Something had been getting harder to name. Not burnout exactly. Not loneliness exactly.
We missed playing. We missed conversations that went somewhere. We missed the feeling of an afternoon that belonged to us. We were tired of productivity culture, tired of optimisation, tired of the relentless pressure to be building something, growing something, documenting something. We wanted somewhere you could just be.
So we built it.
Shalini & Mara, Founders
Something in between. The feeling of being constantly connected and somehow less present. More productive and somehow less alive. Surrounded by people and somehow less known.
We were feeling it ourselves. We kept seeing it in everyone around us. And we couldn't find anywhere.
“Technology will always be part of our lives. The goal isn't to get rid of it, it's to build routines that counterbalance what it's doing to us.”
The world needs more places that are human-centered, real, and where people choose how they want to spend time without the pressure to be productive.
Absent is our contribution to that.”
There's real science behind what we were feeling. Researchers call it directed attention fatigue, the cognitive cost of being constantly available, constantly stimulated, constantly on.
Studies show that even having your phone on the table reduces the quality of your conversations. That the mere presence of a screen changes how present you are with the person in front of you.
Absent is designed around this research. Every detail, the lighting, the materials, the phone pouch, the lack of agenda, exists to make presence effortless.
Sociologists call spaces like this third places, not home, not work, but the rooms where real community happens. They're disappearing when we most need them.
Come experience Absent,
You’ll see what we mean.