Are coworking spaces designed for a specific type of user?

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The answer would be absolutely not! But let’s see why…

When you search the web about coworking spaces, you get the impression that the typical users are freelancers and startups. However, what about the people who are in a transitional phase and are in the mood of trying out new things?

Last week we had an insightful conversation with Virginie Viel. After finishing her PhD thesis in exploring how visualisation can be used to compose music, Virginie decided to take a little break, and experiment how she could artistically express the same message through different human senses (hearing, vision and tasting). It is inspiring listening her to talk about her quest to explore the relationship between the visual sense and music.

“When I think of music, I do it visually. In the frame of a project, I am working on, I am thinking of musical pieces as abstract patterns and colorful sensation, which I depict in pieces of paper as rectangular or circles or other motives and try to express them afterwards into sound and music.”

Virginie is about to obtain her PhD in Electroacoustic composition from the De Montfort University, Leicester (UK). She has a diverse academic background in arts and experimental music and at the moment she is studying baking at EISF -CAP Pâtissier – CAP Boulangerremotely. She also loves to explore new countries and she has lived and studied in France, Belgium and Great Britain. While writing her PhD Thesis, she came to Greece seeking for a new cultural environment. Although she submitted her PhD in October 2018 and passed the viva in January 2019, she is still in Athens as she found a warmth towards the people she encountered here worth staying!

Experimenting on music and baking

Currently, she is engaging in a project that is related to music and baking! She uses music as an inspiration to create pastries and then she organizes tasting sessions. There, rather than the opportunity of eating itself, she invites people to acknowledge their impulsive desire to try the deserts, and then she encourages them to slow down a bit the eating process and feel the actual experience as if it was a wine tasting.

She decided to approach Stone Soup after spotting it online. Her idea was to find a dynamic place with lots of potentials in terms of meeting people, discussing about her project or even discovering some new ones. It is very likely that we will be announcing such workshops in the near future! So stay tuned!

Music workshop

Now, if you are interested in experiencing Virginie’s project or just to meet her, you may attend this music workshop on Sunday 3rd of March, organized by Giorgos Kokkinaris, Giorgos Mizithras and Nikoleta Chatzopoulou. During this evening you will encounter a tasting journey meant to satisfy and surprise your tasting buds as a piece of music does to the ears.

Are you interested to find out more?
You may find here Virginie’s website and have a closer look at her creative pastries here.

Expressing yourself creatively as a way of living

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How many of us could say that our profession reflects our passions and our true life calling? You know that feeling when you wake up in the morning and you realise you make your living by practicing something that you love as if it was a hobby.

Olga Alexaki feels very lucky waking up every day with such a sensation. She comes from a family of architects and she grew up with an inclination to arts and crafts and the habit to draw anything that came to her mind.

“Because of my family, I was always fascinated by architecture and I could easily picture myself following the same profession, as Ι ended up doing. My aspiration was to give a more modern and creative approach to my personal work based on my expertise and taste.”

During her studies Olga explored her creativity by designing jewelery. She formed a company named “Open that Stone” producing handmade collections of wooden and perspex accessories.

Surrounded by inspiring people

As a professional architect you may find multiple ways to cover your clients’ needs and simultaneously express yourself creatively. The trick is to find the source of inspiration. For Olga this source is the everyday life and that is the main reason she wanted to have an office in a coworking environment rather than a traditional office place.

Olga is working with Iris Papadatou at YOU & ME Architecture, which is based at Stone Soup. According to her, being surrounded by individuals from diverse fields of expertise is really inspiring.

“We like the kind of fun architecture, with playful structures that gives the opportunity to people to feel comfortable and welcome. Operating in a shared environment triggers our creativity and enriches our perspective for our own projects, as we view it as a chance to observe how people use the space, in order to work, to cowork and network.”

Do you have to leave Greece to start your career?

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We talked to Daphne Xourafi this week and our conversation raised one daunting question.

Can you find work in Greece if you are a highly trained and skilled young professional?

The social and economic crisis has deeply affected the living conditions and opportunities in Greece, resulting in unemployment and a poor working environment. Human capital flight, or brain drain is usually described as a problem that needs to be solved.

However, there are benefits that can be derived from this process. The country can naturally profit when talented workers return with new competencies and carry the prospect to create better job possibilities for Greeks. Another phenomenon that also acts as a bridge between the Greek and the international scene is the attraction of foreign human capital. Professional nomads are not merely tourists but they come to Greece to start a new life. They spread a strongly desired global mindset by carrying professional, social and personal skills.

