Eclat Coworking Melbourne: The Idea, the Design, and the Story Behind It
- Jesse Hayes
- Jul 17
- 8 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
What matters most to me doesn't fit in a job title. Whatever I've created, directed or built, should speak for itself in the details proudly when someone experiences it. I dream big because I have the persistence to follow through, and I build things because I love to. Things should be done well, and for the right reasons, accountability to the result and the process is important. This care has carried me across a lot of ground and through a wide array of professions and industries. On paper it could look like restlessness or perfectionism. But it isn't, it's just good old fashion accountability, applied to whatever the format or material: whether it's a floorplan, sentence, brand, design, objective, a challenge, an obstacle, or a line of code, I want it to be fully considered and to exist meaningfully.
It all begins with the same questions, and I'll never stop asking them: why should this exist? Why does it matter, and why should it be done well? Most ideas don't survive the first if you answer it honestly. But understanding and answering all three is where the magic really happens, no matter the effort or the time invested, to see it all come together beautifully, and the result giving people a little more ease, or joy, or opportunity is what makes it all worth while.
ECLAT is the fullest answer I've given to those three questions so far. I'd spent so many years studying workspace design standards and the commercial property industry at large before I chose to begin this endeavour; analysing the one environment where most people spend most of their waking lives, generally treated as a cost to be minimised or a place to be tolerated. Coworking, for all its promise, had been mostly optimised for density and efficiency. I was convinced the market and the industry was ready for something else entirely: a workspace built the way a great hotel is built, and how a world class restaurant performs, where atmosphere, craft, design, brand and service are the point rather than an afterthought. That was my vision, so, in 2014, I set out to build it. It wouldn't be easy, yet even now in 2026 reflecting on every obstacle and challenge faced; it's all worth it. And it's only the beginning!
Jesse Hayes — Founder/Director of Eclat, Co-founder/Director of Forme.
More about my work and the disciplines behind it →
What Eclat Is
ECLAT is a hospitality-infused, members-only workspace in Melbourne. The name comes from the French éclat, brilliance, of achievement or effect. The second I saw the word back in 2011, I knew I needed to own the dot com domain, firstly, then I'd figure out what to do with it later. It describes both the intent of the brand and the people it was created for. Rather than treating an office as a grid of desks to be filled, ECLAT would redefine the workday and every moment within it as a fully considered experience, where the standards of great restaurants and hotels are applied to the place you actually work.
In practice, that means gorgeous interiors, custom furniture, genuine hospitality service, seamless technology, and perhaps most importantly; the application of highly considered creative and brand methodologies.
As well as a particular philosophy for the post covid era: neither the isolation of working from home nor the anonymity of a conventional office, but a third thing that borrows the best of both. If you'd like the longer exploration of this thinking, I wrote about it in Rethinking Coworking in Melbourne.
Why Melbourne Needed a Different Kind of Coworking Space
By the time my vision and business plan for ECLAT had become fully formed way back in 2020 as a sole trader pushing the dream up the hill (that was a long six years!), amidst the global impact of Covid-19, Melbourne already had plenty of Coworking. What it didn't have was much variety of ambition or application. The dominant models optimised heavily for one thing, cost X yield per square metre, and everything followed from that: thin partitions, harsh lighting, barren corridors, neon slogans on the walls, empty branding, and free apples standing in for genuine consideration.
I was convinced the market would move towards a higher standard if it were shown what that looked like and if given a little nudge, whether the incumbents could see it coming or not, no matter how much concept art, floorplans and flowcharts or financial projections were required. But that was ok, I wasn't going to give up easily. My confidence was fundamental and simple, people have always expected their homes, and the hospitality spaces they choose to carry a sense of warmth, purpose and to mean something special, because thoughtful experiential design matters. I believed devoutly that hospitality inside the workplace should matter too, and I would set out to prove it.
Generic environments were quietly draining the people who used them. The dream behind ECLAT Melbourne was simply that if you built the workspace the way a hospitality operator would, the right people would recognise it immediately and the overall perception of what a workspace could be; would change. I traced how that shift unfolded across the city in The Evolution of Coworking in Melbourne.
The Three Hubs: Bureau, Parlor and Galerie
The ECLAT flagship in Hawthorn East is organised as three connected hubs, each with its own rhythm, working together across roughly 1,970 square metres. These designations were not just for the sake of how each operated or the value they provided, but more fundamentally as individual branded identities. Each speaking a different way, both in their voice and in their design. You can learn more about my branding logic at A Family of Brands.
BUREAU is the workspace itself, a spine of private, gorgeous offices, lounge and workspaces designed so that daylight and energy moves through the whole floor rather than getting trapped in a perimeter of closed rooms or disconnected spatial flow. Most members leave their doors open, the sense of connection and comfort is organic.
PARLOR is the members' lounge and social heart: part café, part restaurant, part bar, part hosted meeting space. It's where the hospitality thesis is most obvious, and where work quietly dissolves into conversation.
GALERIE is the event venue, a space engineered for gatherings, talks and launches, with acoustic and technical specification well beyond what a flexible workspace normally bothers with.
