Search Results for: cities

May 7, 2016

Problem of London’s success + Design & people + Latest Work&Place ⁰

by Sara Bean • Architecture, Facilities management, Newsletter, Workplace

In this week’s Newsletter; Simon Heath suggests that FM should be satisfied with remaining essentially a service; Mark Eltringham bemoans the rise of tall buildings; examines commercial buildings that become synonymous with an organisational or sector crash; and celebrates the work of Donald Broadbent, whose research into cognitive psychology helps us address the effects of unwelcome noise in open plan offices and of German artist Fritz Kahn, in providing some understanding of how people respond to their surroundings. There’s news of a significant drop in employee satisfaction; why remote working may help to reduce the strain on overcrowded cities; and the negative effects of admin and unreliable technology on productivity. You can read the latest issue of Work&Place, download our Insight Briefing, produced in partnership with Connection, on the boundless office; visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

May 6, 2016

Can building design presage the decline of the world’s tech giants?

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Comment, Technology, Workplace design

At the movies, buildings are often used to denote hubris. The ambitions and egos of Charles Foster Kane and Scarface are embodied in the pleasure domes and gilded cages they erect to themselves and their achievements. Of course, the day they move in is the day things invariably go badly wrong. In the real world too, monstrous edifices have often presaged a crash. The UK’s most ambitious and much talked about office building at the turn of the Millennium was British Airways’ Waterside, completed in 1998, just a year after Margaret Thatcher famously objected to the firm’s new modern tailfin designs by draping them with a hankie and three years before BA had to drop its ‘World’s Favourite Airline’ strapline because by then it was Lufthansa. Nowadays BA isn’t even the UK’s favourite airline, but Waterside remains a symbol of its era, albeit one that continues to influence the way we perceive building design.

May 5, 2016

The problems that come with London’s success need better solutions ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Cities, Comment

We might all welcome London’s success as a thriving centre of commerce and culture, but this comes at a price and we need to look for a better balance than we currently see between London and the rest of the UK. Of course London is often the main victim of its own success. Its thriving tech and creative firms continue to spill out of the incubator districts created for them to find cheaper and more appropriate spaces in which to grow. In doing so they are pushing up rents in such unlikely nearby places as Croydon. In the traditional business districts in the City and Docklands, the capital’s tech giants are now able to compete for the first time for some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. To cope with demand, the Mayor is rubberstamping tall buildings like never before, many of them bloody awful, unloved by Londoners and heritage organisations alike, transforming the skyline and creating windswept, arid tundra at their feet.

May 4, 2016

Brexit debate having negligible effect on regional office market ⁰

by Sara Bean • Cities, Facilities management, News, Property

Demand for office space in the UK regional office markets has remained strong for the first quarter of this year, despite uncertainties surrounding a potential Brexit. A total of 1,381,350 sq ft of office space was taken in the ‘Big 6’ regional cities in the Jan-April period, just marginally below the final quarter performance of 2015 but 27 percent higher than the five quarterly average, CBRE has revealed. The leading cities in terms of year-to-date take-up are Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow, with total volumes of around the 285,000 sq ft mark in each of these three cities. All of these markets have substantially outperformed their five year quarterly average and have each supported a strong level of pre-letting activity. In the case of Glasgow, the volume for the beginning of 2016 has been twice the quarterly average. The strong start in this market is the result of Morgan Stanley signing a large pre-let for 154,814 sq ft at the first phase of Bothwell Exchange.

May 3, 2016

Remote working may be the answer to the housing crisis, claims report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News, Technology

A new report from techUK and Citrix claims that the UK’s housing crisis is exacerbated by the majority of workers (59 percent) working on the basis that there is greater potential for securing employment by living and working in large cities. The Housing Crisis: a Digital Solution (download) is based on data from YouGov research into the expectations of 1,243 UK knowledge workers with the potential to enjoy remote working. The report claims that the burden that location-dependent work places on large cities could be significantly reduced by allowing workers to work remotely, as over half of British workers (54 per cent) stated they would be likely to relocate to a rural area if they could still perform their role to the same level. However, while many workers would relocate if they could, connectivity, transport and corporate culture were all cited as challenges to achieving this especially when 48 per cent of rural premises don’t have access to high-speed broadband internet.

April 29, 2016

Start-ups help drive the rise in uptake of serviced offices in Australia ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Workplace design

The number of flexible workspaces is growing in Australia, which has seen a 15 percent increase in new serviced offices and co-working spaces opening in the last year, according to data from Instant Offices. But the country still has some way to go when compared to other major international destinations for business, with only 300 such offices in total compared to more than 3,000 in the US alone. During the relative economic uncertainty of the past year – with growth limited to 2.5 percent however, Australia is now witnessing the growth of a “contingent” workforce. Small businesses of four employees or less make up more than three quarters of the total market, and considering that in two of the country’s commercial markets, Sydney and Melbourne, the typical entrance to the market has been via fixed lease of seven to 10 years in length; the agility offered by flexible workspaces is gaining in appeal.

