In 2021, our small group of friends decided to live, learn, and build together in NYC. It started as just a single apartment with weekly dinners where people gave 5-minute “lightning talks”, and then we expanded into the apartment next door. And soon, another one. And more. Fast forward a few years, and Fractal has grown into a neighborhood campus:
Living near each other has helped us coordinate and incubate a bunch of fun projects.
Three we’re especially proud of:
- Fractal University, where we teach everything from art, to cooking, to coding. Classes are cozy (we teach them from our living rooms), and it’s a lot of fun to learn from and with our friends.
- Fractal Bootcamp, a three month intensive software engineering bootcamp, and Fractal Tech Hub, our co-working space.
- merlins place, our first community-run third space (with a 3000-LED lighting installation on the ceiling!)
“Is there a vision?”
Many of us want to help improve the creative and civic culture in NYC (housing, energy, art, community, flourishing), but some are just here to live a well-rounded life.
📚 Fractal University
Fractal University offers in-person, community sections of world-class courses, for fun. We have courses in AI, computer science, friendship + community, NYC government, cooking, mind-body sciences, and more.
We aim to democratize enjoyable, community education and public research culture by creating an easily replicable model for a decentralized university - and the economic, social, and creative opportunities they create.
The dream is 100s of writers, artists, and scientists and 1000s of great works to emerge from this program - but we are really in it just for the love of the game.
🛌 Stay at Fractal
Want to visit? Fill out this form.
P.S. If you’re visiting New York, check out Tyler’s guide to falling in love with NYC or Liam’s Social Fabric NYC.
✏️ Writing
Fractal is a pluralistic community. Sharing our work here isn’t meant as a collective endorsement. Still, many of us do a lot of thinking about community, you might find it interesting :)
- How to Live Near Your Friends
- How to Turn Your Home Into a Third Space
- How to Start a School With Your Friends
- Marry Your City
- Reversing the Centrifuge of Modernity
- Introducing The Fractal University Canon
- Take yourself and others seriously
- Be concrete; no bullshitting
- Collaborate joyfully and publicly.”
- a neighborhood stroll
- The Gardener Leader
- Effective altruism in the garden of ends
“People tell me that their friends talk about living near each other too. And yet, almost no one I’ve talked to has successfully clustered their friend group. So today I'm going to show you how to.”
“The benefits to residents who host a community space in their home can be profound. It suddenly becomes easier to build close friendships and build a robust support network. The constant flow of diverse people and ideas through one's living space serves as a source of inspiration and creativity, and an antidote to loneliness and isolation.”
“FractalU is a “school” for adults, taught from living rooms in New York City. We’ve run over 100 classes and taught thousands of students. Classes meet weekly and are held on evenings and weekends, since most of our students and teachers are working professionals.”
“The benefits of a good marriage cannot be overstated. Selecting a partner (well or poorly, or not at all) is one of the most important decisions you make in life. Where you choose to live should be regarded similarly: you should do it deliberately, and you should commit to a place.”
“With the right collaborators, you can do anything, and joyfully, too! The challenge is assembling a good team. Not just talents, but personalities that fit together.”
“First, we establish an Etiquette:
“I never want to forget why this walkable place, with all the people I love (and have yet to love), leaves me in awe.”
“A Garden is a complex, self-organizing system. It consists of multiple organic entities and processes all operating at once in chaotic harmony. In contrast, a Factory is a tightly run ship. Each detail and process is planned and orchestrated to the last T.”
“This truly isn’t a new idea. Mutual dedication to one another’s ends seems like a thing commonly present in religious and ethnic communities. But it seems quite uncommon to the demographic of secular idealists, like me. Such idealists tend to form and join single-focus communities like effective altruism, which serve only a subset of our eudaemonic needs.”
Fractal originally emerged from an online scene of friendly ambitious nerds. If you’d like to have fun online and make friends, read Christine’s Guide to TPOT.
We’re constantly blown away by our talented Fractal University teachers. Some rabbitholes you might enjoy:
- Keesh’s blog on Indian cooking
- Jules’ 3D printed shoes and bags
- Tyler’s sci-fi novel
- Choosy’s Twitter thread on how to grocery shop
- Fractal University’s Teacher Spotlight series
🎧 Podcasts & Talks
Fractal was originally dreamed up by Andrew and Priya Rose. They were later joined by many co-conspirators. If you’re interested in Fractal’s story and where we see it going, you might like the following talks and podcasts.
