Living in Wonderland: Urban Development And Placemaking 9780857194060, 9780857193612

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Living in Wonderland

Urban Development & Placemaking

David Twohig

Personal Acknowledgments: Amy Cornfield, Elizabeth Twohig, Robert Tincknell, S P Setia, Sime Darby, EPF, William Murray, Wordsearch, Eric Holding, Sam Martin, John Ronan, Richard Barrett.

HARRIMAN HOUSE LTD 3A Penns Road Petersfield Hampshire GU32 2EW GREAT BRITAIN Tel: +44 (0)1730 233870 Email: [email protected] Website: www.harriman-house.com First published in Great Britain in 2014. Copyright © Harriman House Ltd. All photographs remain copyright © of their respective owners. The right of David Twohig to be identified as the Author has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. iSbn: 9780857194060 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library. Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the Publisher. This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior written consent of the Publisher. No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person or corporate body acting or refraining to act as a result of reading material in this book can be accepted by the Publisher, by the Author, or by the employer of the Author.

All photos, unless stated below, are by David Twohig and Amy Cornfield. All Rights Reserved. Additional acknowledgements: wavebreakmedia / Shutterstock.com (Kinsale) p.v and 4 Battersea Power Station Development Company (London eye) p.6 Sean O’Dwyer / Shutterstock.com (Glenstal Abbey) p.7 MarilynJane (www.flickr.com/photos/71153021@ N00/375836669) via Compfight, used under creative commons 2.0 (Poundbury) p.34 John Thompson Partners p.58, p.79 Sean Pavone / Shutterstock.com (Roppongi Heights) p.60 Studio Shanghai p.67, p.144 Grafton Architects p.75 RTKL P.75 Treasury Holdings Limited (Grand canal Dock) p.75 AWP Architects p.84 Mikhail Markovskiy / Shutterstock.com p.92 Battersea Power Station Development Company p.123 Hassel and Lend Lease, N178: Peter Bennetts and N213: Earl Carter p.125 Wordsearch p.159 Frank Gehry Partners p.171, p.175 Steve Speller p.176 lambda_X (www.flickr.com/photos/25744394@ N04/2928942251) via compfight, used under creative commons 2.0 p.179 Battersea Power Station Development Company p.186 Battersea Power Station Development Company p.189 CreativeNature.nl / Shutterstock.com p.193 Sam Martin p.196

01. Introduction The Future World About Me About the Book

04. Living / Residential

1 3 4 9

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02. Cities and Districts

05. Working / Offices

06. Shopping / Retail

The evolution of the modern office The Multifaceted Corporate Office Diversity in Office Design Enabling Office Diversity Members’ Clubs and Hubs

07. Art and Culture

08. Meanwhile Use

Using Culture to Seed Regeneration 168 Embedded Art 176 Sculpture 178 Graffiti 180 182 Urban Intervention

03. Masterplanning Right Mix of Property Uses Critical Mass Phasing and Implementation The Various Stages of Development Pioneer Stage Building a Place Brand A Global Study of Masterplans

INtroduction 96 Manhattan’s Residential Revolution 100 variety of unit TypoLogy 102 Podium Design 104 Outside space 108 Amenities 110 Facilities 112 Services 114

165

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The Urban Village 18 Two sides of a city 26 Unique Identity 30 Ranking Cities’ Liveability 36 Geography 38 The Global Property Market 44 Investor and Seasonal Cities 46 Slums and our Cities 48 The Best and worst 54

Meanwhile Residential Uses Meanwhile Retail Uses Meanwhile Office Uses Activating Un-let Units Temporary Pop-Up Events

117 120 122 128 134 136

187 192 194 196 197 198

57 61 62 64 68 70 72

75

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Impact of internet retailing 141 Shopping Centres vs The High Street 142 Clone Towns 152 Independent Retail 154 Diversity of Retail Offer 158 Markets 160 Retail Theatre, Curatorship and Events 162

09. Conclusion Choosing our future

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Photograph: Manhattan skyline as seen from Brooklyn Bridge Park.

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01. Introduction The Future World

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About Me

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About the Book

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Good placemaking is about never reaching for the default solution. It is about balancing big gestures with intimate spaces and delivering on actions and not empty marketing words.

The Future World We are currently experiencing the greatest urbanisation and growth of population in human history.

A

ccording to the World Health Organisation, the world’s urban population stood at 3.4 billion people in 2009. This was expected to rise to 6.4 billion by 2050. With such levels of urban growth we need to think seriously about the neighbourhoods we are creating. They will define a new world. Unprecedented demand for housing makes it easy for designers and developers to opt for lowest-common-denominator solutions. But the prospect of hundreds of millions of people ending up in nondescript developments without a sense of identity will lead to future social problems: alienation, isolation, crime and more.

This book is an exploration of what makes for effective placemaking in the modern world. By looking at what has worked and what hasn’t, by exploring some of the most exciting urban neighbourhoods today – as well as looking at some dramatic large-scale mistakes – my hope is that anyone interested in creating the world of tomorrow will be better equipped to make outstandingly liveable cities.

Dismal new cities and districts are also completely unnecessary. Good placemaking needn’t be expensive, and it can make a developer’s products many-times more valuable than its competitors’ – as well as creating new urban districts that everyone can be proud of for generations to come.

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About Me The towns, neighbourhoods and buildings we experience directly influence our mood and quality of life. I feel this places a significant social responsibility on all involved in the development of our urban environment.

I grew up in the small seaside town of Kinsale on the south coast of Ireland. If you could imagine the quintessential coastal town in which to live, this would be it. Two 17th century forts reach out into an enclosed bay, protecting the town with its narrow streets nestling between the sea and surrounding hills. Kinsale has a slew of independent shops, restaurants and galleries, all of which have been promoted by an active town committee since the late 1960s. Kinsale had an active community spirit even in the arguably less sophisticated Ireland of the pre-Celtic Tiger era. I can recall the town’s determination in 1986 to win the European Entente Florale and Ireland’s Tidy Towns competitions. Locals came together, understanding the social and economic benefits of improving the town’s physical environment and identity. Its strong sense of community involvement, coupled with an active calendar of social, arts and maritime festivals throughout the year, added to the scenery and bustling centre to make Kinsale one of Ireland’s most popular towns. Although I didn’t know it at the time, growing up in Kinsale first ignited my interest in property and places.

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Both my parents were archaeologists and when I was young family holidays consisted of trips to Neolithic monuments, castles and galleries. I once spent two weeks in the back of a Land Rover with my two brothers being carted around every Norman castle in England. At the time I was envious of other kids’ trips to water-parks and Mediterranean beaches, but that early exposure to culture was to have a major influence on everything that became important to me.

Below: The picturesque seaside town of Kinsale, Ireland.

An actively involved community and beautiful environs was something I was again lucky to be exposed to when I attended boarding school at a Benedictine monastery. At 12 I was shipped off to Glenstal Abbey, a 19th century Norman Revival castle, set amongst lakes and forests in County Limerick. At that age you don’t appreciate the influence of your surroundings, but they undoubtedly had a positive effect on the students’ outlook on life and study. The impact of our environment on our personal development is critical, particularly in our formative years. Trips to Paris and London, including visits to La Défense and Canary Wharf in the 1990s, also widened my horizons. But I really only became conscious of the benefits of my upbringing and experiences once I began studying at university. I had always loved architecture and art but I lacked discipline and found little in the way of fulfillment when studying both these subjects in a prolonged college career. Property economics in Dublin and then Oxford finally provided the balance between design and commerce that I craved. It captivated me from the outset and has maintained its hold on me throughout my career. When I finished my studies I was lucky enough to find work with Ireland’s most-renowned developer at the time, Treasury Holdings. They were the biggest development company in a country where little else was being talked about. They had a reputation for ruthless ambition and after a lot of networking and a few white lies I got an interview.

Above, top to bottom: Twenty-one years young, travelling around the US. Here with friends on the Staten Island Ferry in New York. Back in New York on a routine visit years later. Pictured here taking time out for a stroll on the recently renovated High Line.

I was let in to what was the dream job for a young upstart. I soaked up everything I could. Gradually I found myself moving up the ranks from surveyor to manager as I worked my socks off on a plethora of Irish-based assets. The most interesting ones were the developments I ran around Dublin’s Grand Canal Basin, then fast becoming the most exciting post-industrial mixed-use neighbourhood in Ireland.

But I tired of Dublin’s small incestuous market after a couple of years and I asked for a move to China in order to be our first man on the ground for the company’s emerging business there. And so I was sent to Shanghai for what were the greatest three years of my life. Moving 6,000 miles from home to a country where I didn’t speak the language wasn’t easy, but the professional challenge was unparalleled by anything I might have found in Ireland. Over the next three years, at the peak of the global economic boom, I worked on a diverse portfolio of projects in China. We were joint venture partners with the Shanghai government when we secured masterplan approval for the 42 million sq ft Dongtan eco-city outside Shanghai. I spent four months living out of the Ritz in Beijing as we acquired the single largest property asset ever purchased in China, only to see the government renege on the deal six months later. That was a steep learning curve! Finally, having compiled a portfolio of assets, I was fortunate to be involved as development director in a $250 million stock exchange launch of the company we had built. But there is only so much time one can spend chasing around the Far East and in 2008 I jumped at the company’s request for me to move back to London to head up the development team for the newly acquired Battersea Power Station. The Power Station was instantly appealing because very few opportunities now exist in the Western world to work on the kind of large-scale projects that you get in developing countries like China or India. Particularly not in the centre of one of the world’s greatest cities. The 40-acre site and the iconic nature of the Power Station, a listed building, provided the opportunity to carve out a new district for London with its own identity.

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Clockwise from top left: A view from the London Eye over the Houses of Parliament towards Battersea Power Station. People’s Square, Shanghai. Grand Canal Dock developments in Dublin. The Normanesque castle that is home to Glenstal Abbey School, Co. Limerick, Ireland. Shanghai launch party of China development company.

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Working in China was amazing, but Battersea Power Station is unique. As we worked on the project it became increasingly evident that it had to be developed as a distinctive place in London.

We sought to identify the reasons for a place’s success and how to measure that success – whether in terms of popularity, privacy, intimacy, demographic, etc.

Too much recent development in the city had been uninspiring and predominantly single-use neighbourhoods. The recognisability of the Power Station, with over 1,200 ft of river frontage and 40 acres of centrally located development land, demanded an original approach. We would be shaping the future of a large chunk of the city. So, as head of development during the planning process, I led a team which set about a comprehensive process of research and investigation – trying to find out what was really involved in the creation of real places.

It was a major research initiative, featuring a series of seminars attended by experts across a number of property sectors: living, working, shopping, playing and branding. We followed these up with internal workshops to debate the issues raised and to distil what was most pertinent to contemporary placemaking.

We researched great places being created today as well as those that have existed in the past.

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This work was consolidated into what we called the Placebook. This was essentially a piece of thought-leadership – a handbook for all involved with the project to refer to as we sought to make a progressive, signature new district for London.

Left: My first edition of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album, Animals, with the cover showing Battersea Power Station.

About the Book Choose from a million Minis but only one home There is increasing disillusionment with the property industry’s failure to produce anything but soulless contemporary environments. Recent years have witnessed grass-roots urban initiatives rally against this trend of banality. Unfortunately, the companies responsible for developing most of our built environments have not paid much attention. Developers are often slow to change and seek improvement. Land is a fixed commodity, which means there is always demand, and whenever demand outstrips supply there is less competition and reduced pressure to make advances in what you offer. Property development is a conservative industry and the typical firm’s approach is archaic when you consider how little time they invest in research and development. It would be interesting to compare the percentage of turnover that the automotive industry puts back into R&D compared with the property industry. After all, consider the difference between the cars you travelled in as a child and those you drive today. The two are incomparable. Can we say the same about the buildings we live, work and play in? I don’t think so – particularly when it comes to housing. I would rather live in a Georgian

townhouse or a Victorian mansion block than many new-build apartments we see today. If the real estate sector is a long way behind the automotive industry when it comes to product development, it also lags badly when it comes to broadening customer choice. The Mini Cooper comes in over one million different combinations when all extras and options are considered. Not many can say the same about their choices when buying a newly built home. But why shouldn’t we expect the same level of service, or better? It is the biggest financial commitment of most people’s lives.

The internet has also proved an ineffective catalyst of positive change in property development. This seems likely to continue. Sites like TripAdvisor might have changed the way we assess our holiday choices, but we cannot all afford to buy our dream home in an ideal location. Most of us have to compromise to some extent. This, coupled with a house-proud nature and fear of causing a negative impact on the value of our homes, prevents us from publicly expressing the shortcomings of the products developers have sold us.

Improvement within the industry needs to be driven by developers. Planning and regulatory authorities are not sophisticated enough to dictate quality. Authorities can try to introduce regulations, such as minimum space standards for apartment sizes, but even these can sometimes prove counterproductive by locking those unable to afford larger units out of the market. And where authorities express their opinions on quality of design, this can border on the realms of the subjective and face legal challenge.

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Accumulate those air miles

Time constraints and pressure to hit deadlines mean that many of us aren’t afforded the opportunities for sufficient research and travel. Innovation is limited to what’s on our doorstep and design magazines.

The only way to improve contemporary development is for developers to realise that creating better buildings and places is good for business and provides a competitive advantage in terms of bottom line, quicker sales and improved brand recognition. I truly believe that there are cost-effective ways to create better places while at the same time running a more profitable business. Yes, it is likely to take a little more thought and effort than reaching for the same off-the-shelf solutions for every project. But the payback can be huge. While there are many boutique developers around the world doing some fantastic progressive developments, often the larger developers – who in the end provide the majority of the building stock – are not going to change their ways unless it pays to do so. Even if we accept the benefits of more innovative development, time and financial constraints often prohibit developers and designers from

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taking time out to get a handle on what is happening at the cutting edge of global design and placemaking. Of course, we all take an odd afternoon tour or see something on holiday that is interesting, but we don’t undertake the kind of research needed, especially given the far-reaching impact of what we do. We are set to urbanise three billion people between now and 2050. While reading periodicals and design magazines is all well and good, these are no substitute for site visits. Once we secured planning approval for Battersea Power Station, and before being saved by a consortium of Malaysian companies, the delays that had dogged the project for decades hit again. I decided to take advantage of that window of opportunity to collate my thoughts on placemaking and development into a book, bringing together the knowledge generated from my personal and professional experience and the research we had undertaken at Battersea. I find that much of what is written about development

either ends up as a coffee table book or a theoretical academic paper. Here I try and strike a more informed balance, formatted in a way that allows you to read cover to cover or dip in at your leisure, picking up independent but connected principles. As part of the research for this book, it was important to look at all facets of property and places. I started by considering cities and their constituent neighbourhoods at a macro level. While there are a myriad of magazines and companies compiling lists of the ‘world’s most liveable cities’, I wanted to break down what really makes a city or a district appealing. I sought to understand if those traits could be applied to artificial regenerative masterplanning and whether contemporary districts could compete with historically established places. Once we gain an understanding of the district we want to create, we can consider the component building elements of a new place, including residential, office and retail.

To do all this I needed to research the latest large-scale developments and understand what they were doing well and what they were doing poorly. I studied mature markets such as Europe and the US, which have been at the forefront of development for decades, but also the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), where one can learn a lot from rapid large-scale development, where lower construction costs and reduced planning constraints can result in some wonderful projects as well as some true nightmares. While this book won’t substitute for genuine site visits, hopefully it will serve to ignite ideas and demonstrate that there is value to be realised in creating better places and buildings.

Left: A computer-generated image of the Battersea Power Station masterplan.

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UK

Learn from the best

More London, London King’s Cross, London

During my career I have had the opportunity of working on projects in some fantastic places, including Ireland, Britain, France, China, Russia and America. I have also been fortunate enough to visit a whole host of global developments. Not all have managed to make it into this book; in fact, the majority don’t merit a mention. But there have been a few that I think we can take positives from. Not every element of a scheme needs to be perfect for us to learn something from it. In fact, I don’t think there are many schemes that are without fault.

Battersea Power Station, London Chiswick Park, London The Barbican, London One Hyde Park, London Poundbury, Dorset NEO Bankside, London Virgin Lounge, Heathrow The Shard, London Central Saint Giles, London Workspace Group, London Westbourne Studios, London The Hub, London Kings Place, London Westfield, London

Here is a map of the world with all the countries that I have worked in or visited highlighted in grey. These provide the case studies and brief examples throughout the book. The chapters of the book are colour-coded according to topics such as masterplanning, residential and retail (see the ‘key’ below for full details). Every location featured in the book has also been colour-coded here according to the same pattern.

Marylebone High Street, London Borough Market, London Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth Shoreditch, London Gabriel’s Wharf, London Container City, London Boxpark, London

North america One World Trade Center, NYC Rockefeller Center, NYC One57, NYC

Chapter Key 02. Cites and Districts 03. Masterplanning 04. Living / Residential 05. Working / Offices 06. Shopping / Retail 07. Art and Culture 08. Meanwhile Use 09. Conclusion

Union Square, NYC Chelsea Market, NYC Farmers Market, LA Millennium Park, Chicago SoHo, NYC Disney Concert Hall, LA The High Line, NYC

South america Palermo, Buenos Aires Favelas, Rio de Janeiro Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires Yoo, Punta del Este Petrobras offices, Rio de Janeiro Rua Oscar Freire, São Paulo Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro Escadaria Selarón, Rio de Janeiro San Telmo Feria, Buenos Aires

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Europe Port Grimaud, France Malmö, Sweden Grand Canal Dock, Dublin La Défense, Paris Bilbao, Spain Keetwonen, Amsterdam Platoon, Berlin (and Seoul)

ASIA INDIA Dharavi Slum, Mumbai Gurgaon, Delhi Trident Towers, Mumbai Kanchanjunga, Mumbai

