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Just three large office towers — of more than 500,000 square feet — are being built across New York City, with two expected to open in 2024 or 2025 and nothing else projected to go up for years. Normally, a handful of sites that size would be in various stages of construction, with at least one opening every year since 2018, according to JLL, a real estate services firm. — The New York Times
Due to an obvious confluence of interest rates, office vacancy records, and construction costs, the Times says Manhattan is “entering its most significant office construction drought since after the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s and early ’90s.” Recent superlatives like BIG’s... View full entry
Carlo Ratti and Harvard's Economics department chair Edward Glaeser recently detailed their vision of New York as a “Playground City” in an interactive opinion feature for the New York Times. The six-point plan calls for a number of radical solutions — including the widespread (but not... View full entry
Vornado Realty Trust, the developer hoping to remake the skyline around Pennsylvania Station with a bundle of new office towers, has put the brakes on the massive redevelopment plan for now as interest rates remain high and the real estate market struggles to recover from the pandemic.
Plans for the Penn site, a roughly 18 million-square-foot project that could include 10 new skyscrapers of mostly office space around the transit hub, could be delayed for at least two to three years.
— The New York Times
Despite her recent mum on the status of the $7 billion project, the Empire State Development agency said it remains confident in New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s commitment. Vornado, which owns half of the sites included in the scheme and in January was delisted from the S&P 500, reportedly... View full entry
There’s been a surge of demand from real estate owners for pleasant fragrances to make the air a little fresher and the workplace a little more comforting and energizing [...]
“Here in New York City, for example, real estate companies are interested in scenting the building itself, as opposed to just the individual tenant spaces [...] There are lots of vacant office spaces these days. So what can the real estate companies do to attract tenants?”
— Commerical Observer
So-called "scent profiles" have been documented to improve productivity, avoid a phenomenon known as olfactory fatigue, and achieve a psychological familiarity helpful to marketers when developing brand recognition. This is one of many approaches companies are attempting to use in order... View full entry
Even if the office were to go the way of the horse-drawn carriage, the neighborhoods we refer to today as downtowns would endure. Downtowns and the cities they anchor are the most adaptive and resilient of human creations
The rise of remote work today won’t kill off our downtowns, but they will be forced to change once again. And with smart strategies and perseverance on the part of city leaders, real estate developers and the civic community, they can become even better than they were.
— Bloomberg
Writer Richard Florida is back with a new look at the “basic reason” behind his predicted rebound of central business districts, which he claims is an inevitability based on the historic evolution of such areas and recent building trends to convert hotels and office buildings into residential... View full entry
While speculation over what a long-term “post-pandemic workplace” may look like is often distilled into conversations about remote and hybrid working, the topic of asynchronous working garners relatively less attention. This comes despite the fact that many of the touted benefits of remote... View full entry
A lot has changed since Archinect released the findings of its initial Return-to-Office survey in March this year. Responses gathered from the architecture community during the first weeks of 2021 displayed an overwhelming commitment by employers to offer an option to work remotely and/or to... View full entry
Office design has changed over the years, but perhaps one of the most infamous design trends has been the open office layout. Pitched to foster collaboration and optimize space while bringing a new modern edge to the workplace environment, corporate offices across the globe were eager to adopt... View full entry
Ever since the transition of many offices to remote work, plans and strategies on returning to the physical office have been developing. Archinect is reaching out to the community to learn about various plans on reopening the office. Previously on Archinect: Architects share their biggest... View full entry