PHOTOGRAPHY: ED RS AVES WRITER: NICK COMPTON
In 2010, Rohan Silva was a smart young thing
pulled from the UK’s Treasury department
into the policy unit at No.10 to advise the
then prime minister David Cameron. He
had already launched the Tech City initiative
that established East London’s ‘Silicon
Roundabout’ as Europe’s key startup engine.
Sam Aldenton, meanwhile, had impeccable
new model entrepreneur credentials, opening
what he says was London’s first dedicated
co-working space in Dalston in 2005 – ‘we
took an empty floor in a factory and put lots
of desks in it’ – followed by alternative music
venue Café Oto and Dalston Roof Park. He
also set up street food arena Feast, which is
where he first met Silva. The pair bonded
immediately. ‘I had hung out at all these
places and really liked them,’ says Silva. ‘Then
I realised there was this one person connected
to all of them and that was really exciting.’
Silva and Aldenton quickly looked for
opportunities and hatched a plan. Working
life had splintered and atomised. More and
more people were working for smaller and
more companies, often their own, but the
professional infrastructure hadn’t kept pace
with those changes. Commercial space was
expensive, inflexible and spirit-crushingly
dull. The pair also realised that this new
workforce of atomised entrepreneurs still
wanted to feel physically connected. They
understood a fundamental truth: it’s hardto stay energised and motivated when your
only company is the cat and a half-empty
fridge in your kitchen.
‘Today’s technology means you can work
with anyone anywhere, but this means that
clustering in physical proximity is more
important than ever,’ says Silva. ‘Everyone
could be working in the middle of the
countryside in their pyjamas, yet they’re not.’
The pair, eloquent and conspicuously
connected, took their idea for a new model
workplace and pitched it to 150 potential
investors, with plentiful success. In 2014,
they opened Second Home in a 1960s
former carpet factory in the wrong part
of Spitalfields in East London. For Silva, »How Second Home is engineering the new creative hothouse
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