UAE Masdar City, Abu Dhabi Dubai Marina, Dubai

Antilia, Mumbai British Council, Delhi Saturday Night Market, Goa

Marina Bay Sands, Singapore Thames Town, Shanghai Taipingqiao, Shanghai Dongtan, China Roppongi Hills, Tokyo Tokyo Midtown, Tokyo Xintiandi, Shanghai M50, Shanghai Beijing National Stadium Shanghai Expo 2010, Shanghai

The Palm, Dubai The Gate Precinct, Dubai Etihad Towers, Abu Dhabi Downtown Dubai, Dubai O-14, Dubai Dubai Mall Mall of the Emirates, Dubai Aldar Central Market, Abu Dhabi

Australia Sydney Harbour The Rocks, Sydney Woolloomooloo, Sydney

South Africa

ANZ Centre, Melbourne

Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, Cape Town

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Photograph: Manhattan skyline as seen from the top of the new One World Trade Center.

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02. Cities and Districts The Urban Village

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Case Study: Palermo, Buenos Aires

Two Sides of a City

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Case Study: Superb Singapore

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Unique Identity

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Case Study: Thames Town, Shanghai

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Case Study: Poundbury, Dorset, UK

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Case Study: Port Grimaud, France

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Ranking Cities’s Liveability

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Geography 38 Case Study: Sydney Harbour

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The Sustainable City

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Case Study: Masdar City, Abu Dhabi

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The Global Property Market

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Investor and Seasonal Cities

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Slums and our Cities

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Case Study: Dharavi Slum, Mumbai

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Case Study: Favelas, Rio de Janeiro

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The Best and Worst

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What makes a great district and can it be artificially replicated in contemporary development? One of the big difficulties facing urban regeneration and large-scale development is how to replicate the authenticity and character of neighbourhoods or cities that have evolved over generations. Years of development and historical constraints mean that large-scale development opportunities are increasingly rare in mature cities. Infill developments are the norm, where the design and construction of stand-alone buildings are positioned to fit into the surrounding context. Such infill developments are rarely capable of altering the nature of a neighbourhood, although there are exceptions such as Kings Place in London or major state-funded cultural institutions like the Guggenheim in Bilbao, both of which we’ll look at later in this book. In contrast, emerging markets offer many opportunities where there is sufficient land and permissible density of development to create a new neighbourhood identity. In such situations, the design and animation of the spaces between buildings is as important as the architectural design of the buildings themselves. As the BRICS, in particular, continue their hasty march towards urbanisation it is essential that they create worthy new districts. Having worked or undertaken research in all of the BRICS nations, I fear this is far from the reality. Along Left: Graffiti artist Stik portrays the unlikely scene of a woman in a burka holding hands in public with a white man. While improbable, it captures the diversity of cultures in London that makes it a dynamic and creative city.

with the Middle East, what we are seeing is the development of homogenous neighbourhoods with the same generic architecture, devoid of any sense of place, individuality or soul. At this time of the greatest urbanisation of the world’s population in history, we need to consider what constitutes great cities and neighbourhoods before we subject hundreds of millions of people to dismal, nondescript urban environments. It is important that we identify successful neighbourhoods and places that have emerged organically or through regeneration, places where people love to live, work or play. We need to identify what makes them popular, be it architecture, history, intimate spaces conducive to family living or corporate grandeur attractive to multinationals. Once we have identified successful examples and understood the elements that make them popular, we need to consider if and how these principles can be applied to newly created contemporary neighbourhoods. What makes a city great? It is a question that has been asked a thousand times and rarely has the answer been the same twice. Despite what the urban authorities behind our planning codes think, cities are organisms that grow naturally over decades and centuries. Each is unique and different elements constitute their greatness. But I think the principal elements could probably be summarised as:

• Adequate infrastructure in transport, sustainable energy, availability of education, public open spaces, and so on. • Density. This allows a city to grow sustainably and results in a vibrant concentration of people. • Tolerance. This is a platform for diversity, and diversity breeds the creativity key to economic prosperity: particularly important today, when creative capital and attracting talent are leading targets of successful businesses. • An extensive and diverse offering of shops, restaurants, galleries, markets, cultural institutions and events. This makes a city endlessly explorable, even for long-term residents. Above all, a city must be liveable, filled with intimately scaled neighbourhoods (which doesn’t necessarily mean low density ones), each breathing life and relationships into the city. A successful city balances global icons with intimate experiences. The sum of these individual places and neighbourhoods constitutes a great city. Researching these liveable neighbourhoods is what is most relevant to property development, design and regeneration because whereas a city in its entirety can be endless, neighbourhoods have scale that allows them to be studied and their lessons applied.

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The Urban Village The best cities are a balance of global icons and intimate neighbourhoods.

While the considerations of density, tolerance, infrastructure and extensive facilities are all important to a city’s make-up, I want to focus on liveability. I believe it is this characteristic that is absolutely critical to the attractiveness of a city, particularly to permanent residents. To achieve liveability, development should fuse big-city life with village culture. We increasingly refer to neighbourhoods within our major cities as villages. Why are we inclined to do this and what are the attributes of village life that can be

Great cities are a balance between iconic attractions such as the Sydney Opera House and intimate situations like coffee on the doorstep of the wonderful Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

successfully applied to city life in order to improve the places where we live and work? For centuries we lived in village communities that were characterised by intimate relationships, common interests and limited degrees of separation, where people were related or knew each other. Today’s unprecedented levels of urbanisation, coupled with the internet, social media and globalisation of consumer products, have rendered many of us alienated from our communities. We know less and less about our neighbours. The most successful cities are those that comprise a series of unique but interconnected villages, where the city’s attractiveness is the collective total of these individual parts. The perfect urban solution is a fusion of villages, each local, intimate and uniquely identifiable, into a collective city that is diverse in terms of population, wideranging and broad-minded. It allows for the big adventure that attracts talent, residents and tourists but, more importantly, also offers an intimate and liveable scale for those who live there.

Above, top to bottom: Village life in Recoleta, Buenos Aires. Fireworks over Sydney Opera House.

