Archinect - News

Are ‘work resorts’ an answer to rising office vacancy rates?

2024-09-17T07:00:00-04:00

In an Archinect feature article published last month, we unpacked the residual impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on office design. As our recent business survey found, a decline in demand for new office space post-pandemic is one of several factors currently feeding a turbulent economic landscape for architects, alongside headline forces such as interest rates and inflation.

As our feature article noted, 20% of U.S. workers are believed to be currently working on either a remote or hybrid work schedule. Meanwhile, industry studies posit that 50% of large international firms expect to reduce their existing office space over the next three years, while U.S. office vacancy rates sit at 20% and approximately 2 billion square feet of U.S. office space is underutilized.

Related on Archinect: The Pandemic Is History, but for Architects, Its Impact on Office Design Remains. Image: Aaron Thompson

Amid the warning signs for architects specializing in the design and delivery of new office space, ...

Makoto Yamaguchi completes Tokyo gaming headquarters with slanting walls and video game metaphors

2024-04-17T11:43:00-04:00

Japanese practice Makoto Yamaguchi Design has completed a headquarters for a game production company in Tokyo inspired by video game elements.

Facing the site of an elevated railway where trains pass on average every 1.5 minutes in both directions, the scheme is defined by slanted walls in response to environmental elements such as light, wind, and sound.

Image credit: Koichi Torimura

Across the building, every slanted wall height is optimized according to the requirements of each floor. The third-floor walls, for example, are increased in height to prevent recording studios from being impacted by external noise. Meanwhile, the height of the slanted walls decreases as the scheme rises to open views of the surrounding city.

Image credit: Koichi Torimura

“The slanted walls protect the interior from the external gaze, making it impossible to tell what the building is for from the outside,” Yamaguchi explains. “Not being able to see the purpose is much the sa...

Safdie Architects completes integrated Surbana Jurong Campus in Singapore

2024-03-14T17:18:00-04:00

Safdie Architects has just announced the completion of their Surbana Jurong Campus project in Singapore. The 742,000-square-foot design for the Surbana Jurong corporation aims to establish a better work-life balance for employees while connecting to its natural rainforest setting.

The design brief calls for elevating ten pavilions of five and seven stories apiece along a linear arch to allow plantings to grow up from beneath and eventually envelop the offices, creating a "treehouse" effect for its users. Architects say this provides an alternative to "traditional, internally focused buildings." Charu Kokate, a Senior Partner at Safdie Architects, said the design "was guided most essentially by the people whose work and lives intersect there."

Photo by Timothy Hursley, courtesy of Safdie Architects

As such, the project features a selection of workplace wellness considerations meant to stimulate socialization, increase creativity, ...

De Zwarte Hond designs flexible timber office park in Amsterdam

2023-06-22T11:30:00-04:00

De Zwarte Hond has designed a timber office building for Dutch energy company Alliander. Located on the Noordzeeweg in Amsterdam Westpoort, the new offices are described as circular and flexible, consisting of workshops, warehouses, test facilities, and educational and park buildings.

Image: Jaques Tillmans Foto Focus / De Zwarte Hond

Sustainability guided the design of the roughly 226,042-square-foot complex, which resulted in high flexibility, scalability, and modularity. Materials such as wood were used as much as possible, and harmful substances like glue, PU foam or sealant were minimized. The parking building’s detached set-up allows it to grow or shrink. In addition, the structure’s façades are made of weather-resistant Corten steel.

Image: Scagliola Brakkee / De Zwarte Hond

The office is gas-free and energy neutral due to approximately 37 square feet of solar panels and thermal energy storage. Its use of timber allowed the project to store 560 tons of carbon dioxide. Much con...

Zaha Hadid Architects on using AI in workplace design

2023-06-15T13:01:00-04:00

Zaha Hadid Architects has offered The New York Times an insight into how the firm has deployed artificial intelligence in workplace design. Times writer Farah Nayeri spoke with Arjun Kaicker and Ulrich Blum from Zaha Hadid Analytics + Insights (ZHAI) which uses data and artificial intelligence to design workplaces.

“The pandemic has really supercharged innovation in the workplace,” Kaicker told the paper, noting that before 2020, “the majority of office buildings had a one-size-fits-all desk for everyone, and the same environment around them, the same everything.”

Blum shared that ZHAI possessed a computer tool that, within 27 hours, could generate 100,000 designs for a building interior — a feat which would take an architect a decade to deliver if producing 40 drawings per day. The team cited the firm’s Infinitus Plaza in Guangzhou, China, which saw AI deployed to generate options for positioning the bui...

Zaha Hadid Architects to begin construction on curving towers in Lithuania

2023-02-14T10:56:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects is moving forward with a set of low-rise towers in Vilnius, Lithuania. Titled the Vilnius Business Stadium, the scheme is comprised of two towers of eight and nine stories connected at street level by a courtyard atrium and two floors of public amenities.

Image credit: Frontop for Zaha Hadid Architects

The 258,000-square-foot scheme is defined by its sweeping form, with both the curvature of the facades and cantilevered balconies facing toward the city’s historic Gediminas Castle Tower. Described by the design team as “reinterpreting the dynamic geometries of the neighborhood’s existing civic architecture,” the center’s built form is complimented by 126,000 square feet of landscaped terraces, roof gardens, and plazas that open directly onto a Martha Schwartz-designed public square.

