Not every team needs a permanent office. Sometimes you need a workspace for a defined period — a few weeks, a couple of months, a single intensive sprint. The project has a start date and an end date, and the space should match.
This is one of the most underappreciated advantages of coworking: it can flex to fit the shape of your work.
When short-term space makes sense
There are more scenarios than you’d think. A consulting firm sends a team to Canberra for a three-month engagement. A distributed company brings people together for a two-week design sprint. An organisation needs overflow space while their own office is being refitted. A cross-functional project team assembles from different agencies to collaborate on a shared deliverable.
In Canberra especially, project-based work is the norm. Contracts have defined scopes. Teams form, deliver, and disperse. The workspace should support that rhythm rather than fight it.
The problem with traditional options
If you need space for a project team, your options have traditionally been limited. You could take a short-term office lease — but commercial landlords rarely offer terms under six or twelve months, and the fit-out costs alone can blow your budget. You could book a meeting room by the day — but that gets expensive fast and doesn’t give your team a sense of base. You could try to work from hotel lobbies or cafes — but that’s fine for a day, not for serious collaborative work over weeks.
What you actually need is somewhere your team can walk in on day one, set up laptops, pin things to a wall, have conversations without whispering, and get straight to work. And then walk out on the last day without worrying about a lease tail.
How coworking solves it
At Canberra Office, project teams can use a combination of hot desks and private offices on month-to-month terms. There’s no fit-out, no bond, no long-term commitment. You get:
- Instant infrastructure — desks, WiFi, kitchen, meeting rooms, all ready to go from day one.
- Flexible headcount — start with two desks, scale to five if the team grows mid-project. Scale back down when people roll off.
- A professional address — 161 London Circuit, Canberra CBD. Your team has a proper base, not a temporary arrangement.
- Separation from the home office — when your team is co-located in a dedicated space, they focus on the project. No office politics, no distractions from BAU work.
- Month-to-month terms — when the project wraps, you wrap up the workspace too. No penalties, no negotiations.
The Canberra angle
Canberra runs on projects. Defence, cybersecurity, infrastructure, policy — the city’s economy is built around defined engagements with clear deliverables. Teams fly in from Sydney or Melbourne for weeks at a time. Agencies assemble working groups that need their own space.
Being on Level 9 of 161 London Circuit puts your project team in the middle of the action — walking distance to most government departments, the bus interchange, and the light rail. Your team spends their time on the work, not on logistics.
Making it work
If you’re planning a project that needs temporary team space, here’s what we’d suggest:
- Talk to us early. We can reserve desks or a private office for your project dates so you’re not scrambling on day one.
- Think about mix. Some team members might need dedicated desks (those doing heads-down analysis work), while others might be fine with hot desks (those who are in and out for meetings).
- Use the common areas. The breakout spaces and kitchen are great for informal stand-ups and team lunches. Some of the best project breakthroughs happen over coffee, not in meeting rooms.
- Don’t over-commit. Start with what you need for the first month. If the project scope changes, your workspace can change with it.
The bottom line
A project shouldn’t be constrained by your real estate. If the work has a defined timeline, the workspace should too. Coworking gives project teams the professional environment they need without the overhead they don’t.
If you’ve got a team coming together for a project in Canberra, get in touch. We’ll help you figure out the right setup — whether that’s two hot desks for a fortnight or a private office for a quarter.