#HTE

Joe Gebbia & Samara’s Backyard Initiative Will Prototype New Ways to Build Homes—and They’re Hiring

After the raging success of Airbnb, co-founder Joe Gebbia is expanding on his initial home sharing and loaning vision with Backyard, a new initiative within the Samara team at Airbnb that will prototype new ways in which homes can be built and shared. Backyard will have a special focus on waste-conscious construction and the ways in which smart home technologies can better shape the future of our time at home. 

“We began with a simple question: what does a home that is designed and built for sharing actually look and feel like? The answer is not simple at all. Other questions quickly emerged. Can a home respond to the needs of many inhabitants over a long period of time? Can it support and reflect the tremendous diversity of human experience? Can it keep up with the rate at which the world changes? Can we accomplish this without filling landfills with needless waste? It’s a tall order. But because it’s so complicated, and touches us in such essential ways, it’s a challenge worth engaging.” —Joe Gebbia

Airbnb was ahead of their game by recognizing a shift in what “home” means to people—especially city dwellers and travelers. Now, Gebbia and his team want to further explore what the next phase in this shift could be. In order to do so to the fullest potential, Backyard is currently seeking designers in various fields, including industrial, interaction and architecture to join their team. In terms of timeline, Backyard plans to test prototype units as early as next fall. Design minds with big ideas should strike while the iron’s hot—or perhaps even before the iron’s hot in this case, as the initiative was just announced today.