Shared workspaces have become so ubiquitous in the global urban landscape that WeWork, the defacto face of the movement, now has offices in 12 countries and more than 30 spaces in New York alone. But, in an increasingly crowded market filled with companies like WorkHouse, Projective Space and Ensemble, there’s a new venture in Brooklyn that’s an antidote to the rent-a-desk model that’s sweeping the globe.
Say hello to New Lab: a private working community for hardware manufacturers, particularly in the area of technology, located inside its 84,000 sq-ft former shipyard. 'When we saw this building', says founder David Belt, 'we thought, this is one of the last places in New York where interesting things can happen.'
New Lab’s co-working space in Brooklyn Navy Yard
New Lab resides inside Building 128, the once-fallow monument to machinery’s past, inside the Brooklyn Navy Yard – part of the regeneration of the borough’s proclivity towards making and manufacturing. 'I love Brooklyn. I live in Brooklyn,' says Belt, 'but people tell us if they’re in some maker-space, it’s hard to attract top engineers from MIT or Carnegie Mellon.'
Belt emphatically explains, 'We wanted to build New Lab for this community – for the smartest, brightest people at the top of their game who are also entrepreneurs and are looking into the abyss.' The private workspace is partially funded by the New York City government in an effort to revitalise industry, and not nostalgia of yesteryear’s smoggy industrialised past – as New Lab symbolically and quite literally shows, it’s a clean, forward-thinking future.
The concept for New Lab, explains Belt, stems from 'what’s going on in 3D printing, or what’s happening in other forms of manufacturing, what companies in NYC are building interesting products. Doing hardware in NY in difficult. We can create a public/private partnership and get support from the city and state and tax credit financing.'
Though the project was financially greenlit more than four years ago, it's only now that New Lab has officially opened, after receiving the $35 million private investment it needed to finalise construction and equip the space with state-of-the-art resources, from 3D printers to wood and metal shops, and printing studios.
Currently, 30 or so tenants occupy the space, including Nanotronics, Jason Krugman Studio and Honeybee Robotics – even outspoken 3D industry guru Francis Bitonti has moved in. While it may seem like the secrets of tomorrow are being plotted inside today, as Belt says, 'we like to tell people, "We don’t know what the future is going to look like in the future."' Except that it’ll be made in Brooklyn.
New Lab is an interdisciplinary space designed to support entrepreneurs working in emerging technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence and connected devices
The Brooklyn Navy Yard hub is a cathedral of manufacturing which includes studios and reserved workspaces, prototyping shops, lounges and open spaces, a cafe and a kitchen, meeting rooms and event rooms, to be shared by everyone working there
INFORMATION
For more information, visit the New Lab website
ADDRESS
63 Flushing Avenue
Building 128
Cumberland Gate
Brooklyn NY 11205
-
The most comprehensive showing of Nan Goldin’s photographs and films is intense and emotionalNan Goldin's moving-image work makes a heavy impact in ‘This Will Not End Well’ at Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca
-
How We Host: Interior designer Heide Hendricks shows us how to throw the ultimate farmhouse fêteThe designer, one half of the American design firm Hendricks Churchill, delves into the art of entertaining – from pasta to playlists
-
Arbour House is a north London home that lies low but punches highArbour House by Andrei Saltykov is a low-lying Crouch End home with a striking roof structure that sets it apart
-
Step inside this resilient, river-facing cabin for a life with ‘less stuff’A tough little cabin designed by architects Wittman Estes, with a big view of the Pacific Northwest's Wenatchee River, is the perfect cosy retreat
-
Remembering Robert A.M. Stern, an architect who discovered possibility in the pastIt's easy to dismiss the late architect as a traditionalist. But Stern was, in fact, a design rebel whose buildings were as distinctly grand and buttoned-up as his chalk-striped suits
-
Own an early John Lautner, perched in LA’s Echo Park hillsThe restored and updated Jules Salkin Residence by John Lautner is a unique piece of Californian design heritage, an early private house by the Frank Lloyd Wright acolyte that points to his future iconic status
-
The Architecture Edit: Wallpaper’s houses of the monthFrom wineries-turned-music studios to fire-resistant holiday homes, these are the properties that have most impressed the Wallpaper* editors this month
-
The Stahl House – an icon of mid-century modernism – is for sale in Los AngelesAfter 65 years in the hands of the same family, the home, also known as Case Study House #22, has been listed for $25 million
-
Houston's Ismaili Centre is the most dazzling new building in America. Here's a look insideLondon-based architect Farshid Moussavi designed a new building open to all – and in the process, has created a gleaming new monument
-
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fountainhead will be opened to the public for the first timeThe home, a defining example of the architect’s vision for American design, has been acquired by the Mississippi Museum of Art, which will open it to the public, giving visitors the chance to experience Frank Lloyd Wright’s genius firsthand
-
Clad in terracotta, these new Williamsburg homes blend loft living and an organic feelThe Williamsburg homes inside 103 Grand Street, designed by Brooklyn-based architects Of Possible, bring together elegant interiors and dramatic outdoor space in a slick, stacked volume