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The village characteristics that are critical when developing a new neighbourhood are: locally run services, common interests, being uniquely identifiable and intimacy – these are discussed in turn in this chapter. The cumulative result of these endeavors will be a neighbourhood where residents are inherently proud, and thus self-policing – which in turn becomes self-perpetuating.

1. Locally run services Although the ongoing globalisation of the high street and the brands we purchase is likely to continue, the existence of locally run services at the heart of a community is key. This topic is discussed further in Chapter 6. The retail prowess of global cities is typically measured in terms of the presence of top-rank international retailers and turnover. While this is inevitable, I would advocate that at neighbourhood level, locally run retail, services and enterprises best serve to successfully create a sense of community.

Towns and ‘village centres’ within cities ought to contain an abundance of locally run newsagents, butchers, fishmongers and vintners along with fashion boutiques, restaurants and bars. Although local products should be encouraged, this is not necessarily the core point I am making. I do not have an issue with the sale of branded or international items so long as the shop owner is local. Not only does this keep expenditure within the local economy but the ability of a shop owner to converse on a human level and create relationships with local customers about local issues helps foster a sense of community life in often alienating cities. If it is possible to go one step further and to sell food and fashion that is locally sourced, then all the better for a thriving local economy and sense of place.

Above: In Shanghai the primary shopping streets are now overrun by the invasion of global brands, but at neighbourhood level communities still retain local identity.

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2. Common interests Villages historically consisted of people with close bloodlines. This meant people shared common interests that bound a community together. Throughout this book I discuss the benefits of a diverse population and its importance to creativity and prosperity. I am not challenging that here, but suggesting that the more an immediate community has in common, the stronger the bond. All cities should accommodate diversity, which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5; however, at a neighbourhood level increased commonality of interests can lead to a stronger community. For example, I agree with the concept of private development supporting social housing. However, I do not agree that both elements are always

best located within the same development as is so often the requirement of democratic-minded local authorities. Cohabitation of the same neighbourhood by people who are from vastly different economic groups is not always viable. Residents are likely to have different levels of education, different interests and demand for different consumer products and services. This can result in a split community, neither half of which relates to the other. In terms of facilities, you have to provide different shops, restaurants and services to satisfy both sides’ varying demands. This reduces footfall, harms business and limits the facilities that can be provided. Communities where the population is ethnically diverse but of similar economic standing have proven to be much more successful.

Above: Rich and poor share the beaches of Rio de Janeiro but return home to less diverse neighbourhoods, be it the condos of Ipanema or the favelas on the hills behind. Left: Similarly, Mumbai on a micro level is a city of independent districts, each home to likeminded people, while on a macro level the city comes together as a whole, often in the larger public parks and most commonly around the game of cricket.

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3. Uniquely identifiable I have travelled around developments in China and India that are thousands of miles apart and in completely different historic contexts, and yet the new communities that are emerging in each place are indistinguishable from each other. Rows of standardised residential blocks are located above podiums with self-contained shops and services, and surrounded by unused open space, all located within gated ‘communities’. Above: A street sign within a residential neighbourhood in Dubai.

South America, Russia and the Middle East are the same, and in the latter countries the communities aren’t even named but often numbered by ‘sectors’. What has happened? Consider Paris, where each neighbourhood within each arrondissement has its own identity, or New York’s and London’s villages each with their own character, from Tribecca to Gramercy and Hampstead to Clapham. The problem is that developers are conservative and lazy. Demand is such that they can simply opt for the lowest common denominator in order to achieve sales. They will continue to reach for the default design solution every time unless they start to understand the value of designing

something different. Developers need to realise that creating new districts that offer new residents something tangible to connect with will drive sales in the face of competition. It is about the introduction of something that defines the character and identity of an area. This might be an iconic building, such as the ‘turning torso’ in Malmö, Sweden (Chapter 4), or a major piece of infrastructure like the public park at Taipingqiao in Shanghai (Chapter 3). Equally, it might be establishing an active community group or a weekly market such as at Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Other ways might include resurrecting a piece of an area’s historic past or establishing a local club that a community can get behind. In London, after losing their football team in an American-style franchise deal, Wimbledon village started running trials on the local common to establish a new grass-roots club, which bound the community closer together and has gone from strength to strength. Whichever route is employed, successful neighbourhoods benefit from a uniquely identifiable and tangible character.

Not only are Dubai’s many disjointed districts devoid of character and services, made unidentifiable by the dominance of uniform glass box architecture, but the sense of community alienation is compounded by a lack of street names and the use of a hierarchical numbering system of sectors, communities and roads.

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4. Intimate Working on Battersea Power Station we were very conscious of possessing a massive icon, an important part of the London skyline. It was the perfect piece of architecture to attract potential residents and tenants. The challenge was how to balance the enormity of the building with somewhere that is intimate and liveable. The big attracts people but the intimate retains people. In London you can see this, for instance, with the balance of the scale of Canary Wharf on the one hand and the intimacy of somewhere like Neal’s Yard, Camden on the other. Jingan Park in Shanghai serves the same function. In New York it’s the reason for the success of the communityled redevelopment of a disused cast-iron elevated railway called the High Line, a point emphasised

to me by James Corner, who showed me round the project (discussed in Chapter 8). The intimacy that we experience in our neighbourhoods is very often linked to scale. It could be a small independent bookshop, a pavement café or a pocket park. Human scale is one of the keys to intimacy. Developers should seek to provide a hierarchy of space – for example, from large playing fields to mid-sized public squares to small pocket parks. We often focus on the big-ticket elements, but the smaller spaces that afford a few people a place to stop and contemplate are a requisite ingredient of good city life.

What is often overlooked, particularly in developing countries’ march to modernisation, is the creation of intimate spaces, with a human scale at neighbourhood level.

Above: When developing a new district you commonly see the big ticket items such as iconic architecture, cultural attractions and new sports or entertainment arenas. What is often overlooked, particularly in developing countries’ march to modernisation, is the creation of intimate spaces, with a human scale at neighbourhood level. It is what you could describe as fusing Canary Wharf (top) with Neal’s Yard (bottom).

