Nexspace

Nexspace was a technology-focused co-working company co-founded in 1999 by David Agger and Alex Kasper.¹ Its first facility, an 18,000-square-foot space on the 17th floor of the Westwood Center in Westwood Village, Los Angeles (wih a “panoramic view stretching to the Pacific Ocean"²), opened in November 2000, offering fractional short-term office space to as many as 39 partner companies at a time.¹

Agger served as co-founder and CEO; Kasper as co-founder and Chief Technology Officer.¹ Nexspace was headquartered at 1100 Glendon Avenue, one block from Wilshire Boulevard and adjacent to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) the birthplace of the Internet.¹²

Design

Nexspace was designed by Beckson Design Associates (BDA); director of design Steven Heisler said the brief was to “appeal to a broad spectrum, from legal and financial firms to young marketing types and production companies,” without taking “the boring middle ground.“² The result paired an industrial base (concrete floors, partially exposed ceilings, fiberglass-reinforced plastic partitions on galvanized-steel studs) with design-forward reception furniture including pieces by Charles and Ray Eames, Verner Panton, Alvar Aalto, Karim Rashid, and Ron Arad.²

The design team organized the floor around a theme of “emergence… nascence… a chrysalis,” using translucent partitions to divide the space into 39 communal “development rooms” of two to fourteen people each, furnished identically so that, in Heisler’s words, “it’s easier to move people than walls.” Individual “front porch” work spaces lined the windows outside the development rooms, and one of three conference rooms featured a “smart wall” combining a 50-inch monitor with an electronic dry-erase board.² Interior Design reported the facility had reached 98 percent occupancy, quoting Heisler: “Visits show it working like we envisioned. Doors are open, and companies share information.“²

Marilyn Zelinsky’s The Inspired Workspace (2002) profiled the space independently, in a chapter titled “Space for Metamorphosis: Nexspace,” framing it as a response to the disorientation of corporate relocation and mobile work and quoting Agger on wanting “to create a workspace that was non-traditional, contemporary, and collegial to meet the emotional and physical needs of mobile staffers, emerging companies, temporary project teams, displaced sales units, consultants, and out-of-town companies waiting to find a permanent space in the Los Angeles area.“³

People

Kasper’s own tenure as co-founder ran from 1999 to 2006. Nexspace itself was later acquired by, and continued to operate as, TechSpace in 2010.⁴ TechSpace was subsequently acquired by Industrious in 2019, which continues to operate at the original Nexspace location today.⁵

Mitnick worked from Nexspace while writing The Art of Deception, published in October 2003,⁶ and thanks Kasper of Nexspace as “not only my best friend, but also a business partner and colleague” in the book’s acknowledgments.⁷

The floor was open and communal by design, and Mitnick wasn’t the only notable figure on the floor. Travis Kalanick ran Red Swoosh, a peer-to-peer content delivery startup from Nexspace, before co-founding Uber.⁸

References