By Cecilie Rohwedder, Wall Street Journal

When Joshua Bryan leaves his apartment to go to work, he travels up three stories, to the 40th floor of his building in Chicago’s South Loop neighborhood. There, he settles into a workspace with television screens, a kitchenette and sweeping views of Lake Michigan.

For meetings, Bryan books a first-floor conference room with teleconference equipment and interactive white boards for presentations. The building also has a fifth-floor “Makerspace,” a shared office area with personal computers, a 3-D laser printer and a computerized milling machine for cutting and shaping metal or wood.

“The communal workspace is pretty much the reason I chose this building,” says Bryan, who is 37 and owns the Chicago franchise of Poop 911, a company for dog-waste removal.

One of today’s most practical amenities in residential buildings: shared office space equipped with the latest tech and communications equipment. With more Americans working from home, architects and developers are designing spaces that spare residents from conducting business at a Starbucks.

Read the whole story