There’s no question what the first green business incubator is - it’s the Environmental Business Cluster in San Jose in 1994, christened by then Vice President Al Gore and still going strong. However, as you can see by its website (and the fact it started in a suburban office park with cubicles, though now located downtown), it’s not a coworking site. Btw, check out its graduate list of companies - I helped found the firm called Global Opportunity Villages in that incubator - a bit too

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Women make up a majority of those who start their own businesses, so it was a matter of time before that trend intersected with the coworking movement. It also helps to know that top women business builders are looking for creative and affordable environs.

Thus, we have In Good Company (IGC), an affordable/high-value coworking space in the creative capital of Manhattan (Flatiron district) - for women only. It has all the amenities you’d expect in a coworking site, like a conference room, open

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, what about a video explaining what coworking means to creatives? There really wasn’t any until this one came along, produced by none other than the pioneers of one of the first coworking sites in the country, the Affinity Lab in Adams Morgan, Washington DC.

Founded in 2001, the ‘Lab’ is peaking right now with a full house of entrepreneurs who rent workspaces full time and part time. They’re also one of the first to establish an online social network to

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The previous entry profiled the Architect magazine story, The Next Coffeehouse, and there’s one that truly stood out to me as something that a creative would say, “You know, I’d actually really want to work there.“

Designed by STUDIOS Architecture, their Modular Community Kitchen concept is the spatial inverse of the piazza, with a 60’ communal table serving as the ‘town square’. Greg Keffer, principal, provided some insight in this CoolTown interview:

Do you think the market is ready for

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On an island near Shanghai, China formed by the accumulation of, silt shared with a protected bird habitat, will rise a city that is free of greenhouse gas emissions and gas-powered vehicles with an emphasis on energy-efficient design, waste reduction strategies, and renewable energy.

Dongtan, a 21,250-acre eco city, is being developed by Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation as a leading example of green development in China.

Transportation
- All vehicles within the city will be

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Every major city nowadays has a coworking space, but what about a coworking district? That’s the plan with the nascent Adams Morgan Works program.

With 30 million people and counting working at home as we transition to a knowledge-based economy, coffeehouses and coworking sites are becoming increasingly popular, most of which thrive in natural cultural districts. Thus in Adams Morgan, Washington DC’s preeminent natural cultural district, a movement is underway to transform a rather dead day

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Not only are coworking spaces (shared open-plan entrepreneurial workplaces) fast becoming a standard office model in every city, but they’re starting to multiply.

San Francisco has at least four, one of the most recent being the largish (4500 s.f.) downtown Sandbox Suites (pictured above). Meanwhile, Seattle has several, the latest being GiraffeLabs (pictured to the right).

That doesn’t mean quantity trumps quality, as a single coworking space found out the hard way in the small town of

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Adams Morgan, the preeminent natural cultural district of Washington DC, has no problem attracting nightlife whatsoever, especially on the weekends when you’ll have difficulty walking down the sidewalks that are packed with pedestrians.

However, weekdays during the day are another story, when only a tiny fraction of the restaurants are even open and pedestrians are sparse. The picture above isn’t a normal day (taken during the annual Adams Morgan Day festival), though that’s what it could be

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You’ve heard of live-work units where owners either live about their workplace or have extra room to work in their living space. However, how about a live-cowork space? That’s the Hat Factory in San Francisco.

In the evenings the Hat Factory (word on the street was that a former tenant made hats there) is home to three tech-oriented workers, but during business hours they open it up to about seven other untethered workers. As you can see, it has a much more lived-in feel than most coworking

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We hear a lot of buzz about the popularity of people working at home, but how prevalent is it?  Here’s a snapshot via answering a few questions:

How many U.S. Americans are working at home? 28 million at least part time in 2006.
Is that number growing? That’s a 10% increase from the previous year and a 40% increase from 2002.
Do U.S. Americans have home offices?  7 out of 10 have offices or designated work stations, a 112% increases since 2000.
How important are home offices in new homes? 

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If you’re looking for an affordable, creative place to work or hang out, you’re in luck if you live in Pittsburgh, or more precisely, Bellevue, Pennsylvania, 4.5 miles from downtown Pittsburgh. That’s where you’ll find the Creative Treehouse; a 7500 s.f. arts-oriented coworking space.  The key ingredients?  An inexpensive lease in a developing neighborhood.

The membership-structured (starting at a mere $25/month) space features:
- A creative service center that will allow businesses to

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Of course a coworking site in Paris would have a cafe. Strangely enough, it’s one of the only coworking sites to include one, especially given the official definition of coworking as a “cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.“

La Cantine opened January 30, 2008, with 2200 square feet dedicated to three spaces:

- a café and coffee bar for meet-ups, information, exhibitions and project testing;
- a collaborative space for project development (shared

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Creatives, free agents, entrepreneurs and mobile knowledge workers may be driving the economy, but they aren’t going to be driving to work. They prefer avoiding isolation at home, but there are only so many coffeehouses, and even fewer coworking sites.

