Why revolutionary workspace Second Home is expanding to Holland Park

It’s not yet 9am but Holland Park is already filled with nannies dragging micro-scooters back from the school run, ladies who latte browsing in Daunt Books and a gentleman in a cravat vaping outside Starbucks.

The suits left for the City hours ago. This leafy west London enclave is an unusual choice for the latest Second Home, the creative co-working and community space with locations in Spitalfields and Lisbon, plus outposts in London Fields and LA in the pipeline. The signature orange Perspex door, flanked by tropical plants, which opened for business in October, is hard to miss in an area that is, as co-founder Sam Aldenton quips, ‘more second homes than Second Home’.

But, as his business partner Rohan Silva tells me, ‘We felt that the pendulum had swung too far towards east London.’ The pair lead me on a tour across sage-green and electric-pink carpets, through the mezzanine and past shiny desks that snake along the walls. ‘Holland Park was not the obvious move, but experimenting is what we’re all about,’ adds Aldenton, pointing out a water feature on the glass roof that will soon have soap bubbles pumped through it ‘for insulation’. I’m struggling to get my head around how this works when I’m whisked into a mid-century Danish chair to carry on the interview.

It probably didn’t hurt that they managed to get their hands on this impressive building, once the studio of John Cowan (‘the swingiest of Swinging Sixties photographers’, says Silva) and one of the locations for Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 cult classic, Blow-Up. In the 1980s it was Richard Rogers’ architectural studio, and Rogers’ son Roo, who has an innovation agency, is now here, alongside Sharmadean Reid, founder of WAH Nails, One Scream, a safety app for women and girls, and Clemency Burton-Hill, the musician and writer. It’s an eclectic mix. ‘It takes all sizes and forms of life to make an ecosystem work, otherwise you end up with monocultures,’ says Aldenton.

But there was one other big factor in bringing Second Home to Holland Park — they both like spending time out west. ‘There are companies who operate on the basis of spreadsheets and cost benefit analysis, but our thing is where do we wanna hang out, what do we think is missing from the city?’ says Silva. It’s for this reason that they opened their bookshop Libreria in Spitalfields, and why the next Second Home will be a parent-friendly space in London Fields, due to open in May. ‘Sam has one baby [Santiago] and another on the way, and me and my wife are trying, so children are on our minds,’ says Silva. ‘There will be scooter parking for kids, a crèche — everything will be geared towards parents who are also entrepreneurs.’

The pair met in 2011, when Silva came to Aldenton’s restaurant, The Rooftop Cafe next to The Shard, for his birthday brunch. They spent all day drinking ‘magnums of champagne with chef Magnus Reid. By the time it got to lunch we were too drunk to move,’ says Silva, before pointing out that ‘we have calmed down a bit since then’.

Silva was working as special adviser to David Cameron at the time, focusing on entrepreneurship and launching Tech City, while Aldenton was chief executive at Bootstrap Company, an artists’ collective in Dalston. They brought their areas of interest together to dream up Second Home and, with the help of Spanish architects SelgasCano, turned a 1960s carpet factory in Spitalfields into what Aldenton describes as ‘a crazy space with all these curves and a table on pulleys flying around’. It was fully occupied the day it opened, and Silva says that 75 per cent of the teams there now collaborate in some way, which is his proudest achievement. What’s more, businesses at Second Home grow 10 per cent faster than the national average, which they attribute to creating spaces that foster interaction and having a community organiser whose job it is to connect members.

Unlike a members’ club, Second Home’s focus is on helping teams create jobs and be more productive. ‘It’s very different to the older generation [of members’ clubs],’ explains Silva. As well as workshops on subjects as diverse as VR and ‘social innovation and public speaking for entrepreneurs’, their members-only Be Better programme is designed to get members sharing their skills and knowledge; sessions include business masterclasses and roundtable discussions.

Silva, 37, exudes a magnetic energy that helps explain how he managed to persuade investors — including M&C Saatchi — to stump up £158m to ‘two young guys with a glint in their eye’. He also convinced Kate McTiernan, an Australian architect, to move to London to be with him after only their third meeting. Aldenton, 34, is a down-to-earth counterweight to Silva’s hyperactive optimism, often chipping in with a sarcastic comment. Silva likens him to [Soho House] creator Nick Jones for having a ‘knack for creating spaces people want to be in’. Aldenton set up Café Oto and Dalston Roof Park, but knew he ‘had to get out when Brad and Angelina came to a party at the Roof Park. Everybody was messaging me saying, “You’ve killed Dalston!”’

It’s clear how passionate they are about London. Silva moved here aged 21 from Manchester to start a fast-track scheme at the Treasury. Aldenton was born and raised in Clapton, and now lives on Columbia Road with his wife, Isabel.

Despite being a native Hackney-ite, Aldenton resists the clichéd gentrification lament. ‘Yeah, it has changed but there’s still that texture and depth,’ he says. They say that protecting the ‘rich patina’ of the city and ‘bringing different types of people together’ is at the heart of Second Home. ‘Both of us hate how in lots of ways London is becoming less interesting,’ says Silva. ‘Lots of nice parts of town are becoming sterile, corporate developments.’ Aldenton adds, ‘We see our job as clearing the path for people and creating the space for ideas to flourish.’