Beyond Coworking: From Flexible to Hybrid Spaces

The gig economy and novel technologies are bringing about new ways of working, living, and socialising that are changing common habits in the design, management, and use of space. The built environment is required to be increasingly flexible, which determines a phenomenon of ‘hybridisation’, meaning the co-presence and co-existence of multiple functions, users, and building types. This trend generates original types of spaces and calls for a new understanding of the landscape of work to support the creation of modern facilities. Due to the relative novelty and complexity of such a dynamic, an overarching interpretation and comprehensive classification of hybrid spaces are still missing. This chapter proposes a systematic reflection on what determines hybrid spaces. Given its intrinsic flexibility, the coworking industry represents a privileged environment for studying hybridisation, offering the opportunity to delve into multiple stakeholders, complex managerial mechanisms, and different uses.

Starting from seminal definitions of coworking spaces and of hybridisation, this chapter deconstructs the concept of ‘hybrid’ in multiple elements and applies them to a set of examples from Italy, the UK, and the USA. This contribution advances the concept of coworking space to include hybrid trends, thus expanding the existing taxonomy of new working spaces.