Global Property Insight
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issue 2 autumn 2014 global property insight Chicago rises Rich pickings On the move The real estate market springs Wealthy investors look How Coca-Cola GB found the back to life with the first new to the commercial sector perfect headquarters in the buildings in eight years as returns boom heart of London’s West End ft.com/GPI contents Special reports editor michael Skapinker autumn 2014 Head of editorial content Hugo Greenhalgh Production editor George Kyriakos Art director Sheila Jack Picture editor michael crabtree Sub editor christina madden Global sales director Dominic Good Head of content activation Alexis Jarman Content activation manager mike Duffy Global associate director, commercial property Lyn thompson Advertising production 04 Daniel Lesar contributors Kate Allen is the ft’s property correspondent Jennifer Bissell is the ft’s US web editor Liz Bolshaw is a freelance journalist David Crouch is a freelance journalist based in Gothenburg Edwin Heathcote is the ft’s architecture correspondent Brenda Hofmann is director of procurement at coca-cola Ben McLannahan is the ft’s tokyo correspondent Michel Mossessian is design S principal at mossessian & Partners Neil Munshi is the ft’s chicago reuTer and midwest correspondent y; Chris Newlands is editor of ftfm, bibb the ft fund management section Adam Palin is a reporter for cHarlie x; ft money knO Gill Plimmer is an ft reporter alan Daniel Ringelstein is a director at ; Skidmore, owings & merrill Time Sarah Townsend is publications editor at the Architects’ Journal DreamS 1. S: TO PHO ft.com/GPI 3. investors 18 column chris Newlands looks at a 4. 2. landscape littered with ‘ghost towns’ and asks whether china’s 1. stalled housing boom threatens Deco delight the global economy the merchandise mart in openers 38 chicago – see page 50 20 second-tier cities 2. 06 outlet villages forget Hong Kong, London, Paris Towers of strength breaking ground out-of-town designer discount – the smart money is on Nanjing, the more London As an antidote to the zoned centres have revolutionised retail, Brussels and manchester for development – see page 8 ghettos of modern commerce, offering luxury for less and productivity and ‘liveability’ Edwin Heathcote admires the good-looking returns for investors 3. 05 estate of play historic mixed-use courtyard developers mark Preston of the buildings of central Europe 24 Grosvenor Estate – see the super-rich 42 page 44 08 the world’s millionaires are pouring column 4. introduction unprecedented amounts into Europe’s listed property market is bags of style from the chiltern firehouse to bricks and mortar, snapping up fragmented, and should consolidate Why retail outlets are in Washington’s Post office, grand iconic properties in prime locations for growth, says Kate Allen vogue – see page 20 industrial buildings are being salvaged from dereliction and 28 44 transformed back into landmarks statistics interview the indispensable data showing mark Preston describes his role 12 the focal points for real estate with the Grosvenor Estate and feature activity across Africa the fine balance between historic Scandinavia’s commercial assets and overseas growth property scene is booming as occupiers foreign investors flood in to take 50 advantage of its strong economic 30 chicago and population growth on the move New skyscrapers, massive Brenda Hofmann describes the downtown refurbishment – there’s fizz and excitement of finding the a real wind in the city’s sales perfect West End offices for her company, coca-cola 54 design 32 Breaking down the office cubicle japan is crucial for workplace success Gabriel Baertschi’s search for new premises that would make topping out his AstraZeneca staff connect 58 michel mossessian High-rise versus groundscrapers ft.com/GPI breaking ground edwin heathcote People love to live and work in lively places. It is a cliché. Experts in urban block capitals studies, from Jane Jacobs to Jan Gehl and Richard Sennett, suggest that cities work because people of all classes are obliged to rub up against one another. They find interest in a streetscape that is alive around the clock and in which the mix of uses maintains an active urban realm. Yet despite this simple idea that sounds rather obvious, cities are no longer being built this way. Developers like to build housing in self-contained plots, whether those are suburban tracts or condo towers; they like the control that solely residential use gives them and generally will not include commercial units unless zoning regulations demand it. Commercial developers, too, like the unencumbered purity of a central business district. They feel strength in numbers, they like their office towers to huddle together with their own kind. Even those cities most famed for their streetlife, for animated landscapes envied across the world – New York, Barcelona, Paris – are making the same mistakes with their new commercial developments. The conventional reasons