“We have been designing buildings as pens. If people are to be productive they need to be free range too.” So says Sir Stuart Lipton, marking his triumphant return to the City with 22 Bishopsgate.
Lipton’s project is better known as that long-stalled, poster child casualty of the financial crisis, the Pinnacle. The site is renamed and re-imagined: simpler, shorter (though still the tallest tower in the Square Mile) and a better bet to succeed.
But it is people that are at the heart of the new design. Visitors will be able to look down on the Walkie Talkie and the Cheesegrater from the free public viewing gallery. Tenants will be able to mix in common spaces with 6m high ceilings, while concierge staff, a bike workshop and a lecture theatre are on hand to smooth, soothe and inspire.
The building will adopt the new Delos WELL Building Standard. Better known in the US, it prompted the Huffington Post last month to pose the perhaps hyperbolic question: “Is your furniture slowly killing you?”
But this will be its first deployment in the UK and Lipton believes the standard – covering everything from light to fitness to nutrition – will raise the bar for future developments in the City.
There are other more familiar forces that may drive a more rounded consideration of the interaction between people and place.
Google is to prelet another major office block at King’s Cross as well as drafting in bus-to-bridge designer Thomas Heatherwick to help reimagine its proposed European HQ at the site (p37). The previous concept – complete with swimming pool and rooftop running track – did not pass muster. Might the new one(s) deliver in all the areas that Delos demands?
At a time when warnings abound around the low productivity of the UK’s workforce, it makes sense to use the built environment to better support a company’s talent. And it’s worth noting that Macquarie Bank, whose Sydney HQ is perhaps the world’s most admired office building, is going to certify all its buildings globally through the new WELL standard. When staff moved into its new building in 2010, productivity increased by as much as 15%.
■ The future of London offices featured heavily at last week’s London Real Estate Forum. And it’s not too late to sign up to receive a print copy of EG’s LREF review. Packed with news, analysis and commentary from the show, sign up to receive yours at www.estatesgazette.com/LREF-review.
■ Speaking of productivity, Bank of England governor Mark Carney is among those to have warned of the UK’s condition. It’s got Capital Economics wondering what a spike in productivity would mean for commercial property.
“Boosting productivity requires a slower rate of job creation, which in turn will tend to moderate the rate of rental value growth,” warns UK economist Ed Stansfield.
But he goes on to say: “All else being equal, higher productivity boosts profits and generates the kind of backdrop in which higher numbers of companies have the confidence to push through their expansion plans.
“Encouragingly, even with productivity at its current relatively low levels, rental values appear to have scope to rise by 5% or so. A strong, sustained recovery in productivity growth should sustain the rental recovery for considerably longer.”
A win-win then.
■ MIPIM UK, once again supported by Estates Gazette, is shaping up nicely. Starchitect Zaha Hadid is among the speakers, with a good representation from the upper echelons of government, too.
Most interesting perhaps, given the protestors that thronged outside last year’s event, will be this year’s residential stream. It is welcome to see the likes of Shelter chief executive Campbell Robb on the speaker programme and a discussion around the housing shortage and rising inequality.
Full details at www.mipimuk.co.uk.
damian.wild@estatesgazette.com
