Innovation hubs & spaces, powered by Makespace
From transforming vacant warehouses into thriving downtown hubs for hackers and artists, to campus makerspaces for students, to production hubs for food makers, we power spaces for innovation communities.
We’ve worked with real estate developers, brand incubators, economic development agencies, and community development partners
Minimum viable development
Developing mixed-use innovation campuses can be highly complex - managing multiple stakeholders, engaging potential users, designing spaces, and raising capital. Our approach focuses on four intersecting project streams, building momentum from concept to reality.
EXPLORATION
Build community, advance projects
Building an innovation hub takes more than adding ‘social stairs’ and ‘collision spaces’ to floorplans. Innovation starts with engaging the people who’ll use our spaces to collaborate and gather. Through our Urban Labs and Exploration Studies, we kickstart projects with building community instead of designing architecture.
ADVANCEMENT
Mobilize allies, partners and capital
Developing innovation spaces can be a painful and complicated process. It requires co-operation between investors, politicians, institutions, associations and operators, who get bogged down by competing interests and ‘design-by-committee’ We take a more hands-on leadership position in every project, leveraging our network of spaces, and public-private co-investment models.
ACTIVATION
Pop-ups, pilots and programming
We take a “minimum viable development” approach when it comes to figuring out and validating everything from how a space is designed, positioned, programmed and activated. By using prototyping methods like pop-ups and beta spaces before/during the design-development process, we can ensure whatever is built and designed truly aligns to what the user/market actually wants.
OPERATION
Managed spaces and hub operations
We’ve learned that “build it and they’ll come” approaches never work from Day One ribbon cuttings. Community-centric, entrepreneurial-driven spaces are rarely successful using traditional leasing methods. That’s why we seek active stakes in every innovation hub we build - as community platform, master operator, anchor tenant, or co-developer - from concept to stabilized years (and beyond).
Build with us
Interested in collaborating or engaging with Makespace on a space or hub project? Get in touch: