About

Welcome to Index

Index is a community and workspace for creative people. Founded in 2021, in the wake of pandemic isolation, Index is a response to New York’s growing need for connection and shared space. Our goal is to make creative work more sustainable and less isolating by building environments that encourage openness, care, and generosity.

Taking cues from community gardens, artist-run spaces, and collectives that have long shown how physical gathering can nurture human flourishing, we see Index as a framework that adapts to the living form of our creative community.

Index Programs

Index uses a peer-led programming model, meaning anyone can come to us with an idea for a workshop, class, or event. If we feel it resonates with our audience, we’ll co-produce it. Unlike a top-down curatorial approach, this model allows Index to reflect the evolving interests and energy of our community.

You don’t need to be a member to host or attend an Index program.

Our programming spans a wide range of formats:

Workshops and Courses: Peer-taught sessions on creative coding, architecture, design, and other disciplines.

Talks and Conversations: Informal lectures and discussions exploring art, technology, and culture.

Community Gatherings: Collective readings, shared meals, rooftop events, and meditations that celebrate the act of being together.

Each program, whether practical or poetic, is rooted in the belief that learning is collaborative, and that creativity grows through generosity and shared experience.

Membership

Index offers coworking memberships for those seeking a creative, community-driven workspace. Members have access to dedicated desks desks, communal work tables, meeting rooms, and shared amenities, including our kitchen, rooftop, and event programming.

We offer a range of membership plans, from part-time access to dedicated desks, designed to meet different needs and rhythms of work. Members gain access to both New York locations (Chinatown and Greenpoint), as well as reciprocal benefits at other Index Nodes around the world.

120 Walker St.

Our flagship space in Chinatown opened in June 2023. It sits at the intersection of Little Italy, Chinatown, and Tribeca—a physical bridge between many overlapping communities.

The space was designed to be a vessel: a carrying bag that expands and contracts to hold what members bring into it. There are no logos on the walls, no branded mugs in the kitchen. We’re not selling affiliation—just offering a space to use as you need it.

We’ve hosted everything from rooftop solar eclipse viewings to artist talks, dinners, and 70-person white elephants. We’re not a perfect place—we’re a living one, always shaped by those who inhabit it.

From day one, Index has been built on transparency and mutual trust. Members participate in quarterly town halls where we share our finances and collectively troubleshoot challenges. Though they hold no ownership stake, the work of sustaining Index is shared.

698 Manhattan Ave.

Opening in 2025, our Greenpoint location builds on what we’ve learned in Chinatown while expanding the possibilities of what an Index space can be.

Spread across two floors and a rooftop, Greenpoint will complement the Manhattan location, providing dedicated desks and communal workspace, but also a communal kitchen, dining room, and rooftop garden.

As we grow, we’re measuring our plans in decades. Each space we open is designed to last, serving as infrastructure for creative and communal life far into the future.

Index Nodes

Index Nodes form a network of loosely connected, highly aligned physical spaces for gathering around the world. Each Node is locally minded but globally aware: made by those who use it, and existing in service of its community in a transparent and non-extractive way.

Anyone in the world can apply to join our network. Each year, the existing Nodes vote democratically to award a new $20,000 grant funded by garden3d.

Nodes differ in form (a coworking studio, a kitchen, a design lab, a bathhouse) but share the same core values:

• For members, by members: shaped by those who use them.
• Non-extractive: members are never treated as users or products.
• Transparent: finances and decisions are openly shared.
• Public: each Node maintains a connection to the wider public.
• Reciprocal: members of one Node receive benefits when visiting another.

Existing Nodes include:

• Index NYC (New York, USA)
• post-office (Amsterdam, NL)
• Lagori (Bengaluru, India)
• ishinoko Kitchen (Ishikawa, Japan)
• Ours (Richmond, USA)
• Index Greenpoint (Brooklyn, USA)

View all Nodes on the map →

garden3d

Index exists within garden3d, a family of creative businesses including Sanctuary Computer & XXIX. garden3d funded the buildout of our Chinatown and Greenpoint spaces and continues to support the infrastructure that allows Index to thrive.

Beyond shared resources, garden3d provides the values foundation from which Index grows: transparency, collaboration, and a belief that creative work can be both ethical and enduring. Together, we’re working to build spaces that can last for decades: places of connection, imagination, and care amid a changing world.