The Lighthouse Opens in Greenpoint’s Old Kickstarter Offices

Maybe because there was already a sense of being watched. “Almost anywhere in this building, you can see what’s going on,” says Nathan Warkentin, the designer who was tapped to repurpose this 1872 former factory. He paused in a slender, vertical window cut into a concrete stairway, which peered over shared wooden desks that were walled in meeting rooms he custom-designed. (The whiteboards were modeled after a blackboard used by Le Corbusier.) Warkentin was tapped to turn what was once one of the flashiest tech offices of the 2010s — a hub for Kickstarter — into a flex office branding itself as one of the flashiest offices of the 2020s. The bones were there: a theater, a roof garden where TikTok chefs could grow herbs, and a central glass courtyard that gives views of the interior rooms — functioning like a red carpet that might help in a mission to spot talent. Funded by memberships and partnerships with brands (TikTok, iHeartMedia, Shopify, Samsung), the Lighthouse is a kind of cross between a flex office and a 21st-century movie studio, with a dash of elitist country club. A selection committee of other extremely online people vets anyone who’s signed up for pricey memberships at around $5,750 a year.

The roof garden (left) and the old theater, where seats were reupholstered in green leather and dated walls were replaced with a simpler black netting. Yoshihiro Makino / Courtesy of The Lighthouse .

The roof garden (left) and the old theater, where seats were reupholstered in green leather and dated walls were replaced with a simpler black netting… more
The roof garden (left) and the old theater, where seats were reupholstered in green leather and dated walls were replaced with a simpler black netting. Yoshihiro Makino / Courtesy of The Lighthouse .

A catwalk gives a view into office carrels, and the central courtyard creates a kind of panopticon. Adriane Quinlan.

A catwalk gives a view into office carrels, and the central courtyard creates a kind of panopticon. Adriane Quinlan.

“It’s the Soho House for creators,” says Armiel Chandler, a plus-size fashion influencer who’s done branding deals with Fenty and Nike and who showed up in a khaki skirt over khaki pants, Timberland boots, and Bottega sunglasses. But he was almost underdressed compared to Chelsea Volpe, a stylist who spoke of celeb clients and editorial shoots and wore a netted, spangled black Poster Girl bodysuit; thigh-high boots by Current Mood; and a powder-blue fur. She was passing through a hall when she spotted someone: a middle-age man in a beanie and a button-down. “You look familiar. Are you in fashion?”

Goss and Volpe.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

“No, I’m the CEO,” he said. It was Jon Goss, who’s overseeing the Lighthouse with two partners — the founders of a company called Whalar Group whose CEO bills it as a “global Creator company with a pioneering end-to-end ecosystem.” There’s a talent-management company, a social agency, a digital operating system, a gaming studio, a start-up venture, and the Lighthouse, which opened another location last year in Venice Beach. (That project took over a landmarked post office, whose interiors Warkentin also designed.)

Warkentin was a drummer with a love of design who lived in the area when Kickstarter opened and worked as a creative director for a company that was infamously all about its packaging, Mast Chocolate. That job led him to designing the Mast stores, and he met Goss through a pop-up at NeueHouse during Frieze, a similar kind of office brand, where Goss was marketing officer. At the Lighthouse, they leaned toward a nostalgia for the late 1980s with statement lamps, swoopy Artek chairs, and chic little meeting rooms softened with solid wall-to-wall carpet in a shade of sidewalk gray — a mix of softness and Brutalism that recalled the lounges of WSA, which might be because Warkentin has also been working for that group on another project.

The space to network would be the Library Bar, where architects also added a mezzanine floor to peer over the action — giving creators yet another angle to shoot from.
Photo: Yoshihiro Makino/Courtesy of The Lighthouse

A more traditional workspace on the main floor where Warkentin cut into the open plan to create meeting rooms, phone booths, and private offices for rent.
Photo: Yoshihiro Makino/Courtesy of The Lighthouse

The team looked to pre-internet, analog tech to decorate spaces where other offices might stick a plant.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

At the end of the night, in a room Warkentin designed to be a kind of living room for the building — there are two sets of couches facing a wall of shelving for vinyl records and a DJ booth — members of the band Beach Fossils played millennial nostalgia hits (“Since U Been Gone” and “Call Me Maybe”). On the other side of a wall, three screens broadcast the action elsewhere at the party live to guests sitting around a long shared desk and grouped in intimate wood-paneled study carrels. Volpe, the stylist in a powder-blue fur, was chatting with Storm Yokouchi, a designer who came to network, a goal that was helped by the T-shirt he was wearing, imprinted with the name of his brand. “It feels good to make things with your hands,” he said.

The untouched exterior of 58 Kent on a snowy night.
Photo: Adriane Quinlan

This article has been updated.