The project, called The Nook, has hosted activities including dance classes, science shows and events devoted to making “bad art.” The founders, in their 20s and 30s, describe it as a shared living room beyond home or work — a place where people can take part in creative activities without the high membership fees or rental costs that can put them out of reach.

The seven friends had met while living in a cooperative home in the Mission District. They carried that experience of sharing responsibilities and building community into The Nook, hoping to make space for the kinds of art and gathering they felt San Francisco needed.

“San Francisco is a city that’s so driven by tech and still desperately needs community and art and other ways of gathering,” founder Shani Zhang said. “I think we confronted those challenges by creating the space.”

Keeping the project going has taken a toll. The founders have experienced burnout that nearly shut The Nook down, underscoring the difficulty of sustaining a community space through volunteer energy and a short-term lease. Their experiment raises a practical question for a city where creative space can be costly: how can places for informal, shared community life endure?

The founders began with a gamble among friends. Whether The Nook can remain a gathering place depends on more than the idea that inspired it; it also depends on the people carrying the work.