Archinect - News

Your next role could be at an Airbnb co-founder's housing startup

2024-11-27T12:19:00-05:00

Following our previous look at an opening for a Compliance Director at AKAM, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for an architectural designer at Samara.

The open role calls for an individual who will join Samara’s Project & Design Team “as an inspirational force for creating new ways of living.” Among the responsibilities for the role will be participating in the conceptualization and development of new product design work, the iterating of design concepts, and producing 2D and 3D representations of projects.

Samara's Backyard range. Image credit: Samara

Why the role interests us

In the same week that our Meet Your Next Employer series profiled the work of Cover, the open role that Samara offers us the opportunity to profile another California-based housing startup focused on delivering prefabricated housing. As we previously reported, Samara is led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and former Flex chief executive Mi...

Airbnb co-founder's ADU company Samara begins production in Mexico factory

2024-03-07T12:35:00-05:00

California-based Samara has opened a factory in Mexicali, Mexico, to scale up manufacturing of their backyard ADU units. As we reported in late 2022, the startup is led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia alongside former Flex chief executive Mike McNamara.

Image credit: Samara

The 150,000-square-foot factory will host the construction of Samara’s modular units, including interior and exterior finishes. Following production in the factory, each unit will be loaded onto a truck for delivery to the customer’s property.

Image credit: Samara

The company’s first unit, Backyard, is being manufactured in studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom layouts, with a larger two-bedroom expected to launch soon. Samara notes that the unit can be installed in “as few as seven months,” including permitting, with 30 days of on-site labor. The unit is currently available for purchase in California.

Image credit: Samara

“Our homes are central to our lives,” said McNamara in a statement. “On average, most people in...

Airbnb co-founder's startup Samara unveils 'Backyard,' its first ADU model for California

2022-11-16T11:29:00-05:00

California-based housing startup Samara has unveiled further details of their factory-produced studio and one-bedroom units. The company, led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and former Flex chief executive Mike McNamara, will now roll out a selection of customizable ADU units, collectively known as the Backyard range, across Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Image credit: Samara

Backyard studio units start at $289,000 and one-bedroom units start at $329,000, including installation costs. While the pricing of the units remains the same throughout California, the cost of installation differs based on regional factors. Customers can also choose between five colors, two roof designs, and customizable windows, doors, and decks.

Image credit: Samara

“Built out of durable, cutting-edge materials, precision engineered and assembled in a factory, Backyard is designed to last a lifetime,” Samara said. “It harvests enough solar energy to power itself, and we’ve made it incredib...

Airbnb announces they don't want to just share homes, they want to build them too

2018-11-30T12:38:00-05:00

What's next for Airbnb? The estimated $38 billion dollar company has transformed the home-sharing network forever. Having successfully turned homes, mud huts, even castles into spaces for rent, the global enterprise is searching for new ways to to think about housing. In 2016, Joe Gebbia the CPO and co-founder of Airbnb started Samara. An experimental product development team at Airbnb, the goal was to find ways where new products and services could push the company.

It's been announced thru Samara's website that a new initiative called, "Backyard" will make its debut in 2019. The project is based on investigating how homes can be built to satisfy and respond to the changing needs of owners and occupants. The goal is to find ways to design and prototype new ways of building a home and how these units can it can be shared. According to Gebbia in a recent press statement, Backyard isn’t a house but a way for the digital company to rethink housing. Gebbia and his...