You’ll never stumble into bad lighting at The Lighthouse Brooklyn. The members club, designed as a hub for the influencer economy, is crafted so that every corner is photo-op ready. Warkentin Associates and Bench Architecture converted the former Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory in New York City’s Greenpoint neighborhood into a hub for content creators. The 30,000-square-foot space is more than a place to co-work: The Lighthouse also houses recording studios, photo studios, and podcast space, as well as a cafe, bar, theater, and DJ booth.
“When we first got the building, it was a wide-open space, cold, cavernous, with just a row of desks,” said Nathan Warkentin, founder of Warkentin Associates, which also designed the first Los Angeles branch of The Lighthouse. The first order of business was stripping the building of its outdated surface treatments and warming up its industrial bones.
Bench Architecture, which acted as project manager, inserted mezzanines and new levels throughout the space to break up the soaring ceiling heights, which are accentuated by the preexisting glass atrium that runs through the cellar, main level, and penthouse floor.
“The main idea is versatility. [Creators] don’t like to be confined to a specific program. They want a free-form, flexible space that can be used in different ways,” Warkentin told AN. The architects incorporated flexible seating options and different backdrops that evoke bars, hotel lobbies, or cafes because “those are places creative people like to be in,” said Warkentin.
On the main floor, communal desks de-signed by Warkentin are lined up alongside wood-framed private offices and phone booths. These desks can also be found in The Lighthouse’s Los Angeles outpost, which opened in February 2025. But the centerpiece of the floor is the Library Bar, where custom wood shelving extends into a DJ booth with speakers and vinyl records. It’s paired with custom steel and leather barstools, three-seat sofa, and green wool rugs, and Artemide floor lamps.For creators with more complex production needs, the architects integrate and crucially expose AV and tech. On the penthouse level, a wood-clad test kitchen with a custom butcher block features rigging on the ceiling to set up overhead cameras for the perfect shot. In the cellar, podcast studios are built like rooms within rooms for acoustical control. The interiors are finished in different treatments on the ceilings and walls, including the TECTUM acoustic panels. The panels’ pattern of swirling wood fiber is left exposed alongside cables and wires, creating affinity with the industrial site.
More custom furniture designed by the architects, as well as pieces by local designers (a molded-resin reception desk by Facture Studio, aluminum lighting by UBR Studio), is situated within concrete columns and uncovered mechanical elements. “It is part of the communication of the design: to tell you the space is tech-enabled. It has a raw, creative feeling,” said Warkentin. It’s an apt style for inspiring a new class of digital creatives.
