The open office is hardly new; think of Frank Lloyd Wright’s breathtaking 1930s design of SC Johnson’s headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, with its 22,000-square-foot work arena featuring a forest of slender pillars capped by saucer-shaped tops. Fast-forward to Coworkrs dazzling new co-working space, seen here, which recently opened in Gowanus and was designed byThomas Leeser. read more at NY MAG >>
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 >>
LEESER Architecture converted a former industrial space near Brooklyn’s notoriously polluted Gowanus Canal into a new home for Genius Media, the 'Annotate the World' company that began as Rap Genius. The design firm made the brick-and-timber space feel ethereal with rows of lighting along the ceiling, reflective cabinets, and glass partitions covered in iridescent film, filling the office with washed-out rainbows...more at REFINERY29 >>
Tech startups, like birds of a feather, tend to flock to specific areas—migrating to such hubs as Silicon Valley, Silicon Beach, and the Brooklyn Tech Triangle. But, when the founders of Genius—an online platform that allows users to annotate lyrics texts—realized the company was outgrowing its warren of small offices in Williamsburg, they took a different route to find a more cohesive home for their expanding team of developers and editors...read more at Architect's Newspaper >>
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 >>