Space-squatting

01 : 07 : 2016 Spacious : Workplace Futures : Freelancers

New York – The co-working phenomenon is expanding to restaurant spaces that are not used during the day in a bid to tackle urban inefficiencies.

  • Start-up Spacious provides space hosts and free coffee, opening up restaurants before 5:00pm service begins
  • It estimates that more than 2,000 restaurants are closed during the day in Manhattan and Brooklyn alone
Spacious, New York Spacious, New York
Spacious, New York Spacious, New York
Spacious, New York Spacious, New York
Spacious, New York Spacious, New York

Co-working spaces have been one of the great success stories of recent years, from the US-founded £12bn ($16bn, €14.3bn) WeWork to the UK’s challenger brand Second Home. Existing offers tend to retain the office model of purpose-built spaces, but New York-based start-up Spacious does things differently.

Founded to tackle the issue of unused space in our urban centres, Spacious works with dinner-only restaurants to create appealing co-working spaces that would otherwise be empty during the day. Access to Spacious is available for £71.40 ($95, €85) per month, or £21.80 ($29, €26) per day, and users can also invite one guest per hour for free, with additional guests costing £4.50 ($6, €5.40) each per hour.

Spacious describes the concept as a reprogramming of urban space and plans to roll it out to other urban spaces that are inefficiently used. Host spaces will be carefully screened to ensure a high-quality co-working experience.

The Big Picture

Space-squatting was a trend that we spotted as part of Symbiotic Branding back in 2012, and is coming to fruition now.

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