Paper Ties

Calling itself a co-creation space, Paperwork offers creative and design professionals an innovative, shared workplace where they can remain productive and connected to a community of their peers

- Victor Chen

 After months of scouring the market for a co-working space that was well suited to the requirements of creative service businesses, Ms. Narita Cheah was prepared to give up. Despite increasing popularity of co-working spaces in Southeast Asia, even the more established outfits were mostly offering basic facilities and amenities, or were better equipped for other types of business operations, such as tech start-ups, small venture capital, and units of much larger operations.

As a designer, and co-founder of design collective Paperspace, Ms. Cheah was well positioned to determine what the creative businesses needed in terms of the facilities that supported individual operations as well as the type of environment that stimulated collaboration among them.

The problem, however, led Ms. Cheah and her partners to innovate a solution.

The ideal space had to deliver on both the soft and hard aspects of creative operations. While on the one hand it had to fulfill requirements for amenities-fitted, dedicated workspaces, it also had to provide a fertile environment that would nurture a community of aligned professionals.

“When we started Paperwork in 2016, we looked for a coworking space that catered for creatives but none felt right,” recalls Ms. Cheah, “so we decided to co-share a design studio with three other design firms, and realized positive effects of coincidental conversations around problem solving, sharing challenges, and celebrating successes along the way.” 

The Paper Trail