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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
Gensler Principal Steven Paynter shares an update announcing important statistical findings related to his firm’s work surrounding the adaptive reuse and conversion of office buildings worldwide. The data report has been updated to reflect changes in office conversions. The firm shares that an... View full entry
These conversions seem like a win-win: turning a plethora of barely used office space into desperately needed urban housing.
But converting offices into apartments is easier said than done. And while it's easy to imagine the process behind conversions, like adding in walls and plumbing, it gets complicated.
— NPR
Various cities across the United States have been turning to office-to-residential conversions as a way to address declining city cores that have yet to reach pre-pandemic levels. As noted by NPR, San Francisco is making way for these conversions by adjusting current building codes and getting rid... View full entry
A new report published by the Brookings Institution is offering potential solutions for developers, architects, and urban planners engaged in office-to-residential conversions in the hopes of remedying the spate of downtown declines that are beginning to plague cities across the country... View full entry
A new report from Moody’s Analytics is further dampening CRE prospects for the near future after declaring all office structures built before 1980 to be “obsolete” in terms of their abilities to lure back tenants in the face of an ongoing national downtown decline. Speaking... View full entry
That simple recipe for pandemic lemonade—offices people no longer use, combining with central urban locations where people want to live—is blissfully ignorant of a wide range of architectural and economic factors that make the vast majority of office buildings simply unsuitable as housing. — Fast Company
Labeled by Fast Company as “Goldilocks” zones, the sweet spot for office buildings with the potential to become residential are ones that are mid-rise, built pre-WWII, with at least two sides facing open areas or streets near, but not within, a city’s financial core. According to San... View full entry
Now the algorithm he spearheaded collapses the survey process — which must be conducted to determine whether a commercial building can be turned into apartments — from months to hours. His work will help these conversions to be enacted on a mass scale. which is important given the urgency created by America's rising office-vacancy rates due to the pandemic's reshuffling of where and how we work. It could help bring people back to downtowns across North America as renters or homeowners — Business Insider
Gensler estimates that only 3 out of 10 office buildings are eligible for conversion. The pitfalls of mass-scale conversions remain impediments even as architecture firms are earning more from renovations than new buildings for the first time. In the last two years alone, office conversions have... View full entry
The ever-changing skyline of Texas’ eccentric state capital is getting another pair of new additions after Hudson Yards developer Related Companies announced plans this month for two new separate Austin office buildings designed by Gensler and KPF. Related says both projects will be located in... View full entry
Through the doldrums of America’s pandemic-triggered office downturn, the nation’s capital is quickly turning into a case study for the conversion of former commercial spaces into residential housing and mixed-use development. The Washingtonian magazine recently did a survey of different... View full entry
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has announced a new adaptive reuse task force that will explore the vast untapped potential for rehabilitation present in the city’s considerable stock of outdated office buildings. Born out of the new Local Law 43, the task force is charged with producing... View full entry
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced two major changes that will help it restructure and rebound following recent economic losses. The institute will shed staff and sell its surplus property as it looks to redevelop its 66 Portland Place headquarters according to reports... View full entry
Last month, New York State passed the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act (HONDA), laying the groundwork for hotels and other commercial buildings to be converted into affordable housing. Nevertheless, a recent article by NBC News gives a laundry list of reasons why among commercial buildings... View full entry
A three-juror panel in Hamburg has announced David Chipperfield Architects as the winner of its two-stage competition to build the future headquarters of the nation’s largest insurance company, Signal Iduna Group. The firm submitted plans for a multi-building office complex in Hamburg’s... View full entry
Paris-based Hamonic+Masson & Associates has completed "Urban Quartz," an urban development of three office buildings designed to establish a more prominent office sector in Rennes, France. Each structure is uniquely shaped to create the impression of a canyon-like experience through jagged folds... View full entry
OMA's Axel Springer building, which received the official launch from its namesake company today, visually confronts the disparate nature of modern office work. The 30-foot tall atrium with 3D facade elements creates a stage for unscripted interaction, while the more discreet sections of the... View full entry