Resort & Second Home

Lisbon is rapidly becoming known as the California of Europe. The similarities stretch further than just its west coast location and great surf: the city is also starting to compete with Silicon Valley in attracting startups and entrepreneurs.
Last month the Portuguese capital was included in WIRED’s list of hottest start-up destinations for the first time, an acknowledgement that the number of tech and creative companies based in the city is growing fast. Over the last five years, 40 Portugal-based startups have raised more than $166 million in funding.
Pictured: An event space inside Lisbon WorkHub, which took over the old Abel Pereira da Fonseca wine warehouse.
While much of the impetus comes from local entrepreneurs, international investors are also making their homes in the city. Foreigners accounted for 90% of the €730 million invested in Portuguese real estate last year, nearly three times the amount for 2013.
While enterprises are committing long term, others are digital nomads basing themselves in Lisbon for a few weeks or months. But all of them are looking for interesting spaces in which to work, and to cater for this growth, a number of new co-working spaces are popping in the city.
Second Home Lisboa will open above Mercado da Ribeira in December. Photography: Courtesy of Second Home
NOW, a 4,000 sq m shared workspace – set to be the largest in Lisbon – aims to open in November in the Beato area to the east of the city. The following month sees London based Second Home open its first international space in the city’s historic centre, Cais do Sodre. Another British coworking brand Ministry of Startups is also considering a new space in Lisbon, choosing the Portuguese capital over destinations such as Tel Aviv and Berlin.
Even Lisbon’s city council is getting in on the act, releasing the former Manutenção Militar factory to serve as a creative hub. As well as acting as an incubator, it will host the administrative offices of Web Summit, which promises to draw some 50,000 more entrepreneurs to the city this month when it holds its annual tech conference at the Feira Internacional de Lisboa.
Manutenção Militar Complex or MMC was an industrial facility that produced food, uniforms and other goods for the Portuguese Army. Photography: DOCOMOMO International
‘Lisbon is the place to be now,’ says Peter Faber, co-founder of Surf Office, a coworking space where members can live on site. ‘A lot of interesting people are moving here and starting new projects; there are a lot of things happening.’
Coworklisboa-founder Fernando Mendes – and the man behind NOW – agrees with Faber. ‘This is the best country to be right now. Portuguese people love to receive new comers. Add in sun, beaches, safety, good food and you have the secret of our success.’

Mendes says that 30% of the companies that use Coworklisboa’s spaces are from abroad, up from just 5% in 2010. Reflecting that, NOW will also offer living spaces alongside its shared work areas.
‘NOW is much more than an incubator or co-working space. It’s being designed to accommodate new services to better support the huge wave of entrepreneurs we expect will be coming to the city in the next few years. We’ll have all the dimensions, to support everything from the nomadic freelancer to digital startup and designer makers,’ says Mendes.
5 Lisbon coworking spaces and tech hubs you should know
NOW
Now is the biggest proposed co-working space in Lisbon and is scheduled to open in November. Spanning 4,000 sq m, it will include living spaces alongside shared work areas and studio spaces. The project also has a community focus and will boost shared learning among members.
Second Home Lisboa
Architect’s visualisation of Second Home Lisboa. Courtesy of Second Home
Second Home’s Lisbon outpost is slated to open in early December and will be located above Mercardo da Ribeira – a vibrant food court and market near the river. With interiors designed by award-winning Spanish architects Selgas Cano, creators of the brand’s original London space and the 2015 Serpentine Gallery Summer Pavilion, Second Home Lisboa will feature a bookshop, cafe and bar that hosts cultural events.
Surf Office
Photography: Surf Office
If you’re looking for a short term space to live, work and play, Surf Office could be the answer. Centrally located in Cais do Sodre, the city’s party zone, Surf Office has rooms to rent from €60 per night and the space comes with a shared workspace, super fast wifi, break-out rooms and a lounge. Companies from 2 to 20 people can hire the rooms by the night if they want to take a break from their usual location. Surf trips are optional!
Lisbon WorkHub
Photography: Lisbon WorkHub
Situated in the east of Lisbon in Poco do Bispo – an area rapidly becoming the city’s Shoreditch – Lisbon WorkHub is based in one of the most striking buildings in the area: the former Abel Pereira da Fonseca wine warehouse. It features two vast 5-metre-tall circular windows overlooking a pretty tree-shaded square below. Desk spaces are available from €120 per month with events spaces, and private offices from €500 per month.
Todos
Photography: Todos
Also in Poco do Bispo, this 1,600 sq m creative hub focuses on multi-media, film and photography. It interviews all applicants for suitability. Todos offers 40 sq m studio spaces for rent from €400/month, and also has a 17m x 9m photography studio, editing and post production suite, fitting rooms and meeting spaces.
Read next: Why Lisbon’s startup scene will hit full throttle in 2016 More

Second Home will install a blow-up dome in east London this autumn to host creative workshops and yoga sessions for a day.
The creative incubator and event group’s pneumatic PVC structure – designed by Spanish practice Dosis – rises over eight-metres-high, and can be reconfigured from a single bubble into several rooms using a system of membranes and zippers.
Dubbed Second Dome, the inflatable installation features a transparent canopy, spotted floor and bright yellow walls that are designed to add a ‘sense of cosiness and warmth’.

