Inside Maslow's: The coworking club blurring wellness and work

This place I'm visiting is like WeWork on steroids. But it’s the small details that make the biggest impression.

For me, it’s the plug sockets integrated into the sofa fabric. Take a look here:

I’m at Maslow’s in Kensington, west London. The building poses a question. When does a coworking space become a health club, or indeed a members’ club?

As I sit with my laptop on the first floor overlooking High Street Kensington, I feel like I am housesitting in a multi-millionaire’s mansion – either one with very good taste, or one who has enlisted the services of a top interior designer.

Books about fine art and wildflowers are idly scattered around on shelves and coffee tables, setting the vibe. The lighting is immaculate. Everything is spotless.

I was keen to visit this place because it represents a trend. Wellness and so-called ‘self-optimisation’ are all over our timelines and it’s a part of the economy that is growing rapidly.

Co-working spaces, which have come of age with the shift to flexible working, are embracing this trend too. And none more so than Maslow’s.

This is the third Maslow’s in London, which has proved to be a hit concept (the other two are in Soho and Fitzrovia). The name is a nod to the psychologist Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, his method for understanding what drives human motivations. These are: Physiological, Safety, Love and Belonging, Esteem and Self-Actualisation (this includes finding meaning and purpose and sits at the top of the pyramid).

Maslow’s was founded in 2017 by CEO Guy Ivesha, who had previously led the redevelopment of The Plaza Hotel in New York. “We see a shift in how people want to work and live,” he says. “Too often, wellbeing exists separately from the working day, something people try to fit in before work, during lunch or afterwards." So here it’s integrated in one space.

To test the Physiological element at the bottom of the needs hierarchy, I sample a chicken pesto sandwich in the Oria café. It is a “nutrition-led” concept restaurant and the menu has been developed by a group of dietitians called Uniquely Health. The menu also boasts “performance-driven” drinks like kombucha, lion’s mane coffee and cold-pressed immunity shots. I had a banana smoothie with turmeric, which hit the spot, washed down with a latte. Instead of sugar in the coffee, they offer a coconut syrup made on-site. More small touches.

I didn’t have my gym gear with me for the weights room or running club, so to test Self-Actualisation, with a bit of Physiology, I opted for a 40-minute trial of Craniosacral Therapy. A specialist in the field of Biodynamics leads me to a dedicated room. This is something like Reiki healing and takes place fully clothed. The therapist makes contact with vital touchpoints in your body, like shoulders or heels, and then you enter a state of meditation to relax. It certainly clears your mind and I could see this being a nice break if you’d hit a roadblock on a spreadsheet problem or company report!

Of course, this is a premium experience that comes at a cost. Minimum membership for an individual is five day passes per month and that will set you back £300 (12 days is £400 and unlimited access is £500, all before VAT). All these memberships are offered on an annual basis. They allow you to visit all three sites.

On days when you come to use the club, all the wellness features are free, from reformer Pilates sessions to gym classes with state-of-the-art equipment and a dedicated programme of events.

So who comes here? There is dedicated office space for whole teams to use, signing up for a long period. In Maslow’s other buildings, this allocation has mainly been taken up by venture capital firms. This makes sense as they are asset-light and they want to be in nice, urban locations. (Presumably it’s appealing for ambitious start-up founders to have the chance to rub shoulders with them too?)

In the coworking areas it’s a different story. Everyone comes as an individual, though many small businesses will invoice for several team members at a time. This might be a London-based team, or it could be an overseas company that has a few London-based employees, but not enough to justify the costs of a dedicated office.

I wondered: what does the founder and CEO think the business lessons are from this place?

“We recognised that work, wellbeing and community were becoming increasingly interconnected,” Guy Ivesha tells me. “Yet most businesses still treated them as separate categories. The opportunity, in any sector, is to understand the broader human needs behind what you're offering rather than solving a single functional problem.

“Wellness is increasingly becoming infrastructure rather than a luxury. People are more conscious of stress, burnout and how their environment affects their health, productivity and overall quality of life. That's why we're seeing the boundaries between hospitality, work and wellbeing continue to blur.”

So here is a key lesson: There is a huge appetite for wellness at the moment and you can make it your USP in a competitive market for services, where others haven’t realised this yet.