So I had the opportunity to work out of the Xin Danwei co-working space in Shanghai recently while on “vacation”. But working out of the beautifully converted space was — kind of — worth it.
Xin Danwei (which means “new work unit”, a reference to how labour was organized back then in China) is six floors of space in an old walk-up a stone’s throw away from one of Shanghai’s main shopping drags. Like most co-working spaces, you can rent space by the hour, day, month or year. You can choose to sit in the ground floor cafe/hot desking area or pay more for a desk upstairs.
What sets the space apart from other co-working spaces I’ve seen is the attention invested in the aesthetic. There’s a minimalist, retro Communist-Soviet throwback feel that’s consistently applied across the whole space, from the choice of chairs (old-school leather clad loungers) to the way the light switches are labeled (black paint on the white walls in Chinese characters and English). The walls are adorned with salvaged Soviet mechanical engineering diagrams, which according to Xin Danwei’s boss Liu Yan, was picked up off the street in the neighborhood, the result of an old professor’s passing.
This pleasing meld of art and technology is the result of the co-founders’ eclectic backgrounds. Liu Yan spent years in the art world in Holland, acting as a curator and talent broker. Her other co-founders are a Shanghainese new media artist and a London School of Economics-trained economist. Xin Danwei as a project started as a salon bringing together artists and technologists, eventually morphing into a warehouse space in the south of Shanghai and finally, into the co-working business it is today. It’s a testament to the city’s dynamism that the space in its current form broke even in three months, according to Liu.
The crowd that hangs out here is a mix of hardware hackers (there’s a dedicated room for that), visiting engineers from Google and Microsoft, local techno-pundits and expats, small online businesses and curious tourists passing through. Barcamp Shanghai holds most of its meetings here too.
The internet connection is super fast, the coffee is fresh and cheap, and the people are open and interesting. The space, of course, is inspiring and pleasing to the eye. Outside, you’ll find a mix of local mom-and-pops, convenience store chains and a quickly gentrifying street with a boulangerie,a hip cafe and independent boutiques.
If you’re ever in Shanghai and looking for a desk and a reliable internet connection, you won’t go wrong stopping by at Xin Danwei.
Check out the gallery of pics I snapped below:
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