You’ll by no means stumble into unhealthy lighting at The Lighthouse Brooklyn. The members membership, designed as a hub for the influencer economic system, is crafted so that each nook is photo-op prepared. Warkentin Associates and Bench Structure transformed the previous Eberhard Faber Pencil Manufacturing unit in New York Metropolis’s Greenpoint neighborhood right into a hub for content material creators. The 30,000-square-foot house is greater than a spot to co-work: The Lighthouse additionally homes recording studios, picture studios, and podcast house, in addition to a restaurant, bar, theater, and DJ sales space.
“After we first acquired the constructing, it was a wide-open house, chilly, cavernous, with only a row of desks,” stated Nathan Warkentin, founding father of Warkentin Associates, which additionally designed the primary Los Angeles department of The Lighthouse. The primary order of enterprise was stripping the constructing of its outdated floor therapies and warming up its industrial bones.
Bench Structure, which acted as venture supervisor, inserted mezzanines and new ranges all through the house to interrupt up the hovering ceiling heights, that are accentuated by the preexisting glass atrium that runs by means of the cellar, most important degree, and penthouse flooring.
“The principle concept is versatility. [Creators] don’t wish to be confined to a particular program. They need a free-form, versatile house that can be utilized in several methods,” Warkentin informed AN. The architects integrated versatile seating choices and totally different backdrops that evoke bars, resort lobbies, or cafes as a result of “these are locations artistic folks wish to be in,” stated Warkentin.
On the principle flooring, communal desks de-signed by Warkentin are lined up alongside wood-framed personal places of work and cellphone cubicles. These desks will also be present in The Lighthouse’s Los Angeles outpost, which opened in February 2025. However the centerpiece of the ground is the Library Bar, the place customized wooden shelving extends right into a DJ sales space with audio system and vinyl data. It’s paired with customized metal and leather-based barstools, three-seat couch, and inexperienced wool rugs, and Artemide flooring lamps.For creators with extra advanced manufacturing wants, the architects combine and crucially expose AV and tech. On the penthouse degree, a wood-clad check kitchen with a customized butcher block options rigging on the ceiling to arrange overhead cameras for the proper shot. Within the cellar, podcast studios are constructed like rooms inside rooms for acoustical management. The interiors are completed in several therapies on the ceilings and partitions, together with the TECTUM acoustic panels. The panels’ sample of swirling wooden fiber is left uncovered alongside cables and wires, creating affinity with the commercial website.
Extra customized furnishings designed by the architects, in addition to items by native designers (a molded-resin reception desk by Facture Studio, aluminum lighting by UBR Studio), is located inside concrete columns and uncovered mechanical components. “It’s a part of the communication of the design: to let you know the house is tech-enabled. It has a uncooked, artistic feeling,” stated Warkentin. It’s an apt fashion for uplifting a brand new class of digital creatives.
