Before the pandemic, Laetitia Gorra was director of interiors for the Wing, the now-defunct women-centered coworking brand. She spent a lot of her time commuting from her home in New York’s Westchester County to the Wing’s flagship in Manhattan. But then COVID-19 hit, and she set up her own interior design studio, Roarke, with cofounder Sarah Needleman.
“A big silver lining for me was being able to work from home, and being able to spend more time with my children,” Gorra says. “But fast-forward three years of being stuck in your house, and I needed a space where I could separate home and work again—but without having to get on a train and spend two hours commuting every day.”
What Gorra decided to do may come as a surprise: In December 2023, she opened up a micro-coworking space called the Studio in a building on her property. “It happened very organically,” she says, explaining that she met a group of women during the pandemic who lived in her neighborhood, the village of Hastings-on-Hudson, and began meeting weekly to talk and share ideas. They, like her, felt unproductive at home and wanted a quiet place to work without the time—and costs—of going into the city.
When a space on Gorra’s property freed up, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to create a convenient, peaceful coworking spot for the new group of friends (it accommodates five people comfortably) as well as to showcase Roarke’s design language.
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