How I Designed the First Public Coworking Space for Social Impact

In late 2015, I was working at CREC, a coworking space in Barcelona that—at 1,000 m²—was among the largest in the city. My role revolved around strategy, sales, and building a strong sense of community.

One afternoon, during what we thought would be a routine meeting, our CEO walked in with unexpected news: the city council had approached him about creating a *vivero de empresas*—literally, a “greenhouse for companies” or a business incubator. I’ve always thought that was just a nicer way of saying: offering public spaces to selected businesses at below-market prices, under certain conditions, to help them grow.

Starting coworking for social return

Long story short, he went to the city council and told them exactly that. I wouldn’t advise anyone to say that to an institution as big as the city council, but he’s never been short on courage—and maybe if more people did the same, things would be better everywhere. Today, CREC manages two coworking spaces on behalf of Barcelona City Council.

It’s easier said than done, though. In that first meeting, I already had a vision for how things should work. Why? Because I genuinely believe taxpayer money is taxpayer money, and we must make good use of it.

Back in 2014–2015, I had written two posts for Zona Coworking, a now-defunct magazine, about public coworking spaces. In them, I tackled the hot question of the time: should they exist?

My answer then—and now—is that this is the wrong question. The real one is: What’s the purpose of a public coworking space? In my view, it’s fundamentally different from a private one—and a different function requires a different design. Form follows function.

That day, in that informal meeting, I laid the groundwork for what would become Social Return Coworking—a term coined by sociologist Isaac Arriaza, who later joined Sinèrgics, the first coworking space with social return in the world (as far as I know).

The idea clicked immediately: the city pays us to run the space; members receive support that’s not essential—like healthcare or law enforcement—so they should give something back to the people footing the bill: the citizens.

How? By working for them a few hours each month. Plain and simple.

How Sinèrgics became a neighbourhood asset

When we set up Sinèrgics’ first location, we decided to hire a sociologist and an educator—instead of a designer or photographer like we did for our second private location—because we needed profiles that could bridge the coworking community with the surrounding neighborhood.

That neighborhood, Baró de Viver, is a small pocket on the outskirts of Barcelona. With just 2,200 inhabitants—about one-tenth the average size of a Barcelona neighborhood—it sits between a highway and an industrial area, with a shopping mall a 10-minute walk away. At the time, it had a plumbing store (is that the right term?) and two bars. That was it.

From the start, I believed a coworking space could make a real difference here: more people in the neighborhood during working hours, and—with the right kind of community building—a chance to create tangible impact. But that impact needed structure.

Designing social return for coworking

The first big question was the social return: how much should members give back to the community, and should the service be free?

Initially, we considered 10–12 hours per month, but after visiting La Colaboradora—a Zaragoza City Council project we learned about via Espacio Arroelo, a socially minded coworking space in northern Spain—we decided on 3 hours per month instead.

The reasoning was simple: if you ask for too much, you risk overwhelming people and hurting their chances of success.

The second question was payment. I was in favour of charging a symbolic €50/month for two reasons.

1. People tend to value a service more when they pay for it.
2. It reduces cancellations—especially in a 100% publicly funded program, where the risk of members not meeting their 10-hour social return obligation is higher.

If you know me, you’ll know there was a calculation behind this too. At the time, a coworking membership cost €200–225/month, so with 3 hours of return, we were valuing their time at roughly €50/hour.

Community integration wasn’t immediate

After renovating the space, we launched. I remember going up to the city council technician—the non-political staffer who championed the project—and telling him: “All this is because of you. You chose to listen when many wouldn’t, and instead of just looking for someone to execute a predefined plan, you let us build something different.”

My colleague Carles managed the team remotely, while Isaac and Estel worked hands-on with the community, both inside and outside the space. At first, the neighbourhood was skeptical—they would have preferred to use the space for their own events and celebrations. But the team persisted, and about a year later, in a completely different setting, I met a resident who told me how happy people were with the project. That’s when I knew we’d made a real impact.