Although the standalone public payphone may be virtually extinct, the phone booth as a quiet personal space is emerging as a viable solution for today’s noisy workplaces… As a result, design firms have been integrating a greater selection of workspace types and sizes—from the open benching desk systems to informal lounges and café spaces for collaboration, as well as a variety of conference rooms and private phone booths for more focused work—to give employees a greater sense of choice in where and how they spend their work days.

The heart of The Shop is The Commons, an area on the third floor designed to facilitate conversation and connection. It boasts a full kitchen, beer and cold-brew coffee taps, and communal and recreational space. Hot desks that allow multiple workers to use the same workspace at different times and fixed banquettes accommodate diverse types of work. Lighting was organized to delineate a wide variety of seating experiences, in addition to accenting key features, like custom murals that were commissioned throughout the space. Local and national artists were brought in to adorn the walls with the goal of connecting the coworking tenants with the art community.

We planned our work around the communal space which offers a buzzing environment of professionals from all walks of life. Fortunately, standard coworking spaces offer printers, desks, and Wifi, which allowed us to plop ourselves in the many working areas spread across two vast floors of the Contemporary Arts Center. When needed, we enjoyed using the phone booths and conference rooms for scheduled private calls and meetings.

The Shop is a comprehensive coworking development that is located on the third and forth floors of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in downtown New Orleans, one of New Orleans’ most important cultural institutions. Targeting technology, arts, and cultural-based businesses, The Shop serves as a hub of entrepreneurship in the developing Downtown innovation corridor.

A cutting-edge coworking space has opened across the 3rd and 4th floors of New Orleans’ 113-year-old Contemporary Arts Center building. The architects opened up over 3,700 sq m of space, revealing the original timber structure and maintaining the architectural history of the warehouse district in downtown New Orleans.