April 28, 2016

London’s office occupiers likely to move out to regions over next decade ⁰

by Sara Bean • Cities, Facilities management, News, Property

The high costs associated with accommodating staff in London will lead to a trend over the next decade of office occupiers moving away from the capital to the major cities around the UK. This is according to the 2016 edition of property consultancy Lambert Smith Hampton’s annual Office Market Report, which highlights the significant and growing difference in premises, staff and housing costs between Central London and the UK’s other key cities. For cities such as Bristol, Manchester and Birmingham, staff and premises costs (including rent, business rates, day-to-day running costs etc) for a new-build office collectively amount to just over £50,000 per workstation. Measured on the same basis, a workstation in London’s Midtown area carries an annual cost of well over £80,000. In practice, this means that the overall cost of occupying a new-build office in a location such as Bristol for 500 staff stands at £27m per annum; in Midtown, the total cost would be over £13m higher each year.

April 15, 2016

Office demand prompts rise in level of London commercial construction ⁰

by Sara Bean • Cities, Facilities management, News, Property

London has reached the highest level of commercial construction since 2008, with activity totalling £7.4 billion. According to JLL and Glenigan’s latest UK Commercial Construction Index the level of speculative office development under construction in Central London totalled 8.3 million sq ft at the end of Q1 2016, well ahead of the long term average (5 million sq ft) indicating that developers are continuing to respond to London’s burgeoning requirements for new office floor space. In the West End office market alone, construction started speculatively on nine schemes in the first quarter of this year totalling 596,997 sq ft; the highest level of commencements since the end of 2014. The largest starts were at Brunel, W2 at 241,000 sq ft, which is scheduled to complete in 2019 and The Foundry, W8, a refurbishment planned to complete by the end of this year totalling 110,000 sq ft.

April 12, 2016

London’s first timber skyscraper could be a step closer to reality ⁰

by Sara Bean • Architecture, Cities, Environment, Facilities management, News, Wellbeing

Londoners may reportedly be growing concerned over the proliferation of tall buildings, but what if they were constructed in wood, rather than steel and concrete? This is the possibility raised by researchers from Cambridge University’s Department of Architecture, who are working with PLP Architecture and engineers Smith and Wallwork, on the development of tall timber buildings in central London. The use of timber is an area of emerging interest for its potential benefits; the most obvious being that it is a renewable resource. Researchers are also investigating other potential benefits, such as reduced costs and improved construction timescales, increased fire resistance, and significant reduction in the overall weight of buildings. Mayor of London Boris Johnson has now been presented with conceptual plans for an 80-storey, 300m high mixed use wooden building integrated within the Barbican.

March 31, 2016

Government needs to wise up to the Fourth Industrial Revolution ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Property, Public Sector, Technology

Last week, the UK Government passed the latest bill to pave the way for the creation of HS2, the high speed rail line that will initially connect London with Birmingham and later cities like Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. Most of the criticisms of the line are focussed on its financial and environmental costs, impact on the wider rail network and (frankly poor) design. We can grant the project’s proponents all of their arguments countering those points and still we are left with a perhaps more fundamental problem. We are now committed to creating a train that will monopolise the resources available to public transport for the next twenty years and exist for more than a hundred, but without considering the world in which it will arrive. I’d go further and suggest that even as its tracks are laid, the world around it will already have left it behind, leaving it as an impressive but doomed testament to hubris, old tech and failure of imagination.

March 31, 2016

Flexible workspace underpins Hong Kong’s status as Asia’s hub ⁰

by Sean Lynch • Cities, Comment, Flexible working, Property

Despite the challenging cost of real estate and general commercial life in Hong Kong, startup activity in the city has seen exponential growth in the last few years, fuelled in part by new and innovative approaches to occupying workspace. The conventional Hong Kong office market is, famously, the most expensive of its kind – making it challenging for small and medium sized businesses to enter the market via this form of space. Despite this, the region’s startup scene is booming. According to an InvestHK survey, over 1500 startups bloomed in Hong Kong in 2015, which is a 46 percent increase compared to the previous year. And those numbers are likely to keep growing. So the question is, how do cash-strapped entrepreneurs, startups and other businesses manage to establish a base in this thriving city, despite these challenges, and what lessons does Hong Kong’s experience have for the rest of the world?

March 18, 2016

Increase in commercial office take up across Europe expected to continue ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

The commercial property occupier markets across Europe recorded healthy improvements in activity during 2015, with the total take-up in the major office markets rising by 10 percent, according to Knight Frank’s latest European Quarterly Report. Although there was a drop in take-up in Europe’s two largest markets, London and Paris, this was made up by the strong performance of German, Iberian and Central and Eastern Europe markets. Commercial property rents rose by around 3.5 percent over the course of 2015, largely due to growth in markets such as Dublin, London, Madrid and Stockholm. Rental growth is expected to spread to a wider range of cities in 2016 with Paris, for example, expected to see prime office rents rise following more than two years of stability. A total of €64.5 billion was invested in European commercial property in Q4 2015, taking volumes for the full year to €238.5 billion. This represents a 25 percent increase on 2014.