- Fooming the Fractal (Tyler Alterman, 2025)
- A template for a civil society you can build with your friends
- Take Some Responsibility! (Andrew Rose, 2025)
- Andrew gets into the weeds of community building
- Hundreds of neighbors share this communal living room (Ulysses Chuang, 2025)
- On how Merlin’s Place started, and how you can turn your living room into a third space
- Scaling Coliving and Slouching Towards Utopia (Priya Rose, 2024)
- On how Fractal started, and where it’s going.
- Or for a more personal telling, watch The Origin Story of Fractal (Priya Rose, 2023)
- Friends, Community, Isolation & Fearlessness (Andrew Rose, 2023)
- “How many friends do you look in the eyes per day?”
- The Network State Conference (Andrew and Priya Rose, 2023)
- “Building a neighborhood is a coordination problem, not a money problem. We didn't put any money into Fractal beyond paying the rent on our own apartment. Friends who wanted to move near us simply sign their own lease in the building”
✨ Vibes
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Sometimes we host neighborhood trash pick-ups
🗽 Excelsior
One thing we have in common is a deep love for New York City. If you’re NYC-curious, we recommend checking these out:
- New York City is Affordable
- Daniel grew up on a farm in Indiana, and is often asked about the price differential from both Midwesterners and New Yorkers. In this video (and part 2), he shows how New York City can be more affordable than Indianapolis, Indiana.
- Tyler’s Guide to Falling in Love with New York City
- If you’re new to the city, or visiting, let Tyler show you our city’s charm.
- An Interview with Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Founder of the Central Park Conservancy
- Hailey interviews one of our heroes, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. Back in the 70s, Central Park was falling apart. The grass was dead and the structures were covered in graffiti. EBR founded the Central Park Conservancy, a revolutionary public-private partnership which revived the park and continues to steward it to this day.
- Social Fabric NYC
- Curated by Fractal's own Liam Rosen, Social Fabric is an exhaustive list of affinity groups, networks, community spaces and other portals to finding your people in NYC
“An old friend once said the only way to respond to a question about the city is with the word yes. ’Is it vibrant?’ Yes. ’Is it depressing?’ Yes. ’Does it smell like armpits & trash?’ Yes. ’Does it smell like baked goods & flowers?’ Yes. ’Is it the worst city in the world?’ Yes. ’Is it the best city in the world?’ Yes.”
💃 Events
Listings:
- Public tech events are posted here
- Check the events channels of the Fractal Tech and Fractal Discords!
Previous Events:
🧵 Social Fabric, a conference for community-builders
Want to host an event at Fractal? Email Merlin's Place!
🔎 Find the Others
🕸️ Alumni of Our Neighborhood Accelerator
Wish there was a neighborhood campus in your city? We occasionally run a campus building accelerator at fractalcampus.com. (We have not yet scheduled the next accelerator.)
There are several groups kicking off neighborhood campuses in their cities:
❓How Can I Help?
Glad you asked! One way to help is to donate to Fractal which helps fund our non-commercial activities like writing, giving talks, and going on podcasts.
If you’re in NYC, here is other help we seek:
- We receive hundreds of inbound housing requests per year and we can’t accommodate them all. We would love for someone to build the equivalent of directorysf.com but for New York City and our extended social scene. If you want to build this, we are happy to give you guidance and help promote it.
- We would love for someone to host FractalFest, and for someone to host Fractal Prom. We think a good organizer could make a profit from these events, and we are happy to promote it. You must already be part of the Fractal community.
- We currently have one economic engine within the community, Fractal Bootcamp, which teaches software engineering. We would like someone to teach a sales bootcamp which ultimately places students in high paid sales roles. About you: you have a history of excelling at tech sales. How we can help: we can provide space at Fractal Tech for you to run your first cohort, and help with curriculum development and marketing.
- We are seeking someone to help us launch a startup accelerator program. We have the talent, we have the space, we have the demand, and we have a dozen founders who have already casually applied. We need a talented leader who will drive the program with us.
- We are looking for someone to build us a forum. It can be cloned from the open sourced Less Wrong forum.
- Some people within Fractal have the money and interest to co-buy property in New York, but currently those most interested are busy with other projects. If you’re also considering co-buying, in a position to do so, and willing to take the lead, we can introduce you to some excellent building-mates.
- We would love to work with a broker who specializes in Williamsburg south of the BQE, or the neighborhood near the Morgan L stop. In the past many of our friends have moved to live near us, and we would like to continue to facilitate this.
