BIG BOI × AIRBNB CASE STUDY

Designing Within a Legacy

A custom dining room wallcovering for The Dungeon, one of Atlanta’s most significant hip-hop landmarks

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Client: Big Boi × Airbnb
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Project Type: Hospitality / Experiential Design
Scope: Custom Wallpaper Design
Featured Space: Dining Room

Value: A signature, one-of-one design that turned a room into a living expression of a cultural icon's story, creating a guest experience no off-the-shelf product could replicate.

The Dungeon is a landmark in Atlanta music history, where Big Boi, André 3000, and the Dungeon Family helped shape the sound of Southern hip-hop.

Complex Flavors designed a custom wallpaper for the dining room, adding a new visual layer to a space already rich with cultural meaning.

The goal was to create a surface that honored legacy, music, memory, and Atlanta culture without overpowering the story already held within the home.

Designing for a space that already means something

This was not a blank canvas.

The Dungeon already carried history.

It was a place where music was written, recorded, and developed; a place tied directly to the rise of OutKast, the Dungeon Family, and the evolution of Southern hip-hop. Airbnb describes the home as filled with memorabilia, artwork, record plaques, and design details inspired by the people, neighborhoods, and creative moments that shaped that legacy. Airbnb

The challenge was to introduce a custom surface without competing with that history.

The wallpaper needed to add:

Identity without imitation.
Culture without cliché.
Presence without overpowering the room.
Story without turning the space into a theme.

That distinction matters.

The work needed to feel like it belonged there.

THE CHALLENGE

  • Let the walls participate in the story

    The vision was to transform the dining room into another chapter of the broader Dungeon experience.

    Rather than treating the walls as passive background, Complex Flavors approached the wallpaper as part of the spatial narrative.

    The custom pattern would give the dining room its own distinct identity while still supporting the home’s larger story of creativity, music, and cultural legacy.

    The goal was for guests to feel that the space was specific to The Dungeon, not something that could be lifted and placed into any hospitality property.

  • Translating rhythm into surface

    Complex Flavors developed a custom wallpaper specifically for the dining room.

    The pattern was designed around the idea of rhythm, repetition, movement, and legacy — qualities that connect naturally to music but can also be expressed visually through surface design.

    Instead of using literal album covers, oversized logos, or obvious musical imagery, the approach was more integrated.

    Pattern became atmosphere.

    Repetition became rhythm.

    The wall became part of the experience.

    At architectural scale, the wallpaper helped anchor the dining room and gave the space a visual identity that could hold its own alongside the home’s existing memorabilia, artwork, and history.

  • More than music

    The cultural importance of The Dungeon reaches beyond OutKast alone.

    It represents a pivotal chapter in Atlanta’s creative history and the rise of Southern hip-hop. Airbnb positions the property as a place where guests can experience that history physically — through the studio, memorabilia, artwork, interiors, and atmosphere of the home.

    That context changes the role of design.

    In a space like this, interior elements are not simply decorative decisions. They become part of how a story is preserved, interpreted, and experienced by a new audience.

    Complex Flavors contributed to that experience by giving the dining room a custom visual language that connected culture, hospitality, and place.

    The value was not in adding more objects to the room.

    It was in allowing the surface itself to carry meaning.

  • From functional dining room to cultural touchpoint

    Before the wallpaper, the dining room functioned primarily as a place to gather.

    The custom surface gave it another role.

    It became a visual moment within the guest journey.

    The room now had an identity of its own while remaining connected to the broader Dungeon story.

    Pattern introduced rhythm.
    Scale introduced presence.
    Custom design introduced specificity.

    The transformation was therefore not simply aesthetic.

    The wallpaper helped turn the dining area into a cultural touchpoint — a space where guests could gather inside an environment that felt connected to the history of the home.

PHOTO GALLERY

  • Custom neutral wallpaper pattern featuring illustrated portraits, roses, crowns, and repeating graphic motifs.

    Custom Wallpaper Pattern

    Custom wallpaper artwork developed for Big Boi’s Dungeon Family Airbnb dining room, using portraiture, roses, crowns, and repetition to create a layered visual tribute to legacy and culture.

  • Big Boi Airbnb dining room with custom neutral wallpaper, round wood dining table, cream chairs, gold chandelier, and framed record artwork.

    Dining Room — Front View

    The finished dining room at The Dungeon, where Complex Flavors’ custom wallcovering surrounds the space and creates a subtle cultural backdrop for the furnishings, artwork, and architecture.

  • Big Boi seated in a living room surrounded by framed record plaques, neutral furniture, and modern decor.

    Big Boi in the Home

    Big Boi photographed inside The Dungeon, surrounded by record plaques and memorabilia that reflect the home’s deep connection to Atlanta music history and the legacy of OutKast.

  • Dining room with custom illustrated wallpaper, round table, cream chairs, gold chandelier, and view into an adjoining green lounge.

    Dining Room — Alternate View

    An alternate view of the dining room highlights how the custom wallpaper wraps the space, adding identity and visual continuity while allowing the furnishings and adjoining rooms to remain distinct.

The story of The Dungeon extended beyond the home itself.

Shared through OutKast’s own social platform, the Airbnb experience became part of a larger cultural conversation around the group’s legacy, Atlanta music history, and the significance of the space.

For Complex Flavors, that mattered because the custom dining room wallcovering was not created for a static interior. It lived inside an environment people were visiting, experiencing, documenting, and sharing.

The design became part of a cultural experience that continued beyond the walls.

CULTURE IN MOTION

Watch the experience on TikTok

THE IMPACT

  • A signature room for a cultural icon. Complex Flavors was trusted to create a custom design for one of hip-hop's most influential artists, where the standard for originality was set by the host himself.

  • Identity you can feel the moment you walk in. The room became unmistakably specific to its host and his story, not a themed backdrop.

  • Cultural legacy, translated into surface. The design turned the architecture itself into part of the narrative, connecting guests to a creative legacy that shaped music and culture.

  • An experience that can't be copied. No off-the-shelf wallcovering could deliver this. The room exists in one place, for one story.

  • A moment guests carry with them. Something meaningful to discover, photograph, and remember long after checkout.

CLOSING

Because some spaces hold more than furniture.

They hold memory.
They hold culture.
They hold the energy of what happened there.

For The Dungeon, the opportunity was not to overwrite that history, but to design within it.

The custom dining room wallpaper became one more layer in a living cultural landmark — helping transform the space while honoring the legacy already held within its walls.

Spaces with Soul.