ICYMI: Unilever’s Hoboken HQ Becomes a Hands-On Innovation Campus

In this In Case You Missed It episode of I Hear Design, we revisit a recent interiors+sources article on Unilever’s newly reimagined North American headquarters in Hoboken, New Jersey. Designed by Perkins&Will, the 111,000-square-foot workplace consolidates Unilever’s former 350,000-square-foot suburban headquarters into a more compact urban campus built for discovery, testing, collaboration, and brand experience. Rather than functioning as a traditional corporate office, the new HQ is organized around Unilever’s product development process—Discover, Define, Test, and Deliver—with spaces that support everything from hands-on experimentation to consumer feedback and storytelling. Listeners will hear how features such as a professional-grade kitchen, full-service salon, retail lab, company store, modular partitions, mobile furnishings, and flexible work zones help Unilever teams experience products the way consumers do. The episode also explores the project’s broader workplace implications, including how urban location, right-sizing, reuse, and adaptable design can help companies rethink the role of the office in a hybrid era. Tune in for a closer look at how workplace design can become a platform for innovation, sustainability, employee engagement, and brand connection.