Usually, the returners and the nomads choose to shelter their activities in co-working spaces, like the creative hub Stone Soup, because of the limitless networking potential and the inspiration one such dynamic environment may offer.

The effects of brain drain are quite visible in our daily practice, but should we despair?

Daphne was introduced to us as a talented, young professional looking for opportunities abroad. She has spent six months in Paris, at Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines with the Erasmus programme, she holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and Mass Media from the University of Athens (UOA) and a Master’s Degree in Computer Animation and VFX from the University of Dundee.

Daphne is a passionate and determined person driven by her passion and ambition to distinguish in her profession. She has a broad range of interests and skills that she acquired during her education or she was self-taught, such as illustration, concept and comic art and 2D & 3D animation and she is already acknowledged for her work in some of these. In 2017 she illustrated a children’s book written by Cleopatra Deliou, a lecturer of Athens University of Economics and Business, and she released her own comic in Comicdom Athens Convention called “Requiem in Deep Blue”.

Both experiences were very important to build her confidence as an artist and gain constructive feedback to help her improve creatively and to build her network. A few months after graduating, Daphne returned to Greece, while seeking positions worldwide, in concept art, character design and animation, with the long-term plan to direct animation films. Asking for career advices she ended up at Stone Soup where she had the opportunity to network and to cowork on some freelance projects.

Daphne considers Stone Soup as an environment where global job possibilities come up all the time through getting to know all kinds of freelancers and you may find yourself committed in ongoing or future projects very naturally. Thus, she came to realisation that going abroad is not the only choice, because there are places for people to perform and network in an international setting in Greece too.

So if you are planning to leave Greece…

We hope we gave you enough reasons why you might want to drop by and check what is simmering for you here!

If interested you can reach here Daphne’s portfolio and LinkedIn profile.

 

Are you an architect? Let a coworking space inspire you

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Iris Papadatou is the co- founder of You&Me Architecture, a company that was established 4 years ago in the UK. She set up the company with her best friend and co-partner Alicja Borkowska.

Iris and Alicja have known each other for 18 years. Their friendship started during their studies, until one day they decided to build their own company. Iris states: “I think is important in any creative business that you see eye to eye with the person that you establish something.” Soon after, they expanded to Athens, Greece, employing freelancers.

Their expertise lies in public realm projects, retail, commercial interiors and exhibition design. By mixing architecture, public space, art and community participation, YOU&ME aim to have an impact in the regeneration of society’s identity.

YOU&ME in Athens

Iris explains that YOU&ME is a community based, multi-disciplinary architecture platform and co-design is one of their main areas of interest and expertise. So with this concept of collaboration in mind, their presence in a co-working space gives them a lot of opportunities. Networking and sharing ideas and knowledge with people from diverse sectors makes the coworking space a fruitful ground to grow their business.

As Iris said: “The whole concept about our practice is collaboration, so on all of our projects we work with creators and we embrace that process. Our presence at Stone Soup is a good starting point, because I’m already starting to think how we can have some more collaborations with different disciplines and enjoy this creative dialog that the space provides us.”

At the moment, most of their clients are UK-based, but the majority of the production and design activity of the company happens in Greece. However, Iris does not see that as a barrier, in fact she considers it an advantage, since  working from a different place gives you more flexibility in terms of schedule and a different creative perspective etc. Technology gives us different possibilities nowadays. Work is always attached to your computer, so you can take it with you everywhere you go and meetings can adapt and be set up via video calls . “We did not plan that two base situation. It happened and now we try to make that work. We say that we have an international practice and we can have the meetings via Skype.”

YOU&ME in London

Since 2012 YOU&ME have been working on UK public sector High Street Regeneration projects for local councils. These projects consist of transforming declined urban neighborhoods into nice areas to live and work in. As an architect, Iris is considering both the social aspects, while upgrading and modernizing urban contexts at the same time. Working with local residents and shopkeepers to regenerate their image, branding and actual shop premises is what YOU&ME are doing at the moment. “We get in touch with people who would never be exposed to this type of architect’s service, and this is great. We learn a lot throughout the process as well”, Iris observes.

Iris’ next steps are to open and expand their business in the Greek market. Working at Stone Soup for one month now, the idea is to link up with local creators and establish a network of collaborators, in a similar manner to their way working back in the UK.

Check out their beautiful work by visiting: https://www.youandmearchitecture.com/work