given are to do with the differing sizes of floor plates needed for commercial, retail and residential use; the desire for global businesses to be together; and zoning regulations. The actual reasons include the developers’ desire to be rid of troublesome residents who tend to object to further construction – see the once densely mixed City of London and its rejection of residential developments, which has turned the historic capital of London into a place purely for capital. Yet there is another, rather neglected model that formerly worked very well. You can see it on the streets of most big central European cities, from Berlin to Budapest, Krakow to Kiev. It also involves a kind of zoning, but not in the same ways that tend to be seen in the Anglo- Saxon model. This is not zoning of the plan, but zoning of the section: you could think of it as a multi-layered torte. In practice, this meant big courtyard buildings, spec-built by individual developers and builders. They were 1. generally five to seven storeys tall (heights were carefully restricted by flats are roughly renovated as demand a civilised new prototype for the city in planning edicts) and had a courtyard at for more space becomes apparent. So which the division of the functions was their centre. The layering often began successful have these been at saving inscribed into the façade. The ground with a half-basement. This was the realm old buildings that they have effectively floor was glazed but with substantial of workshops and craftsmen, allowing gentrified the once end-of-life structures structural stanchions that gave depth light industry and artisanal skill to exist they intended to inhabit temporarily; and interest to the streetscape and in the heart of the city. The ground floor whole blocks are being brought back versatility to the display. to the street-front was occupied by retail. into use rather than demolished. Here, the first floor too was glazed, This might spread into the courtyard, In the dawn of modern architecture, but to a different rhythm. In Lajta’s with every inch of wall space occupied new interpretations of these blocks Budapest building (along with others by window displays or by vitrines as emerged as potential archetypes of he designed in the city around the you entered via a covered passage. the contemporary city. max fabiani’s same time) the commercial floors The ground floor of the courtyard Artaria House in Vienna (1901), Adolf were expressed as almost fully glazed, itself might be plain residential or it Loos’ Goldman & Salatsch building, also open and transparent, letting natural might be inhabited by trades: the tailors, in Vienna, and Béla Lajta’s Rózsavölgyi light deep into the floor plate. The furriers, cobblers, watchmakers and so House in Budapest (both 1911) pointed to apartments above were characterised on, that made a city tick. by more wall and The first floor facing the street was 1. less window, the reserved for commerce, the lawyers’, Front of house more solid surface publishers’ and accountants’ offices Béla Lajta’s Rózsavölgyi signifying the more House in Budapest has and so on. These rooms might also be private realm, workshops, commercial used as apartments; their piano nobile spaces and apartments sheltered from the proportions had a grandeur that made noise of the city. It them suitable for dwellings or show 2. was an architecture 07 rooms. Above these were the flats. yardstick of success parlante, an ideal The classic courts The lower the floor number, the higher around which mixed urban form that the ceiling and the better the interiors; retail and residential has almost entirely service rooms looked out onto the life flourished faded away. courtyard. Poorer apartments were The problem located at the rear of the building and came with the the cheapest accommodation was at next generation of the top or in the mansard roof space. modernists who, Almost all of the apartments would in a way, disliked have been rented, the exceptions being the dense city that the buildings’ owners, developers or was exactly the investors. The social and economic crucible that had structure of the buildings was absolutely given their ideas clear, yet all classes lived and worked succour. Instead, together in a single structure. they desired air These blocks did have servants’ and light, glazed stairs and courtyard entrances, but towers standing in the important thing was that they green space. Their were genuinely mixed environments. utopian vision was y As densely populated buildings, they 2. suburban rather BiBB worked hard; they became engines of than urban; it led economic activity. They have also proved to business parks cHarlie S; to be remarkably resilient. Now many of These were densely populated rather than vital these city centre blocks have seen their city centres and had its ultimate cHiVe ar apartments converted into small offices blocks, engines of economic triumph in the zoned ghettos of al for architects and IT companies, start-ups modern commerce.