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    Could Second Home help reinvigorate west London’s creative community?

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    Photography: Iwan BaanAs London’s creative centre shifts ever further east, Second Home has chosen an unexpected location for its next space: the well-heeled residential enclave of Holland Park.
    The workspace innovator has commandeered the former home of legendary 1960s fashion photographer John Cowan. Working with SelgasCano – who designed Second Home’s first space in Spitalfields and the brand’s Lisbon outpost – it has created a colourful, plant-filled base spanning 12,000 sq ft for its community of creative entrepreneurs.

    Photography: Iwan Baan
    Photography: Iwan Baan
    Photography: Iwan Baan
    Photography: Iwan Baan

    Second Home Holland Park might be an entirely new breed of workspace for the area but, with Olympicopolis vying to tilt London’s creative epicentre towards Stratford, why is the group seeking to buck the trend?
    ‘It’s really unhelpful when a city becomes too imbalanced,’ says cofounder Rohan Silva. ‘For a long time it was the east that was neglected [in terms of creative investment], and now it’s the west. I think that will change.’
    Photography: Iwan Baan
    Holland Park may be synonymous with stucco-fronted Georgian mansions, but it’s also home to the new Design Museum and is fringed by the HQs of fashion mega brands including Stella McCartney and Monsoon. Victoria Beckham is moving her empire to Hammersmith, just down the road, while over in neighbouring White City, the BBC’s old Television Centre is being transformed into homes, broadcasting studios, a Soho House outpost and 255,000 sq ft of workspace.
    Second Home Holland Park sets a high benchmark for the latter. Beneath the structure’s soaring trussed roof is a small forest of 35 trees, which swoop their way around curvaceous desks and glass office cocoons. Richard Rogers designed walkways for the building when it served as his HQ in the 1980s, which SelgasCano have retained, while adding new skylights to the roof and uniting the cluster of volumes with Second Home’s characteristic colour scheme.
    Photography: Iwan Baan
    ‘We want to help business escape the bland corporate cubicle,’ says Silva. ‘We care about architecture because we believe it helps businesses grow. Google are spending £1bn on their headquarters at King’s Cross because they know that it will help them win the war for talent. We’re trying to level that playing field… help small teams do better.’
    Among Second Home Holland Park’s new residents are Sharmadean Reid, founder of WAH Nails; music company TenWest; recruitment innovator Nurole; and new streaming app Marquee Arts TV.
    Photography: Iwan Baan
    Second Home curates this mix carefully, in order to help teams forge business relationships and create opportunities for growth. ‘We’ve found that 75% of teams at Second Home are doing business with other people in the community, which is very high,’ Silva explains. ‘The architecture really helps that because you can see everyone else.’
    So will Holland Park experience a creative resurgence? The cost of space in the area remains a critical factor – and one that’s reflected in the Second Home pricing.
    Flexible ‘roaming’ membership cost £450 per month in Holland Park, compared to £375 in Spitalfields. As Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic joked at the opening, ‘It’s oddly appropriate that Second Home – which began life in Brick Lane – has now set up somewhere where there really are people with second homes.’ But the group’s new workspace certainly fills a gap for west London’s creative community and could be a catalyst for growth.
    Photography: Iwan Baan
    Read next: Could London’s wild west offer artists a new home? More

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      Second Home’s Rohan Silva on the Lisbon tech boom – and his plans for expansion