Image credit: Frontop for Zaha Hadid Architects

The central floors of each tower house office spaces of differing sizes and layouts. The floorplates connect to landscaped terraces and ...

Foster + Partners completes EU's tallest building in Warsaw, Poland

2022-10-26T09:00:00-04:00

Foster + Partners has completed work on Varso Tower in Warsaw, Poland. At 310 meters (1,017 feet) tall, the scheme overtakes Frankfurt’s Commerzbank Tower (also designed by Foster + Partners) to become the tallest building in the European Union.

The new tower is also nearly 400 feet taller than the Intempo skyscraper in Benidorm, Spain, which became the tallest residential building in the European Union following its completion last year.

Image courtesy of Foster + Partners

At ground level, the project includes a plaza enclosed within a glazed screen. Described by the designers as an ‘urban room,’ the plaza contains full-height trees and seating for office workers on breaks and the public.

Image courtesy of Foster + Partners

Inside, the tower’s lobby features a 33-foot-high ceramic artwork by local artist Krystyna Kaszuba-Waclawek. Above, office floors are accessed by two banks of double-deck elevators where each c...

Architects earn more from renovations than new builds for first time, fueled by workplace revolution

2022-05-10T09:00:00-04:00

Architecture firms are billing more from reconstruction and renovation projects than they are from new builds for the first time; a milestone driven by soaring demand for office renovations. In the 20 years that the AIA has been collecting data on billings for renovations versus new build projects, the share of billings received from renovations has been consistently rising for over a decade, suggesting the new milestone is not entirely attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Throughout 2021, works to existing facilities reached 52% of architecture firm billings. According to AIA Chief Economist Kermit Baker, one quarter of works to existing facilities comprise adaptive reuse, with another quarter owing to conversion and basic interior modernization. 18% comprises tenant fit-outs while adding usable space and upgrading building facades or systems each comprise 10%.

“This is a l...

Lloyd's has dropped plans to reimagine its Richard Rogers-designed office in a potential portent to its future

2022-01-31T17:20:00-05:00

As a follow up to the recent surprising news that insurance giant Lloyd’s of London may be considering a potential exit from the award-winning Lime Street headquarters designed for them by late architect Richard Rogers in the late 1970s (opened in 1986), The Architect’s Journal UK is now reporting that the company has also paused previously announced plans to overhaul a major portion of the building in what could be a sign about the future status of its lifelong tenant.

The all-important Underwriting Room within Lloyd’s was supposed to be the subject of the planned fixes, although now plans are being revisited, according to a spokesperson for the company. Lloyd’s is saying it has made the decision to step back from the project its CEO said would be a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for architects in order to “ensure our vision for the future of this space is in line with the market’s needs and fit for purpose.”

Rogers’ original design of the Lloyd’s building included the multistor...

Workplace innovator is looking for designers to imagine the future of offices

2021-10-04T15:09:00-04:00

Last week, we published the results of our survey of the architectural community, which focused on workplace trends and a return to offices. Key findings from the survey, which can be read in its entirety here, included the finding that just over half of respondents had either returned to in-person working or had chosen to work some of their time in the office. Of those who were working in offices that had re-opened, almost 90% said that changes had been made to their office infrastructure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The results demonstrated a continuing dependence on local health requirements, adaptions to technology, and employee preferences, adding further credence to a prevailing view that workplace trends, including what we expect from the offices of the future, will be permanently changed long after the pandemic has ended. In this respect, architects sit at an interesting crossroads. As office users, architects will be among the professions whose work environments are destin...

Employees want healthier, more sustainable offices after COVID, says survey

2021-07-06T12:14:00-04:00

Following almost two years of work-from-home orders, businesses and governments are seeking to bring employees back to traditional workplaces. While working from home will continue to form part of many businesses’ employment structures in the long term, a separate question lingers over what the office of the future may look like.

A new report by NEXT Energy Technologies titled “The Case for Office Space: How Buildings Need to Change to Suit a Climate-Conscious, COVID-Weary Workforce” suggests that many employees will only accept office environments that respond to the needs of human health and the climate crisis. NEXT’s findings, available to download here, were the result of a survey carried out among over 450 remote employees and more than 150 senior managers across business verticals, which expose areas of significant alignment and divergence over how future offices should be designed and operated.

“Employees will not settle for the offices they once had; they want healthier...

BIG unveils infinity loop headquarters in Hangzhou, China

2021-04-20T10:53:00-04:00

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has unveiled their design for the new R+D headquarters of OPPO, the largest smartphone manufacturer in China. Named the O-Tower, the scheme seeks to reflect the company’s ethos of “endless innovation in the pursuit of perfection” and serve as an iconic gateway to Hangzhou’s Future Sci-Tech City.

The O-Tower. Image: IMIGO and BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

Colloquially known as “Heaven on Earth”, the city of Hangzhou has a dual identity as both a hub for innovation, and a center of rich cultural and natural history, hosting three of the world’s 57 UNESCO Heritage sites. The O-Tower sits at an intersection of these two conditions, flanked by a natural lake, a 10,000 square-meter park, and a high-rise urban center.

The O-Tower. Image: BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group

The scheme’s signature massing is shaped in response to the unique needs of contemporary tech companies. While deep, flexible floorplates are desirable by tech companies for accommodating more creative, var...