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 and Atelierdorp among them. 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.

The workspace of Greek designers Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis — founders of the acclaimed architecture firm LOT and its smaller, experiment-driven sibling studio, Objects of Common Interest — is located in a landmark theater building in the center of Athens. As might be expected of a neoclassical space, the 1,075 square-foot studio has the elegant air of the old-fashioned. But tucked into its molded corners and fastened to its expansive white walls are small, vibrant anomalies.