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      Second Home co-founder Rohan Silva. Courtesy of Second HomeWorkspace innovator Second Home has announced it will invest an eight-figure sum in a second Lisbon base, a 6,000sq m space spread over three buildings due to open in 2019.
      The second hub will be five times larger than company’s existing Lisbon venue and will cater for both global companies looking for a Portuguese base and to local firms, with spaces ranging from communal shared desks to large private studios.
      Second Home Lisboa opened inside the 19th-century Mercado da Ribeira earlier this year. Photography: Iwan Baan
      ‘Lisbon is moving from a start-up phase to a scale-up economy,’ says Second Home co-founder Rohan Silva. ‘To date the focus in the city has been on providing infrastructure, training and funding to startups but now it’s time to build an ecosystem that supports growth. Our second space is part of that next step for the city.’
      Portugal’s economy expanded 3% in the second quarter of 2017, compared with the same period in 2016 and unemployment is now 8.5%, below the EU average. The city’s start-up kudos also continues to grow. This month’s WebSummit tech conference, which brought the equivalent of €200 million in revenue to Lisbon in 2015, attracted more than 62,000 attendees and is helping to drive Lisbon onto the international corporate radar. Mercedes Benz, VICE and Volkswagen are just some of the companies now based at Second Home in Lisbon and the company has already secured interest from ‘one of the world’s biggest high street retailers’ for its next Lisbon office, says Silva.
      Second Home Lisboa designed by SelgasCano. The group’s second Lisbon outpost will also be designed by the Spanish firm. Photography: Iwan Baan
      The firm will work with its regular architect, Spanish firm SelgasCano, on the project, which will also include a restaurant, a 200-seat venue for talks and events and a Portuguese and English language bookshop, all open to the public.
      ‘There are outdoor spaces and courtyards and we are planting trees. We want to keep the same design ethos of biophilia and lots of natural light. It’s going to be a campus that feels like real oasis.’

      Photography: Iwan Baan
      Photography: Iwan Baan
      Photography: Iwan Baan
      Photography: Iwan Baan

      Rising property prices in Lisbon are helping to drive companies towards shared spaces: since the nadir of 2012, the price of property in the city has increased by 35%. In upmarket suburb of Chiado, you can now expect to pay around €10,000 per sq metre, though the average in the city is closer to €2,500 per sq metre.
      ‘In five years’ time Lisbon won’t be the fashionable city that it is today but I think it will continue to be a city where companies and people can be successful and innovative,’ says Silva. ‘We need to use this moment of attention to focus on making the city structurally better, a place where global companies can land and grow but also where there is fair, equal access to opportunity for the people who live here.’
      The new Lisbon space will be the company’s seventh: a fourth London office opens next year and a Los Angeles venue launches in the first quarter of 2019.
      Read next: 5 Lisbon properties for sale with commercial potential More

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      Second Home Lisboa: inside the creative accelerator’s first international outpost

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      ‘We want to encourage serendipitous meetings and the clustering of different types of business,’ says Second Home co-founder Rohan Silva. ‘That’s how we believe creativity and innovation happens.’
      The tech entrepreneur has applied this mantra to two spaces in London so far, and now he’s exporting it to Portugal. Second Home Lisboa has just opened inside the storied 19th-century Mercado da Ribeira.
      Spanish practice SelgasCano – who also designed Second Home’s 25,000 sq ft east London space, as well as its bookshop Libreria – created the hub’s colourful interiors, which have been treated to a healthy dose of Yves Klein Blue and a plethora of plants.
      Second Home bills itself as the future of the workspace, offering up in-house restaurants, cultural programming and yoga and meditation spaces to its diverse mix of tech and creative sector entrepreneurs. We spoke to Rohan Silva about the move to the Portuguese capital, what makes Second Home Lisboa tick and how the workplace is changing.

      Photography: Iwan Baan
      Photography: Iwan Baan
      Photography: Iwan Baan
      Photography: Iwan Baan

