This Red Hook Studio and Woodshop is Redefining What a Design Community Can Look Like

When I first got wind of Piscina, the shared workshop and showroom run by designer Natalie Shook out of a 20,000-square-foot space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, my first thought was of other similar, collective design spaces we’ve known and loved over the years: Okay Studio in London, the late-aughts group of RCA grads (think Peter Marigold, Tomas Alonso, and Raw-Edges), who designed and often exhibited together under the same roof; Atelierdorp, the Eindhoven-based collective featuring designers like Nacho Carbonell and Julien Carretero, who worked out of a Catholic church and were the subject of one of Sight Unseen’s very first articles; and the Steve’s Key Lime Pie building that inspired our original Red Hook studio tour, once home to the likes of Fort Standard, Pat Kim, Brian Persico, and a host of other woodworkers.

But after spending the better part of a day at the Piscina space this fall and chatting with both Shook and the other designers who work there — including Luke Malaney, Jenna Graziano, Charles Grantham, Ford Bostwick, Chuck VanDyck, and Giovanni Valdeavellano of Studio POA, who has since moved his studio upstate — a clearer picture emerged of how different Piscina is from its predecessors. Shook often cites things like cooperative movements, barn-raising, and Mennonite communities when she talks about her vision for Piscina: one where a group of designers can thrive within a somewhat insular ecosystem of shared labor, curation, and care even as the capitalist system breaks down around them. “We’re living in a society where people aren’t thriving in the way that they should,” says Shook. “And you look at these communities where people are thriving by a different metric, right? When you’re working within a community, you can’t have success if the people around you aren’t having success. It doesn’t feel good. If our space isn’t working for some people, it’s not working for everybody.”

But what exactly does this mean in practice? The space was founded back in 2013 when Shook was transitioning from a solo painting practice to one that involved fabrication. Shook and her partner, Wes Rozen — who was then an architect at SITU — stumbled upon a ground floor space in the heart of Red Hook that wasn’t even for rent and was filled floor to ceiling with plumbing supplies. Still, they saw the potential, convinced the landlord, and got to work. “It took a long time to build,” says Shook. “My sister was participating in the business and doing ceramics, so I built her this beautiful studio with a herringbone floor and a skylight. We took a lot of time to make these special details. And then kids came along, and it took me until 2022 to finally see the culmination of all these years.”

Now, it’s a true artist-run, almost commune-like space. In the center of the shop is the thrum of metal- and wood-working equipment. Ceramics studios are in front, and encircling the perimeter on both the ground floor and the catwalk are individual design studios. A door in the rear leads to Shook’s studio; keep going, and you emerge into Shook and Rozen’s cozy apartment, filled with work by the couple and their friends. Leave the apartment through its front door, and you’ll find yourself in Rozen’s more digitally oriented woodworking shop, which he shares with designers like Bostwick. “The space is always changing,” says Shook. “A couple of years ago, a friend moved into the studio, and he was like, ‘I’m really into atmospheric firing. Can I build a soda kiln in the yard?’ So he did. The needs of the artists are dictating, in a way, what we’re doing.”

Around 40 makers currently work in the space, and no one has employees; they hire each other. And while working at Piscina doesn’t automatically guarantee placement in the consumer and trade-focused showroom next door — which also features designers like Devin Wilde and Sophie Lou Jacobsen, who aren’t part of the workshop space — it does allow those conversations with Shook, who acts as curator, to evolve organically. The space also provides things that have notoriously been hard to come by amongst the creative class in New York City, occasional free childcare and a third space among them. But the benefits to working this way extend to the intangibles, as well: “There’s a lot of research on the benefit of working within a community on an emotional level, and what that does for us as individuals,” says Shook. In other words, it’s simply a happy and inspiring place to do work, one where a designer can easily bum some time on another maker’s equipment, strike up an interdisciplinary collaboration, and maybe — like some of those collective spaces before them — work amongst designers who will eventually reach the absolute pinnacle of the design world. Shook brought up — and I was reminded of — what it must have been like for the painters birthing Abstract Expressionism in the Hamptons and New York in the 40s and 50s. “We all fantasize about being part of those critical moments in history,” she muses. “But we often forget to recognize we might be living through one ourselves.”