BlaBlaOffice is the European portal for Coworking and Office Sharing

Yes, you run the space and rent out the desks. But first and foremost you are the architect of a community, and it's the community that shapes the space you're responsible for.

According to William Van Den Broek of Mutinerie in Paris, one of the oldest coworking centres, offering the right workspace means first building a community, then shaping what you offer around its wishes and needs. You're its architect, not its boss: you're the manager. Communities come to life because they have a story, and it takes time for the right environment to bring that story out.

Right from the start, coworking has offered an alternative way of working, and most coworkers have a strong environmental awareness.

Centre founders want their spaces to be self-sufficient, living solely on the income from their own community rather than on outside funding. Growth is sustainable too: almost every centre becomes known through word of mouth, and BlaBlaOffice helps that along. And so are relationships: far from the frantic exchanges of today, coworkers prefer genuine, lasting connections, which is where the best collaborations are born.

Cooperation is one of the greatest things coworking adds compared with traditional workplaces: if you can't picture it among your members, don't open a centre.

Coworkers meet as equals, and how important their work is never weighs on their relationships. Long-lasting exchanges, a wide range of skills and a network of contacts that grows every day: everything encourages people to work together. And sometimes those relationships go beyond work.

In coworking, openness takes three forms:

• open-mindedness towards other members, so that everyone feels part of the community;
• openness to the unexpected: meetings and ideas that happen by chance, the famous serendipity;
• technological openness: coworking has close ties with IT, and free software and open-source technologies are right at home.

Flexible, without limits, open to all: accessibility is a core value. Anyone who wants to work from home for a few days doesn't need to ask anyone's permission: they're in charge of their own work and their own hours.

A company office rationalises each employee's desk; a coworking space doesn't just divide up square metres, it brings together energy, projects, ideas and networks. There's no need for barriers to entry: self-selection is what grows a cohesive community.