Search Results for: cities

November 24, 2014

Derry is the latest city to offer free Wi-Fi in all public places

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flooring, News, Technology

The City of Derry in Northern Ireland has announced that it is to introduce free Wi-Fi in all public places. The local council is to work with local business owners to introduce the programme in conjunction with the national Super Connected Cities scheme funded by the UK Government’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s Urban Broadband Fund. Full rollout of the programme is expected by the first half of next year and will be accessible to anybody who registers for unlimited access to the city’s network. The initiative claims that it ‘is geared towards increasing digital engagement and energising cultural and economic activity within the city. The network will be available for free public use, with the benefits of being easy to connect, filtered for user protection and scalable for future expansion.’ Derry is Northern Ireland’s second largest city and has in recent years focused inward investment on the digital sector. Last week, we reported on how the Italian Government is looking to offer free Wi-Fi in all public places across the country.

November 21, 2014

Worktech weaves together the strands of people, place and technology

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Events, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

Day two of Worktech London and affirmation that far from dying, as so many headline writers would have us believe, the office is merely entering a new phase. The underlying theme of Worktech continues to be how we find new ways of weaving together the strands of presence and connectedness formed by cities, buildings and technology. Worktech is a constant reminder that while our world may be shaped by algorithms, we still need each other and need to be with other people at least some of the time. The event is admirably hosted by long time collaborator and MC Jeremy Myerson whose knowledge and donnish charm holds things together while the real Don, founder Philip Ross, beams from the sidelines. It is now de rigeur for such events to have a poet in residence and this year’s was Matt Harvey who summed things up at the end of the day with reference to Worktech’s longstanding idea of jellybean working but who popped up in between sessions with lyrical summations including one that showed some real spunk (you had to be there).

November 14, 2014

EU institutions are not implementing their own green building policies

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News, Public Sector

According to a report on EU news site euractiv.com, the various institutions of the European Union have been ‘unambitious’ in terms of delivering energy efficiency as part of their own buildings strategies. That is the key finding of a new study from the European Court of Auditors. which claims that green building standards and initiatives developed and promoted by the EU are not consistently employed for new buildings or as part of major renovation projects carried out by bodies such as the European Commission, European Parliament, EU Council and other institutions. The special report reveals shortcomings in the approach of these bodies, calls on the EU Commission to propose a common policy for reducing the carbon footprint of EU institutions and bodies and proposes the setting of an overall reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030. The report claims that it is through the design processes of a new building, or for a major renovation, that the greatest impact can be made on its energy performance and this should be the focus of its proposed new approach.

November 11, 2014

City of London’s iconic building the Gherkin, sold to Brazilian billionaire

by Sara Bean • Architecture, News, Property

The Gherkin, otherwise known as 30 St Mary Axe, has been sold to The Safra Group, controlled by Brazilian billionaire Joseph Safra. Although the financial terms of the deal agreed with Deloitte, the receiver for the London property were not disclosed, it is reportedly to be around £700m. Designed by Norman Foster, the 180-metre office tower encompasses approximately 50,000 square meters of office space and is the second-tallest building in the City of London. It was completed in 2004 for Swiss Re, which still occupies half the space, along with law firm Kirkland & Ellis. Safra Group said that the acquisition: “Is consistent with our real estate strategy of investing in properties that are truly special – at the best locations within great cities. While only ten years old, this building is already a London icon that is distinguished from others in the market, with excellent value growth potential. We intend to make the building even better and more desirable through active ownership that will lead to a range of enhancements that will benefit tenants.”

November 11, 2014

Current issue of Work&Place explores intersecting worlds of people, place and tech

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Cities, Facilities management, Technology, Work&Place, Workplace design

As we prepare the upcoming issue of Work&Place (don’t forget to subscribe on our homepage), a reminder that the September issue of Work&Place is available to download or view as a PDF or now in an online edition. Amongst this issue’s highlights are: Ian Ellison’s retrospective of last Summer’s Workplace Strategy Summit; Jim Ware offers up a case study of workplace transformation at NEF from the perspective of the firm’s CEO; Agustin Chavez and Laurie Aznavoorian consider how the workplace can help firms to manage knowledge; David Karpook meanwhile characterises the role of the facilities manager as akin to that of a stage manager; Wim Pullen explores the multi-generational workplace using empirical evidence; Erik Jaspers looks at how workers are colonising the world’s cities; Pawel Lenart and Dominika Kowalska report on how one specific country – Poland – has seen a transformation in the way it creates and uses workplaces over the past twenty years; and, on related themes Nancy Sanquist explains how IFMA is driving the agenda on urban FM and Charles Marks looks at how the UK’s regions are looking to capitalise on the Smart Cities movement.

