded wall panels recalling the supergraphics of the 1960s. Above all, it is utilitarian. Since moving into its new headquarters, Edmunds.com has increased revenue and employee retention, and it expects staff to increase by 10 percent in the coming year. It has been so successful that the company is poised to lease another floor in the building, which STUDIOS will also redesign. As Mitchell says, “We gave them the space, but they’re harnessing it. We just gave them the right tool.”
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