The Third Room: Places Designed for Presence.
We live between rooms. Home, work, screen, feed. What Oldenburg once called the “third place” has become harder to find—let alone feel. But in my work with founders, architects, and cultural teams, I’ve found that this third room still wants to exist. It’s not just a coffee shop or coworking space. It’s a state of design: a space where people return to themselves, and to each other.
We Live Between Spaces.
The ones of productivity. The ones of performance. The spaces of isolation that we have somehow deluded ourselves into believing to be of connection. Home and work, screen and scroll. These have become the primary containers of modern life—efficient, always-on, optimized.
But something essential gets lost in this rhythm.
I’ve spent the last few years exploring a quieter but deeply urgent question:
What is the modern third place?
And how do we design for it now?
Oldenberg, Revisited
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg popularized the idea of the third place in the 1980s—those spaces outside of home (first) and work (second) where informal public life could unfold: cafés, barbershops, bars, community centers. These places weren’t just functional—they were social glue. Unassuming, unprogrammed, and richly alive.
But today’s third places are harder to find.
Public life has been privatized. Cafés are co-working offices. Gyms are branded self-improvement hubs. Even our homes have become hybrid workstations. Our screens, meanwhile, offer infinite stimulation but rarely offer presence.
So the question isn’t just where the third space went. It’s how the third room—a felt, designed experience of connection—can still emerge.
It’s not a location. It’s a way of being.
The third place isn’t a Pinterest-worthy café. It’s not a podcast studio or a meditation app. It’s a designed pause—a liminal, in-between moment that lets people return to themselves and each other. It’s where neither output nor performance is required. It’s where conversation deepens, breath slows, and time reorients itself.
In my consulting work, I’ve helped design these “spaces” inside technology companies, architectural studios, cultural institutions, even hospitality environments. And here’s what I’ve learned:
The third place is not built. It’s invited.
It can emerge in the corner of a founder offsite.
It can live inside the opening ritual of a new hospitality space.
It can happen in silence between two people who have permission to not rush.
What makes a third place work?
Whether physical, digital, or relational, third rooms share certain design qualities:
Ambiguity
It’s not fully scripted. There’s room for improvisation, co-creation, emergence.Sensory cues
Warm light. Textural cues. Acoustic warmth.Temporal release
No urgency. No obvious metrics. A permission to linger or drift.Non-performative presence
No need to be impressive. Just real.Threshold rituals
A subtle cue that you’ve crossed into something different—be it a scent, gesture, material, or sound.
These are small things. But they make the difference between being in a space and feeling invited to be yourself inside it.
Why this matters now
We are tired. But more than tired, we are displaced—physically, emotionally, culturally. We crave places and moments that feel whole, not fractured. We want something that feels like enough.
The third place is one of the few concepts I know that bridges architecture, culture, technology, and care.
If you’re building a team, a product, or a place that you want to feel alive with meaning, I’d love to help design its third place with you.
