Are you ready to go on a tour? Julia and Laksh from Houzz Australia have convinced us a visit to their new Sydney office is a must with these beautiful photos and recap:
Hi everyone, this is Julia and Laksh from Houzz Australia and we’d love to take you on a bit of a tour of our local office. What we love about our team is that everyone is not only very hard working, but also constantly sharing laughs, collaborating across different teams, and of course, spending time together in this great working space.
Love at first site visit When we first visited the “shell” of our new office in Surry Hills we knew it had the potential to be an awesome workplace. The office has a large, open floor plan where we could also sit together, enormous windows with lots of natural light, polished concrete floors and a vast balcony with fantastic views of the Sydney skyline. The office is also surrounded by some of the best restaurants, bars, and cafes in town.
After a few months of designing and furniture sourcing (using Houzz, of course!), we were ready to move in. Our office is filled with the Houzz spirit. We have rubber ducks everywhere (our unofficial mascot), plants galore with vertical gardens, fun green furniture, chalkboard painted pillars (…and walls, and doors…) and, of course, meeting rooms themed to rooms from around the house – but with an Aussie twist!
The workshop When we first started brainstorming ideas for our boardroom, we thought about the ways we could connect our theme back to Houzz – we wanted to bring in a fun and creative hobby that would tell a story about building or renovating our own homes. Our boardroom is a work shed with its own home-made trestle table, a work lamp, and a pegboard with used tools. Traditionally, the home work shed is a place where you can create a piece of furniture, reupholster your chairs and redesign your space. For us, it’s where we come together to build new ideas, improve current processes, and be creative with our daily tasks. (Fun fact: we also used these tools to build all of our desks, furniture and lay our astro turf!)
The kids’ room This kids’ room is one of the most coveted spaces in the office – our colleagues say that it takes them back to younger years and is a place where you just feel at ease. In the kids’ room you can let your imagination run wild, and we encourage drawing and brainstorming on our whiteboard wall. Sometimes when we just need some quiet time, we retreat into the four poster kids bed.
Deckside After much discussion and deliberation, we decided that for our final meeting room, we wanted to create a room that truly represents iconic Australia – and what better way than a sun-soaked Australian Beach? The true-blue room comes complete with real sand, a timber deck stained in Australian Jarrah red and a great outdoor furniture set with chairs that recline. There’s also a life-buoy in the corner for when you need a little help keeping your head above water! When we have meetings in the deck room, we sometimes play sounds of the sea to make it feel even more authentic.
Communal spaces: Kitchen & Balcony They say the kitchen is the heart of the home and this couldn’t be any more true in our office. We’re all foodies and will take any chance to celebrate all things food (e.g. Harmony Day!). With this in mind, we wanted to design a kitchen that would be warm, welcoming and spacious – a great space where our team can get together. This industrial style kitchen features a large stainless steel fridge, a jam-packed pantry and a timber dining table bench.
The kitchen also opens to one of the best features of this incredible office (and no, it’s not just having Crumpet Been, our office dog!)
Our very own large wrap around balcony is most definitely one of the stand out spaces in this office, where we have views of the Sydney central business district and a birds-eye view of Surry Hills. Some of the balcony is covered with astroturf (that we also cut and laid ourselves), where we hold meetings, lounge, dine and bask in Sydney’s sunshine on our breaks. We also have an oversized chess set that is great fun after a few drinks on a Friday Night. No Australian home is complete without a BBQ (barbie) which we, of course, have as well! Personalized and Houzz-y touches are constantly being added to this incredible space, making it feel like more and more like home.
On behalf of the Houzz Australia team, we really hope you do come and visit. We’ll have the beer on ice and the shrimp prawns on the barbie, mate!
Thank you, Julia and Laksh, and the whole Houzz Australia team, for opening your doors and showing us around. You can be sure we’ll take you up on your offer to visit!
