Opening to the public in the new year, and featuring a slew of to-be-determined programs and events, creative hub A/D/O stands on a quiet corner in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The coworking space—developed by MINI and designed by nARCHITECTS—will cater to creative and design professionals and house URBAN-X, an accelerator for innovative hardware startups. A/D/O will also act as a portfolio project for the car company as it explores non-automotive ideas.
The 23,000-square-foot former warehouse at 29 Norman Avenue will offer 24 private desks for emerging and established designers (selected through an application process), as well as access to studio spaces and an array of design tools to prototype ideas in-house. A/D/O also includes a cafe, a design store, exhibition spaces, and indoor and outdoor hangout spaces, all oriented around a vast abundance of free working space that will be open to the public.
In a city where a good 90 percent of co-working spaces are member-only, A/D/O seeks “to flip the idea of working spaces on its head,” said managing director Nate Pinsley. “We thought it was far more interesting that the majority of the space is very permeable, so that people can figure out how [A/D/O] fits in their design life.”
With this in mind, Eric Bunge, principal at nARCHITECTS, explained that the concept of “remix” governed the approach to A/D/O’s design, applying the idea to both the physical building and its program. Rather than dividing the warehouse into different zones, “the spaces kind of bleed into each other,” Bunge said, maintaining that
“transparent connections to the main event space” allow people to “see what would normally be going on behind closed doors.”
At the core of its programming, A/D/O’s Design Academy will seek to foster critical conversations around the future of design to explore “opportunities for cross-fertilization between disciplines of design,” said Daniel Pittman, A/D/O’s director of design, as well as “how those different disciplines interact with the broader world.”
The space is oriented around the engagement between designers and non-designers, seeking “that sweet spot between the more intellectual group that will be in the space, and the people who have a respect for it, but are not credited in the field,” said cultural programming director Alyse Archer-Coité.
This past fall, the A/D/O played host to a series of events to ramp up the buzz around the new space, including the Open House New York Weekend Launch Party, the Architectural League of New York’s Beaux Arts Ball, and, more recently, The Future Series, presented by B&O Play.
With regard to what sets A/D/O apart from the other maker-spaces in Brooklyn, Archer-Coité believes that its strength lies in its flexibility. “The space affords options for designers to bring some of their more wild projects to life, and for projects that have had lives outside of New York to be celebrated or workshopped,” she said. “In New York there isn’t that flexible space for activating certain projects like that. It’s an asset that would make certain projects possible that wouldn’t be otherwise.”
For more on A/D/O, visit their website here.