‘Even though we are diminishing the limits of contact, between nature and inside the structure, the artificial and the natural, we also had the intention of having a very artificial environment that is somehow quite alien,’ says Dosis co-founder Ignacio Peydro. ‘It’s not a space that you can find everywhere.’
Second Home originally commissioned the dome for business and technology event Founders Forum 2016, but plans to reinflate it in London Fields on 1 October. A day-long programme of community events, including film screenings, animation and design workshops and a wellness programme will be open to local children and families.
Adds Second Home co-founder Sam Aldenton: ‘There’s an ephemerality that comes with something inflatable, in the sense that what goes up must come down. Architecture has the opportunity to be experimental, and when you’re not working with a fixed building you can push the boundaries that little bit further.’

After its stint in London Fields, Second Home plans to tour the structure around various locations in London.
It’s not the only architectural pop-up the company owns. Second Home previously bought the brightly coloured 2015 Serpentine Pavilion, designed by Selgascano, which it plans to turn into a community art space in LA.
Read next: Selgascano designs the ‘no-phone’ Libreria bookstore in London for Second Home More

There’s no shortage of startup ‘scenes’ being talked about these days. Whether it’s in European hotspots like London, Berlin, and Barcelona, or the tech world’s spiritual home in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship has scarcely been this popular since the days of the Silk Road.
One city flying under the radar is Lisbon – but that’s set to change in 2016. News that popular London co-working space Second Home will expand to the Portuguese capital this May follows an announcement that the Web Summit conference (to the startup world what CES is to oversized TVs) will relocate from Dublin to Lisbon in November.
Also set to land is the first Portuguese outpost of Impact Hub, whose global network of socially-minded co-working spaces spans some 70 cities. Opening in June, it will take over an abandoned pavilion in the Beato Marvila district, with desk rentals on offer for up to 300 entrepreneurs for a paltry €80 euros a month.
But Lisbon isn’t just about what’s coming. Web Summit and Impact Hub will join existing local startup events like the Lisbon Investment Summit, and sit alongside incubators including Startup Lisboa. Influential venture capitalist firms are also rooted in Lisbon, such as Caixa Capital – an off-shoot of Portugal’s largest bank – rounding-out the city’s growing startup ecosystem.
Web Summit’s arrival will shine the international spotlight on Lisbon, but it already has a burgeoning tech scene. So why Lisbon, and why now for companies like Web Summit and Second Home?
London’s Second Home (pictured) is opening a Lisbon outpost in May. Photography: Iwan Baan
Lisbon living
One obvious factor is Lisbon’s low cost of living. Various figures put rent at nearly 75 percent cheaper than London, and you’d need a take-home monthly salary of more than $7,000 to enjoy the same quality of life in New York as you could for under €2,500 in Lisbon (less than $3,600), according to Numbeo’s latest data.
And it’s not just rent that’s cheap. It’s unusual to pay much more than €1 for a coffee or beer, while grocery prices are nearly 25 percent less than in another major startup hub, Berlin.
Perversely, Portugal’s tough economic climate (particularly between 2010 and 2014) stood the capital in good stead for a tech boom. Its shrinking job market helped spawn a new generation of local entrepreneurs that, ultimately, kickstarted the city’s resurgence and imbued it with new sense of self.
Another key part of Lisbon’s allure is the work-life balance enjoyed by residents. It’s no secret that Portugal enjoys great weather year-round, and the many nearby beaches are easily accessible by public transport. Maria Almeida, the ‘Almighty Duchess of Content’ at Lisbon non-profit Beta-i – the investment group behind top startup accelerator programmes, like the Lisbon Challenge and Beta-start – explains what a typical day might look like in the Portuguese capital for an entrepreneur or startup employee.
‘It’s not uncommon to leave the office at 7pm and go surfing or go for a drink with your friends in a bar with a stunning view over the city,’ she says.
The Village Underground Lisboa co-working hub combines shipping containers and buses. Photography: VUL
Co-working culture
Lisbon’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is now beginning to mature. As Second Home co-founder Rohan Silva said to TechCrunch recently: ‘Lisbon feels like east London just before the tech cluster exploded… It’s a super-creative city.’
When Silva’s Lisbon space opens inside Mercado da Ribeira in May, it will join a number of co-working spaces in the city including Coworklisboa and Village Underground Lisboa. The latter – linked to Shoreditch’s iconic Village Underground – is a particularly striking space, comprising shipping containers and disused buses. Architecturally, it’s designed to encourage interaction between co-workers.
Inside one of Village Underground Lisboa’s upcycled buses. Photography: VUL