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5. Civic pride Civic pride in a place is the result of creating somewhere that is truly liveable. I increasingly notice that the one thing often lacking in newly developed communities is pride. Very often these new developments are merely a property investment or stepping-stone to one’s dream home. Ironically, this dream home is generally in more traditional or established neighbourhoods, such as London’s red-brick terraces or New York’s brownstones, which emphasises that we are not building what people really want. The poor quality of many new developments results in lack of pride and compounds

the soullessness of many developments. Incorporating the principles of the urban village into the development of new neighbourhoods will help to establish a proud community who wax lyrical about the place they live. Instilling pride is key to long-term post-development success, where a proud community becomes a self-policing community, with people who are willing to help keep the place clean, watchful of crime and more actively involved in organisations and events. Estate management is too often an afterthought of development. But it is critical in maintaining standards and pride.

Left to right: The mature neighbourhood of Prince of Wales Drive in London where I live has a tight-knit community of people who are proud of their street. Nearby new developments lack a sense of community, compounded where developers sell the overall site freehold interest to third-party investors, who often squeeze the estate charge and provision of services to improve the return on investment.

New developments lack the social infrastructure, good architecture and estate management required to establish a sense of community.

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Case Study

The urban village: Palermo, Buenos Aires A diverse population is key to the success of one of South America’s most vibrant neighbourhoods.

Buenos Aires

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Palermo is the name of a barrio or neighbourhood in the north-east of the Argentine capital Buenos Aires. Historically it was a residential district popular with Spanish and Italians, and this is reflected in the diverse range of local restaurants, churches, schools and cultural offerings. Like so many of today’s progressive and popular districts around the world, it is the diversity of people that enriches the area. In the decade since Argentina’s economic collapse, Palermo has emerged as the newly hip area for fashion, design, restaurants and street culture. The streets and pavements are home to an eclectic mix of independent companies offering an alternative to the plethora of global brands. This and the European-style architecture of low-rise two and three-storey housing attract a young and creative crowd. The area is bohemian, but definitely upper-middle class. Following the recession of 2001, a graffiti movement such as that which prevailed in New York in the 1970s and 1980s finally made its way to Buenos Aires. In Palermo, where graffiti is legal with the permission of the building owner, fantastic street art is undertaken in a controlled and pro-active manner. The result is that dilapidated buildings are beautified at a time when money is in short supply and the street art with its social commentary provides a rich depth to the neighbourhood’s social context. (Graffiti is discussed further in Chapter 7.) The tree-lined streets are reminiscent of Saint Germain in Paris, but the area is far more liveable than Paris’s ‘museum district’ as Parisians refer to it. Saint Germain, while beautiful, has evolved into a tourist district of hotels and boutique shops that are too expensive and lack the daily services to sustain a sufficient resident base. Palermo is far more liveable and moves at a typically relaxed Latin America pace, where people sip coffee at the pavement cafés; but you can still always sense that someone is planning

their next creative endeavor. This mix offers the perfect creative tonic. To me, Palermo shares a lot of similarities with Shanghai’s French Concession. Both are young, vibrant districts of converted shops, studios and cafés populated by people with ambitions to do great things. That in turn attracts more conventional residents and companies who enjoy being associated with its unique characters. Attracting the masses results in ever-increasing property values. But Palermo is cleaner than Shanghai’s French Concession, is less densely populated and the residents are more discerning. It is, in my opinion, the perfect neighbourhood. What are the elements that make Palermo such a successful district and how can that be captured in a contemporary development? The elements that led to its success in my opinion are a diverse population, independent retailers, an active art scene, and low-rise authentic buildings in a leafy environment.

Left and right: European-style architecture in Palermo provides a human scale and attracts a creative crowd, resulting in a relaxed atmosphere.

How to replicate the success of neighbourhoods that mature over decades in new-build communities

Opting for the safer default position is the primary route towards dull homogenous developments around the world.

How can this be successfully replicated in new developments? It comes down to establishing a manifesto at the outset of the development and rigidly staying true to it when faced with easier alternatives. Opting for the safer default position is the primary route towards dull homogenous developments around the world.

• Globally, there has been a noticeable improvement in the provision of participatory art and events. People are increasingly into pop-up events that challenge perceptions of an urban environment. Long may the support for this continue – especially in lieu of static public sculpture, as discussed in Chapter 7.

• A diverse population requires the provision of a mix of housing and office types at different price points. This should result in faster absorption by the market but requires more complex research and marketing. This is further discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, which cover living and working.

• The greatest challenge for contemporary developments is creating authentic buildings that can compete with the historic buildings which so often attract creative companies. We need to be brave and move away from the sole provision of glass boxes (see 0-14 or Central Saint Giles, both in Chapter 5).

• Independent retailers tend to fail more than the tried-and-tested chains, whose lease and rental payments are also guaranteed by an established parent company. They create a unique attraction but present financing and management issues, meaning it is easier for developers to chicken out. Solving this conundrum is further discussed in Chapter 6.

• Creating a green environment is relatively straightforward but developers need to provide a hierarchy of useable spaces from large parklands to pocket parks and roof terraces.

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Two sides of a city Cities serve a global audience, attracting investment and tourism. I refer to this as a city’s public side. However, cities must also serve local residents. This is a city’s private side.

There are two sides to a city: the public side and the private side. The public side is that which is presented to tourists, investors and governments. This side is critical to the economic success of a city and helps generate important tourism revenue and attract foreign direct investment. The private side is that which is experienced daily by the city’s residents. Elevating a city’s public side is usually more the focus of governments than its private side. This has been particularly true of developing nations in recent years. We have seen emerging countries scramble to secure major international events – a Formula 1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi, the football World Cup in Qatar, a golf championship in Shanghai. Equally, they strive to establish

franchises of major art galleries (Chapter 7), construct mind-bending opera houses and attract all the luxury retail brands. Cities even continue to build taller and taller buildings, at a time when a Taipei 101 or Petronas Towers simply no longer has the same impact. These big-ticket items are all well and good for attracting attention, but irrelevant unless cities deliver on the private side – everything that makes living in a city a pleasure. It is the intimacy, human scale and the relationships people have with their neighbourhoods that makes a city truly liveable for its residents. Without this, all the toys in the world won’t make a city a great place to live or work.

