Zen and the Art of Designing Startups
How Kelly Robinson creates inspiring offices for the likes of Airbnb, Headspace, and SoundCloud.
Her designs are the anti–Office Space. No drab gray, no sterile conference rooms, definitely no cubicles. As one of the leading workplace designers for startups, Kelly Robinson creates welcoming havens that deflate every negative stereotype about office life. SoundCloud, Airbnb, and Headspace are a few of her high-profile projects.
Robinson doesn’t have a formal design background; she says her mother taught her the importance of creating hospitable spaces. “When people feel welcomed, they feel more at ease within themselves and they can be more of who they really are,” she says, which explains why culture-driven tech companies are drawn to her style of focusing less on architectural thought and more on how energy flows through a space.
Her inspiration comes from everywhere. After staying in a geodesic dome in northern California listed on Airbnb, she partnered with interior design firm IDF Studio to re-create a miniature version of it in Airbnb’s San Francisco office. SoundCloud’s Berlin headquarters feels like an urban park landscape, with wooden pallet steps common outside local cafés and restaurants. “When it comes to architecture and design, very rarely are we creating something entirely new,” she says. “I feel that we’re actually stealing from nature, our environment, and other outlets, and reinventing them and mashing them up. And the more you travel, the bigger the closet of things to steal.”
Now she’s working on her biggest project yet — an innovation center in Switzerland, where she’s responsible for everything regarding the food, from menus to designing spaces to how compost is handled, and the “human touch” element. “I love being that motherly influence in this very tech-rich environment,” she says. Robinson’s also designing a small project in LA, where she’s incorporating the IKEA Growroom, a spherical urban farm that empowers people to grow their own food. “It’s important for my heart and for my creative process to be working for people who are making a positive impact on the world,” she says. “Ideally, that’s going to be the trend for all creatives, to create for good. The world is so intense, and we should all do our small part.”
Her clients all happen to be massively successful. But there’s a chicken-and-egg situation: Do her Zen-like offices inspire hyper growth, or are successful companies naturally drawn toward humane design? Read on to discover how Robinson’s yoga practice affects her work, being diplomatic under tricky circumstances, and why a shortcut to creativity might be through the womb.
Getting stuff done
I’m still kinda old school. In the morning, I’ll make a list of things to do for the whole day and chunk them up into digestible blocks, and then pepper my day with different breaks or changes of scenery. There are some cafés I love, and I actually get a lot done from home now that I’ve separated out my work space from my bedroom, which is really important. The hardest thing is to stay away from scrolling Instagram or Facebook. I think the only medicine is to have enough opportunity to spend weeks at a time away from technology, so you remember how clear you feel when you’re not attached to [social media] all the time.
Good vibrations
I’m a very spiritual person, and I feel really good talking about that and using that in my work. To me, the universe is vibrational. I believe that sound and music carry vibrations, and so do people’s words and the way they speak. The way people walk through a space — very gently or very authoritatively — all of those carry vibrations, so when I create offices, even a home office, I really try to keep imagining there are many small containers within the same space and to try to keep a consistent vibration within those containers. For instance, if you’re creating a nap room, you should know that every time someone walks in that room, they’re walking in softly, they’re taking off their layers, and they’re coming in to rest. If you played an hour of Metallica, that would be felt on a certain [vibrational] level.
Working from home
The importance of a home office is not to confuse a home office with the vibration of sleeping, eating, gathering with friends. It should be more of a still environment, which ideally means it’s not cluttered with a lot of other uses, functionalities, and even stuff. For me, even having a bunch of beauty products or food products in my home office would open up the temptation to move away from productively getting things done.
Getting on the same page
When I’m doing a mood board for a client, I use Pinterest. I love it. It’s such an easy way to collect things, and it’s a trust builder for them. I’ll tell them, “This is the space that I see, here are some images I want to bring in.” Once they see that and love it, then I’m fully empowered. If they hate something, it’s a chance for me to understand their perspective and get a sense of how much they really care about design.
Relying on experts
When I’m getting deeper into the process or working on a bigger project, I’ll work with architecture firms who do full-scale renderings and create the actual space. If I had a bunch of time and really loved being behind the computer, I’d probably learn how to use [3D drawing tool] SketchUp, so I could draw my own brain, but it also works to explain it to another creative who already knows those tools.
Collaboration before ego
How well you are able to collaborate is based on how well you’re able to keep your own ego at bay and listen but also still maintain your authority. Architects are super balanced and creative but also really structured and detail-oriented. Contractors are like, “I don’t really care about the design; just tell me what to do.” And the client is like, “I think I know what I need, but I want you to tell me what I don’t even realize what I need.” I’m like the quarterback. I’m focused on the vision, cost, timing, functionality — all of this has to match. It’s about remembering and equally honoring everybody’s role. No one person is less important than the other.
Sticking to your guns
Sometimes I have to override people and overrule decisions, and it’s so hard because sometimes I come across as a “it’s my way or the highway”–type of person, which I am. I’ve gotten that feedback my whole life. You need to develop a really good sense of your relationship with self and knowing when you’re right or knowing when you’re not right. Then it’s about empowering people around you. Even though I act like a know-it-all, I still really want you to challenge me. It’s important to have enough of a heart-to-heart relationship where that still feels safe.
Detaching from praise
One thing I learned through yoga is the idea of selfless service. Can you be in that space when you completely detach from what kind of praise you’re going to get? Because that’s the space where you don’t suffer. Then praise is like “Oh, nice! A little bonus!” That’s so hard in this world that we live in, especially when there’s money attached. It’s way easier said than done.
Mediating tiffs
Whenever something is getting a little too disconnected, the answer has almost always been more presence — going there physically and looking the person in the eye and understanding what’s happening on their side. There was a time working at SoundCloud where I was the only female working with 50 construction men, and I think there was maybe one construction woman. There would be these little fights between the guys. Electricians would get in the way of the painters, and they would point the finger and say they needed to get more money, and so on. So I would gently insert myself into the heat of that argument and try to unify. On days I wasn’t there, that fight would escalate and I would end up with two added invoice charges in my inbox. But if I was there, I could help mediate. It’s so simple yet so profound what can happen if you have a mediator.
Womb vibes
I’ve been studying a lot about ancient feminine wisdom, and we have this space in our body that we never talk about, which is our womb space, which is super creatively focused. Being a woman obviously allows us to create life, but the creative power that we have is really special, too. Sometimes if I feel creatively stuck, I sit and bring my awareness to my womb and ask for creative guidance from that place. That may sound super weird, and I’m totally OK with that! I just want to keep it real.
Knowing a project is finished
There’s almost always a certain vision that I have when I start a project. That vision gets more and more detailed as we get through the design. When the furniture arrives and the contract itself is done, we have a party on that first day and people feel it and they live in it. That, to me, is when it’s creatively finished — that opening moment.
Magenta is a publication of Huge.
