I spent a month designing an office for my design needs. I knew it probably already existed, but had a term I didn't know. Unless I knew that term, it wouldn't show up in google. So I went in blind, and used AI for the outline document, concept art, and tier levels. The AI brought up co-working Spaces, so today I looked it up.
Wikipedia had the term
There are websites dedicated to it with history.
And tons of companies that franchise out the idea
Wikipedia mentioned that co-working is supposed to help urban areas rebuild from the office collapse happening right now. In fact, all of the coworking spaces in Orlando are in the urban center.
They seem very nice. I walked past this one yesterday in fact.
The truth be told, all of this is offered by the Melrose center at the library in urban Orlando.
This makes me think there is a problem with the coworking office business model. It's aimed at office hipsters. Is there enough money to be made from this?
There are good outlines for the business needs. The big trick is getting the right furniture.
The business sites recommend urban centers, not suburban shopping areas. So it's office hipsters all the way down. I just want a space away from my house and loud kids.
The Melrose Center also has a ton of makerspace as well. A makerspace has 3D printers, woodworking supplies and tools, CNC machines and other stuff to build things. I've had experience with them, and it's often tech bros. It's very industrial and the places are found in or near warehouses with crazy people running it.
As far as I can tell co-working Spaces don't have them. In fact some are using the term to sound cooler to tech hipsters.
There are ways to have a makerspace in a co-working space, but it costs a lot.
Which is why libraries and schools do it, but you don't find a lot of business
I want a space that's 10-20 minutes from my house. There are plenty of office areas or commercial areas that could be used for a co-working space. Some of the franchises have bumped rent to $500-$1,000 a month, which only a hipster would pay. Basically, I expect the coworking office and makerspace to start merging and moving to commercial shipping centers. The big expensive offices will be in urban areas, but most will be smaller and found near a McDonald's or taco bell.
With malls dying across the country, it might be a good way to repurpose them.
They would also make great haunted houses or themed experience areas.
Or incredible Airsoft arenas.
Why not both? Imagine a themed experience where you are hunting and being hunted by monsters.
Yeah repurposing malls would be interesting.. maybe some streamer/youtube place where peoppe live and stream from. China has these streamer hubs where thousands of streamers do their streaming in a large office building. Mostly streaming bullshit and scams and thot stuff.
That's an interesting idea.
I have a friend who works for a government agency in Sweden, they go to the office once per week, deskspace and everything needed to work and have meetings is available there as a normal office, it is just that it is divided in four other agencies the other days.
It honestly seems like a huge quality of life and efficiency improvement as you don't have to go into random meetings constantly because someone 'has a crisis'.
All I know about this is WeWork famously made it huge in this space and then imploded under a bunch of metoo and diversity grievances (and some actual mismanagement). Then lost 99% of its market cap and got delisted.
I didn't know it existed until this morning, so I didn't know that either. It makes sense though. They all seem fairly hipsterish.
Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist, but I've always assumed that the tool quality in shared workshops wouldn't be great due to occasional misuse, and the fees would be relatively high, again due to breakage from machine misuse or people walking off with things. Have you found otherwise?
I save time and money thanks to my office being 0 minutes from my house, because it is in my house. It’s also a great way to avoid people you can’t stand.