The point of the three-hub structure is that a single day at ECLAT can move through very different modes, focused work, a hosted lunch, an evening event, without ever leaving the building. All with a consistent language.
Designing Eclat: Hospitality as Architecture
The interiors and furniture were designed through Forme, the design studio behind Eclat co-founded by myself and the incredible Mark Miller. The governing rule was: significant elevation of quality through material honesty and depth of consideration to every element; not a corner dismissed, not a surface neglected, not an opportunity for design missed. We were conscious of never using anything thin or bleak, or just overly commercial. Instead we reached for authentic, weighty, textural materials, quality timber, residential carpets, fully resolved ceilings. Space itself was treated as the luxury: nobody at ECLAT should ever feel compressed; every space an opportunity for design impact. You've entered into something that doesn't operate, feel, smell, look or sound like the office you know; this is new, and you feel strangely more at home because of it.
The furniture followed the same logic. Rather than filling the building with off-the-shelf pieces, or cold items without a soul, we designed a bespoke kit of luxury parts, desks, storage, chairs, joinery and bookshelves conceived specifically for the space reflecting a unified design language, the whole environment reads as one considered idea rather than a collection of purchases. I've written more about that design philosophy in Forme & Function, and about the build itself in Eclat Hawthorn East — The Forme Design.
The Technology Behind the Space
Great hospitality feels effortless, but that effortlessness takes a lot of engineering and care. And as every hospitality operator knows, it's not easy, it's hard, very hard. So technology needs to be truly helpful. A significant part of ECLAT is invisible: the systems handle access, booking, service and the day-to-day experience so that members rarely have to think about them. IT systems and software design was my lifeblood for such a long time prior to ECLAT, so I knew success of the day to day would depend so much on the technology that connected it all. To be further developed iteratively as the company grew, always evolving, always improving.
At the centre, is the award winning ECLAT App, the member-facing layer that holds the experience together in the palm of your hand, your key, your passport. Behind it, the ECLAT Dashboard runs the operation from the other side: a unified, branded, management and CRM platform spanning members, bookings, billing and the relationships that keep the place personal; whilst enabling staff to engage and to manage every element of the business. And ECLAT Order extends the ecosystem into hospitality itself, bringing table ordering and full-service food-and-beverage into the app and dashboard, digitising Parlor service from end to end. Together they deliver hospitality-grade convenience, quietly; with ambitions to become something far greater one day.
I broke down how the app came together in Hospitality Tech — The Eclat App.
Hawthorn East: Choosing the Location
Location was a deliberate part of the argument. ECLAT lives in Hawthorn East, near Camberwell Junction, one of Melbourne's most liveable inner suburbs, roughly seven kilometres from the CBD, surrounded by cafés, restaurants and retail. Placing a premium workspace where people already live, rather than deep in the city; for a time, let members trade the commute for quality of life while staying genuinely connected. It's fitting that the space reads more like a home than a standard office, because that residential setting shaped everything about how it feels to arrive each morning.
Founding Eclat
Founding ECLAT was never just about having an idea. Ideas are cheap; carrying responsibility for what a thing claims to be and defending its purpose, is not. It meant authoring the brand and the ecosystem, holding a coherent vision across design, technology, property and operations, and protecting the standard at every stage, from the first concept through to the details a member may never even consciously notice. You can read more about my many roles and the wider body of work around it on my founder page.
What I set out to prove with ECLAT was straightforward: that a workspace could be brilliant, in the fullest sense of the word, and that the discipline required to make it so would be worth it. Everything I build begins with the same three questions, why should this exist, why does it matter, and why should it be done well. ECLAT is my answer for the future. What comes next? I look forward to sharing it with you, in brilliant detail, clarity and colour. More about what that journey really looked like, what I experienced, the challenges faced, what I've learned along the way, and what that will all be applied to.
Jesse Hayes — Founder/Director of Eclat, Co-founder/Director of Forme.
More about my work and the disciplines behind it → jessehayes.com.au
Frequently Asked Questions About Eclat
What is Eclat? Eclat is a hospitality-infused, members-only coworking space in Melbourne that applies the standards of great hotels and restaurants to the workplace; considered interior design, bespoke furniture, genuine service and seamless, unobtrusive technology.
Where is Eclat coworking located in Melbourne? Eclat's flagship is in Hawthorn East, near Camberwell Junction, roughly seven kilometres from the Melbourne CBD.
Who founded Eclat? Eclat was founded by Jesse Hayes, a Melbourne-based founder, creative director, designer and technologist. Originally operating as the Eclat Creative Studio as a sole trader, he led the brand, design, technology and workspace concepts which would become Eclat coworking Melbourne.
What are the three hubs at Eclat? Eclat is organised as three connected hubs: Bureau (the private-office workspace), Parlor (the members' lounge, café, restaurant and bar) and Galerie (the event venue).
What makes Eclat different from other Melbourne coworking spaces? Rather than optimising for cost per desk, Eclat was designed like a hospitality venue, with material-honest interiors, custom Forme furniture, a residential-quality location and a technology layer built to make the experience feel effortless.
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