One growing source of spontaneous workplaces are anchored coworking sites - coworking sites provided by established companies who not only have extra space, but enjoy reserving it for untethered creatives. PSFK: Trends and Inspiration profiles

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Continuing our happiness theme from the previous entry, here’s one way to look at work-life balance happiness:

“In their interviews and surveys, Nash and Stevenson learned that successful professionals who were also happy had found ways to ‘switch and link’ - to switch the focus of their full attention with lightning speed among activities and people in different realms.

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So where do the creatives in Seattle go to cowork when all the other options seem less than fabulous?

As of November 1st, many of them are heading over to Office Nomads, a 5000 s.f., 40-member much-larger-than-usual shared workplace in Capitol Hill, Seattle’s walkable, diverse counterculture mecca. Considering there are 20 million ‘personal businesses’ in the U.S., they’re increasingly not alone in their quest.

Founded by young entrepreneurs Jacob Sayles and Susan Evans, Nomads features:
-

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Maybe these refrains from Seattle entrepreneurs regarding office space, quoted in sound familiar…

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CooperBricolage (CooBric) is a coworking site company without a coworking site. They’re working on finding one, they say, but in the meantime they’re in the same dilemma as a lot of other entrepreneurs, free agents and home-workers who want a shared workplace to share ideas and conversation, but don’t have a common place to meet.

So CooBric found a cafe to serve as their interim coworking site, at Gramstand in Manhattan. Of course, it has to meet the coworking criteria: Progressive

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A quick refresher on what coworking is: “the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space.“

As this article on the Coworking Blog reveals, profitability is a common coworking space challenge. The primary reason? Coworkers still find it more individually profitable to do business at the coffeehouse - it’s free with no commitments.

So

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From an interview with Architect Magazine, I stated how the next generation of architects will work with the creative vision of progressive future tenants rather than the opinion of one developer, with a lot less ego to go around. At the Balcom Agency in Fort Worth, Texas, you can get a hint of things to come in interior design.

From a Design Sponge article, rather than spend the entire interior design budget on one firm, the company distributed $300 to each employee to design their own

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You may be among the millions of people who wish their workplace was a little more, shall we say, inspiring. Well, if you want an example of what such an office could look like, you may want to visit eOffice in London. Click here for a larger photo.

First of all, it’s in the heart of Soho (see pic on our About page), the media hub of London and a magnet for cool cafes, bars and coffeehouses, creatives and entrepreneurs. What good is a an inspired workplace if it’s in the middle of an

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If you’re looking for a cool workplace you need a service like Pittsburgh Cool Space Locator, which finds office space for companies in the ‘coolest’ neighborhoods, as they say. If you’re seeking meaningful examples of cool workplaces, check out their annual Cool Space Awards (winners pictured), where you can get full profiles of the projects outlined below:

Reflect
Blacksmith Studio - Painstaking historic physical/cultural restoration (third right).
The Union Project - Cafe, studio and

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Can a co-workplace; community and collaboration space for entrepreneurs and independents, be so cool that a mayor of one of the most important cities in the world feels it deserves its own day?

Apparently, yes, for May 10, 2007 is now officially Affinity Lab Day in Washington DC. The official recognition by the Mayor of DC, announced on the sixth anniversary of “The Lab“, follows:

Affinity Lab Day

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Where do you put your city’s most innovative companies?

Well, in Greenville, SC, the answer is easy. They’d obviously go into the Innovate Building.

What makes it worthy of the name, and more importantly, the companies?

The loft-like building is located downtown in a former textile mill built in 1908 with hand-molded brick, exposed timbers, and stunning solid maple flooring, yet it features state-of-the-art audio and visual communications systems; open, flexible floor plans; and

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Yours would if you worked at Red Bull.

Last week, in How ‘play’ is going to shape our communities, we touched on the growing interest in using the motivational methodology behind ‘play‘ as the motivational infrastructure behind both education and work. Hey, if it works I’m all for it - anything other than sitting in a room with 100 other people being lectured to death.

I’m not sure the Red Bull headquarters is what they had in mind, but I can guarantee you this - there are a lot more people

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Continuing yesterday’s entry on the Cool Spaces Report, what are the people behind the relocating companies saying they prioritize?

The single most important relocation factors in the report are:
1. Specific location: 40%
2. Price: 19%
3. Proximity to homes upper management/workforce: 15%

As they say in real estate, location, location, location. The specific location is typically associated with a cool neighborhood to begin with, and the upper management/workforce will be leaning the same

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