Left to right: The 2008 Olympics in Beijing was an event I will always remember, seeing the city so well turnedout and its people at their proudest. China’s events were delivered at great expense in order to elevate the perception of its cities as first-world, global cities. London’s Olympics were about legacy and a relaunch of the national brand. What legacy will it have for the immediate area in East London? Will the investment pay off?

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Case Study

Two Sides of a City: Superb Singapore When people mention Singapore, the following phrase is often ‘sterile’ or ‘nanny state’. Although I can see where they’re coming from, I don’t agree. Singapore is a wonderful city to visit and spend some time in.

Singapore’s public side is deep and varied. As we just discussed, developing cities can become obsessed with big-ticket events such as hosting the Olympics or securing franchises of the most respected art galleries. Most would be better served studying the secrets of Singapore’s success. While many developing cities strive to justify their existence, Singapore benefits from a sustainable economy based on shipping and finance. On top of this it profits from providing a warm welcome, a structured legal system, transparency and good infrastructure. While I have loved living in cities with populations of 8 and 18 million, Singapore has a more manageable scale at 5.3 million and yet a sufficient density to create vibrancy and to sustain transport infrastructure.

Singapore

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For me, Singapore succeeds for a number of reasons. Let me start with Marina Bay as the centre of the city’s global offering, its public side. The area consists of an enclosed bay peppered with a myriad of attractions. Later on I criticise Abu Dhabi for not centralising and relocating the proposed cultural offering of Saadiyat Island to the city’s main bay and focusing high density development in this location rather than creating

a series of disconnected centres around a 40-mile ring road (see Chapter 7). They need look no further than Singapore’s dense, mixed-use urban centre for the basis of a successful model. From Marina Bay one can venture northward to the historic area that is home to the shopper’s utopia of Orchard Road. In a part of the world obsessed with shopping centres, Singapore succeeds by providing them along a walkable high street environment in the centre of the city. I respect the role of shopping centres and support them when they are located in such a way as to complement the high street rather than locating malls in suburbs – always to the detriment of town centres. Nanjing Road and Huaihai Road in Shanghai are similar successful examples of this, although many of the older centres are in need of refurbishment. West of Marina Bay is the financial district, which is visually stunning but like most such development from Pudong to La Défense lacks a mix of uses, particularly residential, to ensure liveliness beyond traditional office hours. However, just a stone’s throw away is the Singapore River, fronted by Clarke Quay. Here the city provides a break from futuristic architecture and returns to the more restful human scale of

colonial architecture, which has been resurrected to provide a bar and café scene that comes to life after sunset. It provides another example to developers of how repositioned historic buildings have an uncanny knack of being the most popular destinations. Singapore has many of the same physical ingredients as Dubai, including engaging architecture, retail and sun-drenched resorts, but the two couldn’t be more different. Singapore is authentic, walkable, human and diverse. A 2013 report by the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit (‘The World In 2013’) cited Singapore as the world’s sixth-best country to be born in. As for claims that is it is sterile, well, I think that probably relates to the second side of the city, the private side. Neighbourhoods arguably lack the uniqueness, intimacy and finer grain required to satisfy. While I might love to visit, and perhaps could be persuaded to relocate for a few years, it is probably not a place where I would settle down indefinitely.

Clockwise from top left: Shopping on Orchard Road. The surreal ‘super trees’ and skyline walkway in the Botanical Gardens. Another positive is the ability to breakaway from the city and head to places like Sentosa. Here young families can enjoy the vulgar but undoubtedly entertaining theme parks and adults can enjoy their own downtime sipping cocktails, sunbathing and misbehaving at the many beach-resorts and hotels. Marina Bay and the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

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Unique Identity Subjecting China’s millions to identikit lives in homogenous towers is nothing more than a new form of Maoism.

I don’t want to single out China, but it’s where I have spent the most time. Three years analysing development opportunities there took me to a lot of second and third-tier developing cities. Cities like Jinan, Wuxi, Hefei and a hundred others are all developing new districts on a scale that many of us cannot fathom. China has over 160 cities with a population greater than a million. Nearly all of these cities are undergoing major expansion and many are planning new districts for up to 100,000 people, with endless residential tower blocks lined up like Terracotta Warriors. In China, Feng Shui ordains that all residential buildings should face south, as I learned when masterplanning a development in Qingdao, where the local authority directed us to align the buildings to face south rather than to the beautiful western waterfront views. I would visit many of these planned new districts as a guest of the government. Beautiful sweeping roads, completed football stadiums and opera

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houses would stand out amongst the fields of empty serviced plots awaiting development. The level of world-class infrastructure is astounding and would make any established nation jealous, but these future communities and many of the completed ones which I visited lacked a true sense of place. There are, of course, exceptions such as Qingdao and Hangzhou, which have built upon their geographic beauty or history, but the majority of the Chinese urban landscape is a cut and paste of the same deficient model. Much of India seems to be going the same way when you consider places like Faridabad outside Delhi. Where India is more compromised than China is in their approach to infrastructure, which is frightening. Buildings stand like stranded islands in a sea of dust where roads and public realm ought to be (see Gurgaon, Chapter 3). However, India’s strong family ties and sense of community partly overcome the dire lack of infrastructure and help forge a sense of neighbourhood.

In China residential blocks line up like endless rows of Terracotta Warriors.

Left: Dubai Marina boasts a few striking towers but is ultimately soulless, particularly Jumeirah Residence, which is the single largest phase of residential anywhere in the world consisting of 40 uniform, ugly concrete residential towers. Right, top to bottom: Shanghai is home to over 4,000 classified ‘skyscrapers’. Some, like the landmark WTC in the background of the photo here, are striking, but the vast majority consist of rows of residential blocks as seen in the foreground. The apartment buildings of Gurgaon, India, located in isolation behind trunk-highways fronted by endless malls and office towers.

