KONTOR: Co-working Brooklyn Style

Brooklyn is the creative heart of New York City and a hotbed for its startup scene. As such, the borough has experienced a growing need for flexible workplaces able to accommodate entrepreneurs. The owners of COWORKRS, who have two Manhattan locales where individuals and teams can rent desk space, recently opened a new Brooklyn location to meet some of that demand. They hired Brooklyn’s own LEESER Architecture to turn part of a former industrial building into a collection of workspaces worthy of the borough’s most promising businesses. The firm gave Kontor a first look at the project. Read more at KONTOR >>

BROWNSTONER: Meet the Artists and Designers Behind Brooklyn's Hippest Coworking Space

In some parts of the world, maybe, the word “work” conjures up images of business suits in a dreary commute to do 9 to 5 at cookie cutter cubicles in a drab office. This, however, is Brooklyn, where we work at creative and innovative jobs, and demand office spaces to match. The new Coworkrs Gowanus space is a great example. As with other successful Coworkrs spaces in Flatiron and the Financial District, the Gowanus location offers freelancers and small businesses a light-filled, airy coworking space, with open common areas, conference rooms, and kitchens that put most office break rooms to shame. Read more at BROWNSTONER >>

YIMBY: Office And Retail Conversion Slated For Bushwick Warehouse, 455 Jefferson Street

The East Williamsburg-Bushwick industrial zone is slowly transitioning from a no man’s land around the heavily polluted Newtown Creek to a mixed-use neighborhood complete with hotels,nightclubs and retail. Near the Jefferson Street L stop, the Bushwick Collective mural project has hastened gentrification by beautifying several barren blocks with the work of dozens of street artists. So it’s no surprise that a hulking six-story factory nearby at 455 Jefferson Street may become offices and retail...read more at YIMBY >>

PERSPECTIVE: LEESER Architecture Completes EM QUARTIER in Bangkok

Honoured with the 2014 Asia Pacific International Property Award for Best Commercial Architectural Design, the mall evokes a synthesis of beauty and unpredictability that can be linked both to nature and urbanism. Based loosely on a spiral form, the buildings alter this traditional shape with floor plates being shifted so they do not align with the floors above. This maneuvering allows for garden terraces that blur the lines between inside and out. To continue this illusion, ample amounts of glass have been incorporated into the soft curves between the buildings. read more at Perspective >>

DESIGN BOOM: leeser architecture combines nature + urbanism with luxury shopping mall in bangkok

Bangkok has a new addition to their array of luxury shopping malls across the city with EM Quartier by New York based firm Leeser Architecture. The expansive retail complex is an accumulation of three new buildings with one being a renovation, all of which consisting of a diverse variety of mixed-use retail space, dining and entertainment. read more at DesignBoom >>