Almeida points to some of the city’s most important success stories as further evidence of its maturation: ‘Startups such as Uniplaces, Farfetch, Talkdesk, Unbabel or Feedzai are good examples of that dynamism.’
She continues: ‘The Municipality of Lisbon also pays close attention to this startup community and there are many incentives for entrepreneurs to start their companies here.’
Giving entrepreneurs a boost
Such incentives include a reduced tax rate for startup businesses, which can be as low as 7.5 percent, while investments of up to €5m can enjoy tax deductions of 20 percent. Corporate filing processes, too, have been simplified from a relatively lengthy ordeal to being executed at the push of a button.
Lisbon has an expansive transit network made up of trams, trains and buses. Photography: Ann Wuyts
Lisbon’s tech-friendly infrastructure
Lisbon also benefits from the presence of two major universities and one specialist polytechnic institute, which help furnish its burgeoning businesses with up to 100,000 graduates a year versed in all things design, development, and programming. Skilled graduates equate to cheap labour in the eyes of entrepreneurs, so this is another reason why new money and opportunities are flooding into the Portuguese capital.
Good transport links – the airport is just 15 minutes by taxi from the centre of town – and fast Wi-Fi speeds add to its appeal.
These are some of the reasons Dublin startup event Web Summit, which drew crowds of 30,000 in 2015, chose to relocate to Lisbon’s spaceship-like MEO Arena and FIL Feira Internacional de Lisboa.
The MEO Arena, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merril for the Universal Expo in 1998. Photography: Dynamosquito
Designed by Portuguese architect Regino Cruz for EXPO ’98, the MEO Arena and its sibling in Parque das Nações have also hosted events like the MTV Europe Movie Awards. For Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave, they are ideal spaces to start the next chapter in Web Summit’s history, with the 2016 conference capable of housing up to 80,000 attendees.
‘We chose Lisbon because of the strong infrastructure in the city, the world-class venue and the thriving startup community,’ Cosgrave told The Irish Times. ‘Investors from across Europe have started looking to Lisbon to capitalise on the low rents and affordable IT talent.’
World class architecture
Beautiful venues aren’t in short supply in Lisbon. In many cases, they just haven’t been discovered yet, even by the locals. Almeida admits she didn’t know about the 16th-century Palácio de Pombal when looking for a home for the 2015 Lisbon Investment Summit. ‘You always find interesting new places, regardless of the time you’ve been living here,’ she says. Located in the heart of the Barrio Alto district, Palácio de Pombal is one of the few conference venues where you can attend a keynote speech and then relocate to a local craft beer bar within five minutes.
Of course, Lisbon’s magnetism for startups, investors, entrepreneurs and the wider creative community can’t be pinned to a single factor, it’s the overall package that counts. The city’s intriguing architecture – where historic buildings stand beside striking contemporary additions on ramshackled streets – lends itself to constant discovery, while the low cost of living is an important part of its allure.
Now Lisbon’s burgeoning tech scene looks set to boom. That’s something we should all raise a cerveja to. More

A new east London bookstore designed by Selgascano is looking to beat the age of Kindle by banning mobile phones and tablets.
Libreria – the latest venture by Rohan Silva and Sam Aldenton, founders of co-working space Second Home – draws inspiration from Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Library of Babel’, a short story that imagines the universe as a library.
Photography: Iwan Baan
Selgascano wanted to recapture the tale’s fantastical world by installing irregular-shaped, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, made seemingly endless thanks to mirrored ceilings.
‘Libreria has been years in the making – we believe in the value of books and literature and have wanted to do this for a long time,’ said Silva. ‘Across industries we are seeing a return to physical, material things and a fresh appreciation of craftsmanship. These things are not being killed by the digital; they are being given new life.’
Photography: Iwan Baan
The bookshelves have been hand-built by students from the Slade School of Fine Art using recycled wood. Artist Dr Cato created bespoke lamps for the project while Selgascano cherry-picked a selection of mismatching chairs.
Conceived as an analogue sanctuary, Libreria has a printing press to publish limited editions of titles and bring authors on board to curate some of its book selections. The store will also put on a programme of seminars and performances in conjunction with Second Home, just next door on Hanbury Street.
Photography: Iwan Baan
Libreria’s director Sally Davies told Dezeen: ‘We’ve reached a cultural tipping point, I think, where people are becoming aware of the costs of being constantly digitally connected – and instead crave experiences that are tangible, human, immersive.’
Selgascano, who designed last year’s Serpentine Pavilion, also worked with Second Home on its Hanbury Street co-working space. More