COMMENT 2022 is likely to be looked upon as the year London offices felt the full weight of volatile market sentiment and, accelerated by the huge work-life paradigm shift post-pandemic, market segregation of the old office stock and our new workplaces of the future – factors which are reshaping what physical workspace represents.
The real estate sector is working hard to understand the new challenges posed by the future of working and ESG drivers, and to strengthen assets to respond to the demands from top-tier occupiers. The leaders are recognising that, for these organisations, their built assets are now a central pillar of their brand proposition; a publicly visible symbol of purpose, part of creating identity and communicating core values, signalling to the people they want to hire, retain, and form into their talent community.
Look back 20 years and the considerations for real estate focussed on costs, security and how the physical office reflected the value of the business. Today, institutions and sophisticated occupiers are looking to sustainability, amenity, interaction with local communities, and communication of values. The evolution of a typical large office building reception illustrates this point perfectly.
Sense of community
We’ve all experienced how purposefully intimidating large receptions can be: cavernous, echoing and giant-scale, designed to reflect the importance and financial strength of the company in the floors above. Walk into the receptions of some of the most successful businesses now and, happily, they have evolved into more welcoming, usable spaces. But there is still an opportunity for these spaces to be evolved further – transformed to the point where entering a business’ home turf becomes an inclusive and inviting experience. Kings Place at King’s Cross was a frontrunner for this, showing how a more open ground floor incorporating culture, touchdown and food and beverage invites in its visitors and strongly communicates a sense of the building’s occupier community.
For us at Art-Invest Real Estate, as one of Europe’s largest investor developers, our role as the creators of space has evolved to support and facilitate this shift from ‘value’ to values. Our ‘manage to sustainability’ strategy brings into alignment the demands of investors, occupiers and local stakeholders. Reaching beyond delivering just bricks and mortar, we hold ourselves accountable to bring a renewed sense of community, implement highly ambitious sustainability standards, and enable our occupiers to attract and retain the best people and facilitate them to do the best work.
The prevailing wisdom is that we do better when we feel better. This is the core belief being embedded into our 1.5m sq ft Canada Water Dockside scheme, a Bjarke Ingels Group masterplan delivering three landmark, sustainable buildings to establish a new commercially-led quarter for London. We’ve been meticulous in assembling a team of innovators , including the UK debut of architectural practice HWKN.
Democratic design
Our approach to delivering a next-generation workspace that is architecturally outstanding, super efficient, and offering a better customer experience is that those buildings allow us to create value by helping our occupiers communicate their guiding values. An example of our approach to implementation is demonstrated by considering the building in segments. On the ground floor a considered blend of food and beverage, retail and community spaces, bringing valuable amenity to the local area. A ‘democratic’ entrance design blurring the threshold into the workspace helps visitors and tenants’ staff alike to feel the same sense of access and agency. The middle section is the workspace, defined by open and flexible floor plates, natural ventilation, accessible outdoor space and supported by smart building technology that minimises operational energy consumption. The top floors have the flexibility to become great tenant amenity spaces with access to terraces, providing open space with greenery, leisure amenities and alternative workspace.
We believe that innovating as the market demand changes is essential for development’s leaders, and finding a way to imagine our office buildings as a new type of ‘pillars’ in their location is attractive to the best businesses today. The availability of grade-A office space that employers and employees now expect as a trade-off for not working from home just isn’t there in high volumes, yet and the difference between high and low quality assets has never been wider. This creates a significant opportunity for those that are long on offices and optimistic about London’s ability to rise to the challenge of rethinking our workspaces.
Luka Vukotic is development director at Art-Invest Real Estate UK
