The Great Waffle Wednesday Design Challenge

Build the coworking space of the future, WITH WAFFLES. Join us for a playful, hands-on team challenge for Traverse City Design Week.
About this Event

Part gingerbread-house-style competition, part rapid design sprint, part waffle-fueled nonsense thought experiment.

What if we could rebuild Grove's coworking space from scratch--or, in this case, from waffles?

Join Grove Community Incubator for The Great Waffle Design Challenge, a playful, hands-on Traverse City Design Week event exploring how shared workplaces could better support the people who use them.

Working in small teams, participants will receive (robust) waffles, icing, and other edible building materials, along with a real-world design constraint. Your team will be asked to design (with waffles) for a working parent, rural founder, neurodivergent creatives, artist, maker, or entrepreneur with limited resources.

You may also need to address challenges involving privacy, accessibility, affordability, collaboration, childcare, sustainability, or limited space...again, with waffles.

Teams will have 45 minutes to imagine and construct a model of the coworking space of the future. Each team will then give a short presentation explaining whom its space serves, what problem it solves, and what makes its design different.

We’ll recognize creations in categories such as:

• Most Radical
• Most Human-Centered
• Most Buildable
• Best Use of Waffles
• People’s Choice

No professional waffle design experience is necessary. Architects, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, students, community builders, remote workers, and creatively curious people are all welcome. Teams are prohibited from solliciting outside help from an accredited waffle professionals; amateurs only please.

This challenge invites us to think outside the office box: What if coworking were more than desks and Wi-Fi? What if our shared workplaces were intentionally designed to reduce isolation, widen access to resources, welcome different ways of working, and help communities flourish?

Ideas generated during the challenge may also help inspire the continued evolution of Grove’s own community workspace. (Seriously.)

Also, there will probally be prizes (if we can find any sponsors silly enough to support this).