October 13, 2014

Huge increase in Glasgow and Edinburgh office leasing activity, as demand grows

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

Glasgow and Edinburgh have both seen more than 80 per cent growth in office leasing activity in the past year. A comparison of Scotland’s two major cities to other major cities on the continent at a recent JLL Research Seminar revealed that leasing activity in Glasgow increased by more than 120 per cent between July 2013 and June 2014, in comparison to the same period from 2012-2013. The increase in leasing activity placed Glasgow at the top of the list of forty comparable European cities. Edinburgh is fourth in the list with an increase in activity of around 80 per cent. The office markets of Edinburgh and Glasgow are expected to see continued high levels of occupier demand, an increase in investment activity and a strong performance from business parks. However, Edinburgh’s weakness is a lack of scale, and Glasgow’s is flat population growth; and though leasing markets in both cities are showing very strong recovery, vacancy rates are falling and Grade A space remains scarce. More →

October 8, 2014

Two thirds of the world’s workers would move to another country to find a better job

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Almost two thirds of job seekers worldwide say they would be willing to move abroad for work, a ‘startlingly high proportion’ that says a lot about the evolving marketplace for talent, according to a new study by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and The Network, a global alliance of more than 50 recruitment websites. The report claims that the proportion of people willing to seek a better job abroad is particularly (and unsurprisingly) high in developing and politically unstable countries. But there is also a very high willingness to work abroad for workers in countries that don’t face such challenges. For example, more than 75 percent of survey respondents in Switzerland, more than 80 percent of respondents in Australia, and more than 90 percent of respondents in the Netherlands say they would consider moving to another country for work, according to the report, Decoding Global Talent: 200,000 Survey Responses on Global Mobility and Employment Preferences, and their preferred destinations are London, New York and Paris.

September 8, 2014

Overdevelopment leads to bad building design, claim Carbuncle Cup judges

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, News, Property

Building Design magazine has announced this year’s winners of its annual Carbuncle Cup competition, which aims to name and shame the UK’s ‘unforgivably bad’ buildings. As well as identifying problems with specific buildings, the judges also raised concerns about the catalysts for poor buildings, especially overdevelopment. The judges this year included Owen Luder, former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and Prince Charles’s architectural adviser, Hank Dittmar. While the main prize went to Tesco’s ‘inept, lumpen, arrogant and oppressive’ new supermarket in Woolwich in South East London, and the runners up prize went to the 50 storey residential Vauxhall Tower at St George’s Wharf, the most nominated building following the call for entries earlier this year was the Walkie Talkie skyscraper in London. However this office building was deemed ineligible because it is yet to complete. It now looks a shoe-in for next year’s prize however.

September 5, 2014

Workplace design is increasingly interwoven with the dynamics of the city

by Colin Watson • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The Workplace Strategy Summit, held near my adopted home town of Reading in June attracted some of the world’s most renowned experts on workplace design and management. As is the case these days, much of the talk focussed on urbanisation, both in its own right and in terms of its influence on the design of work and workplaces. One speaker, Andrew Laing of Aecom argued convincingly that the city is just as much a part of the modern workplace as the traditional office. ‘As we explore the future of work and place, we are beginning to see a shift towards an urban scale in how we frame the workplace problem,’ he said. ‘Our starting point is perhaps no longer the office but the city at large. And what we mean by the city may not be the bricks and mortar urbanism of the twentieth century, but a bricks and mortar urbanism imbued with digital information and connectivity: a powerful combination of the physical and digital.’

September 4, 2014

London ranked the best city to invest in major office refurbishment

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property, Workplace design

London offers the best returns on office refurbishment of any city in the world, according to a new report from ARCACDIS. The firm’s survey of buildings more than 20 years old in thirteen cities found that returns on capital invested in major refurbs (which extend the life of the office by up to 20 years) in London were nearly ten percent, significantly higher than second placed Warsaw (7.5%) and Milan (6%). However, London was only ranked second for return on investment in minor office refurbishment, defined as a refurbs that aims to extend the life of the building by up to 5 years. Top place in this instance went to Madrid (9.6%), followed by London (8.5%) and Shanghai (7.9%). The least attractive market for office refurbishment was found to be Dubai, which the report claims is due to the large supply of new office space.

August 29, 2014

New issue of Work&Place is now available to download and read online

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Premium Content, Work&Place, Workplace, Workplace design

The September issue of Work&Place has today been published and is available to download or view online. Amongst this month’s highlights are: Ian Ellison’s review of June’s Workplace Strategy Summit; Jim Ware offers up a case study of workplace transformation at NEF from the perspective of the firm’s CEO; Agustin Chavez and Laurie Aznavoorian consider how the workplace can help firms to manage knowledge; David Karpook meanwhile characterises the role of the facilities manager as akin to that of a stage manager; Wim Pullen explores the multi-generational workplace using empirical evidence; Erik Jaspers looks at how workers are colonising the world’s cities; Pawel Lenart and Dominika Kowalska report on how one specific country – Poland – has seen a transformation in the way it creates and uses workplaces over the past twenty years; and, on related themes Nancy Sanquist explains how IFMA is driving the agenda on urban FM and Charles Marks looks at how the UK’s regions are looking to capitalise on the Smart Cities movement

August 21, 2014

Hotels allocating more public space to meet the needs of business travellers

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace design

Presenteeism isn’t restricted to the workplace. Growing demand from business travellers means hotels are increasing the amount of working and meeting space they provide in their facilities in cities across Europe and the rest of the world. Three quarters of British employees work while staying in a hotel according to the survey carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute on behalf of hotel business solutions firm HRS. Only Italians spend more time working in hotels (76 percent), followed the UK (75 percent), Poland and Switzerland (50 percent respectively), Germany (46 percent), China (45 percent), Russia (43 percent), Austria (42 percent) and France (25 percent). The firm has also identified a number of hotels around the world which it believes offers exemplars of the new working spaces available.