Creative hub A/D/O is set to open in Greenpoint with a series of events this fall and will open fully to the public in December. Developed by MINI and designed by nARCHITECTS, it will be the newest space for creative and design professionals in Brooklyn. The facility will also act as a “portfolio project” for the car manufacturing company as it explores “nonautomotive” ideas, as The New York Times reports .

The multi-purpose, 23,000-square-foot space will offer 24 private desks for emerging and established designers, all of whom will have access to studio spaces and an array of design tools and resources to prototype ideas in-house. They will also work alongside URBAN-X, an accelerator for innovative hardware startups that will be headquartered at A/D/O.

Via archpaper.com >

LOS ANGELES—Co-working-style office spaces are evolving to meet tenant demands. Breather is a “network of individual meeting rooms and workspaces,” and it is opening up five new shops in Los Angeles, in Downtown, Hollywood, West Hollywood and Culver City. The office solution is another brand of alternative office spaces for the changing office environment, and illustrates the vast demand for different types of spaces. 

Via globest.com >

A cafe in Brooklyn is trying out a different kind of payment structure: It's charging per minute rather than per drink.

The cafe, named Glass Hour, opened in Williamsburg on August 26. Customers can consume all the drinks and snacks they want for free, and play the cafe's video games, board games, and foosball. The catch is that they're paying for the time they spend. 

Glass Hour customers check in when they enter, and check out and pay before leaving. The full first hour is fixed at $6 — whether you spend two minutes or 55 — to ensure that grab-and-go customers don't run off with super-cheap coffee. If you just want a quick cup of joe, it's cheaper to go elsewhere; but if you're staying longer than an hour, the unlimited granola bars, candy, tea, and coffee you can grab make that $6 worth it.

After the first hour, you're charged 10 cents a minute, and if you stay longer than four hours ($24), the rest of the time you spend there is free.

Via businessinsider.com >

Dallas gets a new coworking space this October, and its size and perks suit the Uptown address. The super modern and highly social Spaces Dallas opens at 1919 McKinney Ave. on October 17.

Founded in Amsterdam, Spaces Dallas offers more than just a location to hold meetings or send emails. The company’s culture focuses on creating a community of movers and shakers. This is its first foray into Texas.

“Spaces Dallas will provide an inspiring and flexible environment for the region’s most innovative business leaders to work productively and connect with one another,” says Stephen Farley, Regus CEO, North America, the corporation behind the Dallas debut.

Via dallas.culturemap.com >

San Franciscans without a permanent office space have a new place to get stuff done.

Canopy is a sophisticated new workspace for the "mature" professional, according to cofounder and legendary Silicon Valley designer Yves Béhar. The shared office environment offers boutique style and concierge service to members, who pay a monthly rent.

Béhar insists Canopy is unlike WeWork, the $16 billion "coworking" startup that caters to young techies and startups. It operates dozens of locations worldwide, and any one, cookie-cutter office contains neon signs that read "Hustle," beer taps, and bean bag chairs.

Via businessinsider.com >

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.’

Via architecturelab.com >

Collaborative workspaces don't just save money for startups and solve the problem of an isolating home office, they can lead to incredible new ventures.

Sydney wedding stylist Jessica McLeod was running her own company, Oscar & Ruby, from home in 2011 when the opportunity arose to join a collaborative space.

Marissa Mills, a wedding photographer she had met through a networking group, invited her and another photographer, Nadean Richards, to share a two-level creative space in Alexandria so they could work away from home but not pay through the nose for an expensive corporate suite.

Via huffingtonpost.com.au >

Shared-office-space startup valued at $16.9 billion in latest funding round. 

One of China’s largest hotel companies is eyeing U.S. office space.

Investors including Shanghai Jin Jiang International Hotels have put another $260 million in shared-office-space startup WeWork Cos., according to people familiar with the matter, capping off a funding round that values the company at $16.9 billion.

The deal brings WeWork’s latest funding round to $690 million. The company completed a $430 million chunk of the funding in March.

WeWork has now raised roughly $1.7 billion in private capital. The latest round, which included a U.S. family office and a mix of new and existing investors, will be used to fund the company’s international expansion, one of the people said.

Via wsj.com >

When women's workwear brand Argent launched in June, its premise was simple: "Dressing for work doesn’t have to be a mindf*ck." Unlike many brands on the market, Argent has a sassy, irreverent sensibility and is calibrated to speak to strong women who want outfits that will allow them to be taken seriously in the workplace. As such, it promised to make functional clothes for the professional woman, such as blazers with mesh cell phone pockets to peek at messages without actually taking out the device.

Argent started selling online first, but as it gets ready to make a bigger splash in the marketplace, founders Sali Christeson and Eleanor Turner wanted to think outside the traditional retail box. Rather than turning to department stores or boutique retailers, they decided to go somewhere unexpected: the coworking startup WeWork.

Via fastcompany.com >

The scene could easily be mistaken for a play date, with two moms laying out activities for a few preschool kids in a toy-filled living room.

Yet this is a co-working plus child-care space in Toronto. A small number of self-employed parents, mainly entrepreneurial moms, treat it as a godsend, and they invariably ask, ‘Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?’

Some have. Although rare, a smattering have popped up in other entrepreneurial hubs, such as Brooklyn, N.Y., London and at least one in San Francisco (which nevertheless closed, reportedly because of high rents). Co-working spaces without child care are common though, catering to those who would otherwise work from home or make do with Starbucks as their Wi-Fi office of convenience.

Via theglobeandmail.com >

The accelerator and seed-stage fund for business to business startups, Alchemist Accelerator, and the curated co-working community called Rocketspace, have partnered up in a way that should help both expand their influence beyond the San Francisco Bay Area.

According to Alchemist managing partner Ravi Belani, startups admitted to the next cohort of the accelerator will work together in Rocketspace’s flagship location in San Francisco. And they will be able to attain favorable rates on office space there after they graduate.

Rocketspace founder and CEO Duncan Logan said one thing that differentiates his business from the likes of WeWork or newer and regional challengers like Coworkrs in New York or Techspace in England is a kind of admissions process. “It’s not like if you can pay the rent you can be here,” he said.

Via techcrunch.com >