      Why did you choose to expand to Lisbon?Rohan Silva: It was a business decision but it was a mix of head and heart. I first visited Lisbon three years ago and really liked it here. It reminds me of east London in 2010, before the Tech City explosion. There is energy, creativity and a real mix of businesses, from venture capitalists to film-makers, fashion designers and creative agencies. It’s much more than just tech. And that suits the Second Home profile; we aim to curate a mix of different industries in the space.
      Tell us about the Lisbon space.RS: Second Home Lisboa is on top of the city’s 19th century market hall and our offices overlook the fruit and vegetable vendors below. The building is an open, vaulting space and our architects, Spanish firm Selgas Cano, have respected that. There is a lot of natural light flooding in and we’ve used more than 1,000 plants and trees to demarcate spaces inside and to create privacy.
      This is a very eco-friendly building, too, with features like natural ventilation. There will be a well being space, an in-house restaurant headed up by Spanish chef Francis Paniego and a cultural programme of talks and so on.
      Photography: Iwan Baan
      Lisbon shares the same architects and some of the same features as the London space, but in what ways is it different from the London venue?RS: In some small details it’s different – rather than the bookshop we have in London, in Lisbon we will have a lending library for members, with books in English and Portuguese. And the physicality of the space is very different to London too. But overall the intent is absolutely the same.
      Looking at the way we work more generally, is co-working as a concept still relevant today?RS: Co-working is absolutely still relevant. Desk spaces are a utility and an increasingly important one. Freelance workers are a very fast growing segment of the economy; in the US, 20 per cent of the workforce is already freelance or self-employed and in the UK there will be more freelancers than public servants by 2018. There aren’t enough spaces for people working this way; there need to be a lot more.
      Photography: Iwan Baan
      Where does Second Home sit within the coworking concept?RS: We don’t consider ourselves a coworking space because, generally, as long as you pay for a desk you can work one of these. We curate the companies that work at Second Home and our focus is squarely on creativity, innovation and how to support it and make it happen. I think we are a new species of thing: a creative accelerator.
      What do you think the workplace will look like in 10 years time?RS: I think some of the things we are doing at Second Home now will become more common. Cultural programming for instance: people want to be inspired in the place where they work. There’ll be more of an emphasis on well-being, spaces and time for yoga and meditation. And physical design is important too; a building can really shape us. Our architects look at evolutionary psychology – which considers how humans adapt to the changing the world – and biophilia, which studies the affinity people have with the natural world, and create buildings that mimic and take aspects from nature. There are no straight lines in our buildings and lots of natural light, for example. I think we’ll see more of that in future, a focus on nature.
      Photography: Iwan Baan
      Other than Lisbon, what’s next for Second Home?RS: Our next project is a family-friendly space opening in London Fields in spring 2017. It will have facilities geared at people with young children, including everything from a bilingual English Mandarin nursery to spaces for kids to park their scooters. That’s another trend I think we’ll see a lot more of in the future – child-friendly work spaces.
      We’re also planning to open another space in Holland Park later in 2017, in John Cowan’s former photography studio. It’s the space that was used in the 1960s movie Blow Up and we just fell in love with the building. Also, there’s a bit of an imbalance in London at the moment. All cultural energy has moved to the east at the expense of the west. We’re looking to address that, albeit in a small way.
      Read next: Inside Lisbon’s tech and co-working scene More

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      Second Home are bringing a giant yellow dome to east London

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      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

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      Why Lisbon’s startup scene will hit full throttle in 2016

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      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

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      Selgascano designs the ‘no-phone’ Libreria bookstore in London for Second Home

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      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

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      Second Home to open a Lisbon outpost

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      Co-working brand Second Home will make its first foray abroad this May when it opens an outpost in Lisbon.
      News of the expansion – announced by founder Rohan Silva at the Digital-Life-Design conference in Munich – comes as the Portuguese capital gets set to host its first Web Summit, an annual tech event in the autumn that draws more than 50,000 people.
      ‘Right now Lisbon feels like east London just before the tech cluster exploded,’ Silva told TechCrunch.

      ‘It’s a super-creative city, but there are not enough places for creative people to come together. At the same time, big companies are shrinking, more people are becoming entrepreneurs and the built environment of cities needs to evolve to keep pace with this.’
      Lisbon’s Second Home will feature a meandering 100m-long table that spans the width of the space as well as private meeting rooms, event halls and a late-night bar.
      The co-working company, which has just raised £7.5 million in funding, is also planning to open a Los Angeles base next year. More