01 · Find your anchors
Browse a curated set of partner cafés, libraries, and studios near your campus or commute. Each listing highlights vibe, noise level, outlet access, and study-friendly hours — so you can quickly pick a go-to “anchor” space.
About ThirdSpace
ThirdSpace is a living experiment in what it means to belong in a city that never stops moving. We design and map spaces that sit between home, campus, and the office — the places where friends debrief after crit, where ideas spill out over coffee, and where late-night edits quietly turn into collaborations.
Instead of building one flagship hub, we prototype a network: tiny studios tucked into the backs of cafés, quiet tables woven into public lawns, and flexible corners that can host critique nights, pop-up markets, or recording sessions. Each space is designed to feel warm, grounded, and human — not like a generic co-working brochure, but like “our campus” woven through the city.
Compendium: Mapping Our Third Spaces
This short compendium video documents how ThirdSpace emerges across New York City — from first sketches and site walks to live testing in cafés, studios, and outdoor pockets. It’s a glimpse into how scattered places start to feel like one connected campus.
How ThirdSpace works
ThirdSpace isn’t just a map of “nice spots.” It’s a system that connects places, people, and moments so your week feels intentional, not improvised.
02 · Match time to task
Use ThirdSpace to plan your day: a focus booth for deep work, a semi-public table for collaboration, and an evening spot for crits or screenings. Spaces are tagged by use-case, so you’re not guessing if it will work for what you need.
03 · Build your people loop
Over time, familiar faces and recurring events turn scattered locations into “your campus.” When people know where their friends will be, they show up more often — and the city starts to feel less like a maze and more like a shared studio.
Who we’re for
ThirdSpace is built for students, makers, designers, musicians, filmmakers, illustrators, and multi-hyphenate creatives who feel caught between cramped apartments, booked-out campus studios, and loud cafés that were never designed for deep work. It’s for the ones carrying sketchbooks, cameras, laptops, and tote bags full of almost-finished ideas who just need somewhere reliable — and people who get what they’re trying to do.
Why we exist
In a city like New York, space is expensive and attention is fragmented. That combination quietly pushes students into isolation: working alone, commuting alone, editing alone. ThirdSpace exists to counter that drift. By treating the city as a shared campus and curating spaces that welcome student work, we lower the friction to showing up, collaborating, and staying well while you study and create.
Designing spaces for students & creatives
Every ThirdSpace prototype starts as a drawing: how light enters, where bags go, how far the next outlet is, whether a stranger can join without it feeling awkward. These layouts and sketches trace that process — from scrappy first diagrams to more refined spatial plans that can plug into real cafés, rooftops, lobbies, and lawns.
Layouts & sketches
