Second Home is a coworking company which builds incredible design and community focused workspaces through a unique partnership with architects Selgas Cano and Estudio Cano Lasso on every Second Home co-working space (the practice chosen to create a recent Serpentine Pavilion). Second Home has been described as “the new creative hothouse” Wallpaper* Magazine.
The connections with the cultural sector go far beyond the work of Selgas Cano on cultural sector projects. With an extensive cultural programme the environment bears a resemblance to cultural venues as it seeks to provide creative inspiration to its members that cover a wide spectrum of the creative industries. In fact it even explicitly describes itself as a ‘cultural venue’ as well as a workspace with a commitment ‘to supporting entrepreneurship, innovation, and community’. Their cultural programme is also open and free to all.
Rohan Silva, a Co-Founder of Second Home was previously Senior Policy Adviser to the British Prime Minister, where he developed some of the UK’s key enterprise policies, such as the Enterprise Investment Scheme (offering tax breaks to encourage tech investment), Entrepreneur Relief and Entrepreneur Visas. In addition, Rohan created the Government’s ‘Tech City’ initiative to support the growth of the technology cluster in East London. Rohan was named a World Economic Forum ‘Young Global Leader’ in 2014, and is also Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
He is a believer in the benefits of joining the dots between different industries and cross disciplinary working. The commitment of Second Home to this goal has been recognised by the Writer and Philosopher Alain De Botton who said “Second Home is simply dazzling and beyond belief. Your synthesis of architecture, social, business, politics and psychology is unprecedented.”
The business was primarily focused on developing in-person communities of interest so it was impacted like many others when the global pandemic forced those communities into isolation. However, Second Home survived the pandemic and now that there is a need to attract workers back into the City the Los Angeles Times when talking about the opening of Second Home’s Hollywood space posited that it might “offers a preview” of architecture post pandemic.