A City within a City: Peeking Behind the Door of Mailchimp’s New HQ

Mailchimp's new custom-designed Atlanta office is imagined as a lively cityscape, inspired by the diversity and vibrancy of neighbourhoods within cities like New York. Spread across nine floors along the city’s BeltLine in the Old Fourth Ward, each 'neighbourhood' segment within the space is a reflection of the various business departments that come together to form the Intuit-owned company’s ecosystem. 

Mailchimp's in-house creative agency, Wink, led the entire design of the new space, aided by architectural and design firms TVS and Studio O+A. The team at Wink, headed by group creative director Christian Widlic, was tasked with concepting a physical manifestation of Mailchimp's own brand identity. 

To accomplish all of Wink’s goals, Christian and the team established seven key design principles: 

1. Provide a functional, versatile, and uncomplicated space that meets the needs of all employees and their many different roles and responsibilities, giving them everything they need to do their best work. 

2. Bring to life an office that creates comfort and connection amongst employees, surrounded by an environment that encourages them to be their most creative and healthiest selves.

3. Cultivate an office where employees would want to spend time collaborating with each other to propel creativity and innovation, attracting the incredible and diverse tech talent in Georgia.

4. Create a space that is both breathtaking and inviting, pairing high-quality materials with an inclusive and elevated home, come-as-you-are attitude. 

5. Embrace and integrate Mailchimp’s vivid brand identity so that employees and guests can easily tap into who we are. 

6. Create a space full of dynamic details so that every time you look closer, there is something new and exciting to see. Quirky details will include hidden artefacts, messages, and other architectural surprises. 

7. Create a space that celebrates Mailchimp’s exceptional community of unique individuals. 

"The first step was to dissect what our brand embodies and feels like — what is the spirit of Mailchimp?" says Christian. "Without just making everything yellow and slapping the logo everywhere, we wanted to stay true to our fundamentals and develop a space that inspires creativity, collaboration, and innovation.”

Then Christian and the team would go about exploring function — they were designing for Mailchimp’s most important asset - its people - so it was vital that the space worked for everyone. So, the space features a laundry list of all the things you might expect — ample meeting rooms, desks, hangout areas, coffee shops, a rooftop… but also some you might not — wellness rooms, libraries, dedicated maker studios, hidden bars, and a town square for all-company meetings. 

The hope, according to Christian, was to create a series of distinct places to explore and get inspired. There’s a state-of-the-art media production space equipped with a cyc wall for photography and filmmaking as well as recording areas for podcasting — all to support Mailchimp Presents’ content development and other work created by Wink. Meanwhile, for the IT team, there’s a TechKnow Bar, similar to a ‘Genius Bar’, where they can directly and easily interact with employees who need in-person tech support.

The next step was wayfinding and navigation which, while important to any environmental design, was particularly critical when over a thousand people would be looking for a meeting room. “The system was inspired by our customers — small and medium sized business owners who are some of the most hard-working and inventive people on the planet,” says Christian. “We branded each room as a unique storefront in their honour. Each of the nine floors also uses a different colour palette and is adorned with businesses that start with a certain letter, so floor five is ‘P’, for example, which really helps when someone wants to meet you at ‘Pete’s Pet Shop’, right next to the ‘Post Office’, instead of ‘Room H3074V’.”

Finally, art and inspiration were extremely important details, and ones that Christian is really proud of. With the intent to expose the team to a range of perspectives, styles and forms, the team spent a lot of time curating due to the myriad benefits associated with being exposed to art - including improving overall wellbeing, making people more open to learning and problem-solving, as well as potentially making them happier. 

“We have such a rich office history of art and murals, and it was important to us to keep the Mailchimp spirit present on our walls in an elevated way… It was important to us to make sure we elevated that global perspective, and made it a unique Mailchimp experience,” says Christian. 

So, the team commissioned about 270 pieces of art, including 55 murals spread across nine floors — each representing a different art movement, ranging from minimalism to surrealism. “It might have been my favourite part of the entire project,” he adds. Check out some of the art here.

Another key design feature is the aforementioned ‘neighbourhoods’ within the building, which were driven by enabling employees’ discovery. “Take Manhattan for example: you can walk around for 30 minutes and wander into a variety of neighbourhoods — Soho, Chinatown, Lower East Side — that, while having completely different identities, all distinctly feel like New York. We loved the idea of a city within a city: a place you could wander, get lost, and stumble upon something new,” says Christian. 

Each neighbourhood has a distinct identity, colour scheme, furniture style, art programme, and storefronts inspired by Mailchimp’s heritage, customers, people, and the city of Atlanta. “By mirroring the diversity and vibrancy of a city, the office stands as a testament to our commitment to creativity, community, and the small and growing businesses that we proudly serve.”

With all that said and done, this new Atlanta location marks one of the top five largest campuses in the Intuit global real estate portfolio, which Christian believes is a showcase of its commitment to the city of Atlanta,its diverse talent pool, and the fact that, of course, Mailchimp was founded in Atlanta and has been headquartered there ever since. “In every way, this location was selected to continue prioritising our commitment to the local Atlanta community and the growing technology field,” says Christian. 

“It’s pretty surreal,” he adds on the topic of seeing people use the space he helped design. “It’s amazing to see how everyone uses the space differently and how teams have customised their homerooms. The art still blows my mind and I keep changing which floor is my favourite. 

“Honestly I feel really proud — there are so many talented people that put their hearts and souls into this project, and seeing the whole team interact with and experience the output is special. When it comes to numbers, attendance has doubled since opening, a huge win thus far and a testament to the office being a place people want to commute to and work from.”