Congratulations to Sara Matiz, the brilliant Italian designer who created the beautiful cover of our book “Tech and the City”. Sara and her MAD Studio (Matiz Architecture & Design) have won the competition to do the interior design of the new NYU incubator at 15 MetroTech in Brooklyn. The incubator is called “Clean Technology Entrepreneur Center” and will have space for 20 startups focused on energy efficiency, resilience, climate adaptation and other technologies. It should be up and running by the fall.

“It’s about 10,000 square feet and it used to be the office of an accountant firm – Sara told us -. So we must totally transform it into a space that is right for startups”. And Sara is the right person for this job, because she’s doing also a research on how startups’ workspaces are very different from the traditional ones. “I’m trying to understand how technology affects the way we communicate and collaborate at work – says Sara -, which generational differences are in play, and how graphics and design may be used to change the attitudes and behaviors of people, encouraging knowledge sharing, making business more agile, adaptable to change and sustainable.”

So the Clean Technology Entrepreneur Center will have open spaces to foster casual meetings and the exchange of ideas. “Even the pantry will be more like a meeting room – Sara adds -. The furniture will be very flexible, able to change and expand in order to adapt to the startups’ growing’.

Micah Kotch – former director of operations at NYU-Poly DUMBO Incubator – is in charge of the project: we wish him Sara and the clean tech startups a great success!