WIKICAMPERS
Founded in 2012, Wikicampers (WKC) is a specialist in the rental and sale of camper vans between private individuals. As a pure web player, the company has experienced strong and steady growth, with a significant increase in its business volume. This success is driven by the growing popularity of this type of travel and vacation, the quality of its efficient, responsive, and proactive service, as well as by the diversification of its activities (insurance, sales, online store, etc.), which have evolved naturally and organically in response to the needs expressed by the Wikicampers community.
Given this rapid growth, WKC projected in 2021 a workforce of 75 to 100 employees within 10 years — compared to 31 at the time. As a result, its management team wanted to anticipate these developments by constructing an office building designed to support and accompany these transformations.
The goal was therefore to conceive a flexible, adaptable, and transformable building — one that would allow work to be reimagined (and vice versa), and that would enable both roles and organizational structures to evolve over time. Moreover, the company strongly values collaboration, open communication, and fluidity between departments — both in terms of information flow and professional mobility. The spatial approach to this new building needed to promote and facilitate an open, organic organization in which both people and information can circulate freely (and quickly).
Aware of how much the quality and generosity of the work environment contribute to employee balance, cohesion, and engagement, WKC emphasizes comfort at work, relaxation areas, shared spaces, open views, outdoor spaces, greenery, and natural light. To achieve these programmatic goals and realize this project, we conducted a programming study in close collaboration with the company’s teams in order to understand not only the existing organization and the wishes and needs of each person, but also to collectively envision a future that is, by nature, fluctuating and uncertain.
The plot is located at the southwestern edge of the Izarbel ZAC in Bidart (64210).
It featured a steep slope and included three notable trees to be preserved. Additionally, there was an obligation to create such a large number of parking spaces that no one wanted to acquire the land. It was too complicated, even too costly.
Furthermore, since this parcel is on the boundary of the ZAC, it seemed essential to us to preserve, as much as possible, its «forested» character (shown in red on the plan) beyond the three identified trees—not only for obvious ecological reasons but also to maintain one of Izarbel’s key qualities: its proximity and relationship to nature, and the value of use this represents for its users. These factors therefore constituted important constraints and parameters regarding the choice of site location and the optimization of the building’s size.
