The days of open offices as the sole workplace standard are over! Today’s largest and most modern brands have taken to developing flexible office spaces instead, allowing employees to work where they want, increasing project collaboration within and across teams, and making the scaling and reshuffling of teams easier. The flexible spaces approach mirrors the offerings of some of the more popular coworking spaces—and the most dynamic of such flexible systems offer proprietary technologies for space management.
Workmesh is a Montreal Founder Institute portfolio company pioneering how flexible office spaces today are managed. Founded by architect Cesar Patricio, Workmesh empowers workspace designers and managers with the information needed to drive efficiencies, while also increasing flexible space ease of use for all workers.
The number of global coworking spaces is set to reach 22,400 by the end of this year—the past year alone, around 2200 were added globally, with 1000 of them being in the US. Though each space varies by capacity, many of the smaller offerings have inefficient planning solutions, which means that inventory is harder to keep track of or report on. Founder Patricio explains,
We developed a cutting edge interactive platform that combines data visualization with office space analysis of/for office users. Our product helps companies increase team collaboration, proximity, and productivity while allowing access to one-click information for a more complete understanding of how office space is being used, as well as outcomes to provide the office manager. This makes it possible to make better decisions regarding office space optimization, while reducing real estate costs related to office spaces.
The Workmesh solution enables office managers to better maintain flexible environments through space planning, data visualization, and if more than one officespace is involved, a portfolio of all available spaces. On the business development side, the platform also helps flexible workspace managers to see in real-time where space is available, and even helps streamline move-ins and move-outs. Founder Patricio says,
WorkMesh transforms architectural drawings into interactive maps, which help organizations speed up office space management activities, allow them to become completely flexible, all while generating automatic reports and data visualizations.
An Architect’s Startup Vision
The concept for Workmesh is the result of Patricio’s five years of teaching at the Urban Planning School, where he was a professor of architecture. While there, his work focused on graphic, urban, and architectural design, the concepts all of which are very much incorporated into the Workmesh platform. Patricio later became a Partner at RTKSP Rethink Space, a firm that provides architectural planning, interior design, engineering, and construction services.
With such great early traction and momentum, not to mention the growing market needs to drive efficiencies in coworking and flexible office spaces, plan to keep a close eye on Workmesh. With Founder Patricio’s background in spatial design and architectural data visualization, the startup’s solution looks like a winning combination, as interactive office floor plans become ever more important in the day-to-day life of the modern flexible workforce.
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