We can find identical districts under development in the Middle East and South America, but the sheer scale of India and China can only focus one’s attention on the potential legacy. The solution in both countries needs to be led by the private market; in both cases, though in different ways, they are currently doing too little. Devolution of power is not something on the horizon in China and consequently anything that strays from the norm is often knocked

back. Meanwhile, India’s chaotic and remote government has little interest in directing urban development, as highlighted by the fact that up to 70% of homes in the political capital of Delhi reportedly exist without planning permission. Developers need to understand the value of socially sustainable developments from a financial perspective in terms of profit and demand if we are to witness change.

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Case Study

Unique identity: Thames Town, Shanghai Thames Town is the somehow familiar but eerie new town located south of Shanghai. While I am not outright against the design of pastiche architecture, I am where it bears no relevance to context.

shanghai

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So how can you forge a sense of identity? Some places try to introduce a cultural icon, some seed community uses or local interest groups. But for others the answer lies with the introduction of a unique architectural language. Around the world there are multitudes of developments that are trying to create an identity solely through an architectural language, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. One such place is Thames Town, just outside Shanghai, which I first visited in 2007. This new town for approximately 10,000 people was part of Shanghai’s larger urban strategy to decentralise the overcrowded core into a series of nine new satellite towns. Some of Shanghai’s other new satellite towns are also surprising, including places modeled on Dutch, Italian, Spanish and German originals. Masterplanned by architectural firm Atkins, Thames Town became a mismatch of imitation Georgian, Tudor and Edwardian architecture sometimes occupying the same terrace. The British theme goes beyond the architecture, with security guards costumed as Beefeaters, a statue of Churchill adorning the town square and a full-size church standing as the centrepiece in a country where the practice of religion is not necessarily encouraged.

Below, left to right:

While I admire the desire to do something different, and Thames Town follows some strong underlying urban principles – including narrow streets with a human scale connecting a series of squares – the strange decision to choose an architectural language more suited to a theme park undermines any of these good intentions. This is unfortunate, because the fundamentals of the masterplan are strong. Regrettably the Chinese continue to be fixated on Western aesthetics that bear no relation to the local context. This masterplan might have been more successful if the designer had been willing to develop a contemporary take on indigenous

Chinese architecture. Alas, this is something the market does not appear sophisticated enough for yet. The Jin Mao Tower stands alone as a beacon for the fusion of Western and Eastern styles in the centre of Shanghai. An equally odd attempt to create a unique identity for a new 100,000-population neighbourhood stands down the road near the beautiful city of Hangzhou. Here you will find Parisian-style architecture and landmarks, including a replica of the Eiffel Tower.

The Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai is one of China’s greatest architectural achievements of the past decade. Strikingly modern, it pays homage to a traditional Chinese vernacular but adapts it to sit comfortably within the unlikely form of a skyscraper. A street in British-inspired Thames Town. China needs to divert from its obsession with Western influence, which has seen the development of European and American style housing across its countryside. It would be better served by studying historic Chinese housing forms and adapting those for contemporary living.

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Case Study

Unique identity: Poundbury, Dorset, UK Developers should reflect on Poundbury’s continued popularity and ability to command premium values against new-build competitors.

Poundbury

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In Europe and America we aren’t averse to what some might describe as pastiche architecture. America’s short architectural history has until recent decades been dominated by neoclassical architecture, which while not progressive is not without merit. In Europe, neoclassical architecture is still frequently dabbled in, often to preserve the context of a historic area but sometimes as a marketing tool to differentiate a new development. Poundbury is a new town built in Dorset, England. The project is the brainchild of Prince Charles, whose championing of classical architecture over the modern movement has seen him object to various developments over the years, including the now listed Lloyd’s Building in the City of London and the Qatari royal family’s proposals at Chelsea Barracks. I visited Poundbury in 2005 as part of a research trip for a major housing development in Ireland. Poundbury’s scheme has come under much criticism for mixing too many traditional European styles. While that may be true, when I consider it against other new town developments I find it hard to be entirely critical. No new development compares to England’s historic villages that evolved naturally over time, but I would prefer to live in Poundbury than in the country’s many modern estates. It may be unfashionable to admit, but if you strip back the architectural stylings and consider the underlying masterplan on its own, you have to commend the attempts to promote certain principles such as pedestrians above cars. Here I like the way buildings directly front the pavement, giving a human scale and animating the streets,

as well as allowing for larger shared parks at the rear of the buildings, a far more practical approach that the 20 ft gardens/driveways that plague housing estates. Sure, the architecture is up for debate. Personally I think that, when applied to the town’s smallscale housing and side streets, it works well and would appeal to me more than the vistas offered in most new lower-density towns or housing estates. However, I think the larger civic buildings in particular tend to lose the run of themselves at times and undo much of the better work. Whatever your opinions, developers should reflect on Poundbury’s continued popularity and ability to command premium values against new-build competitors.

Case Study

Unique identity: Port Grimaud, France Regardless of architectural style, the introduction of waterways as at Port Grimaud could be considered in developing countries where lower construction costs and premium value for creating something unique could make it a viable urban form.

I would like to discuss one other ‘pastiche scheme’ – Port Grimaud, near San Tropez on the south coast of France. It was built on reclaimed marshland in the 1960s under the guidance of architect Francois Spoerry, with a masterplan based upon Venetian waterways and Provençalstyle housing. It proved so popular that second and third phases were delivered in the 1970s and 1990s. The concept for Port Grimaud can be separated into three elements: masterplan, architecture and community. The masterplan consists of a complex network of canals which affords waterfront views to the majority of houses, and this and the direct access to the water and a marina are unquestionably crucial to the area’s success. This was the primary aim of the developer and is in essence the same principle employed decades later at the Dubai Palm, although that builds out into the sea rather than creating inlets. Port Grimaud’s unique approach offers a major competitive advantage and surely merits consideration by developers seeking to differentiate their development, especially in countries such as China where construction costs are lower and there is a tradition of water towns. I believe this masterplan arrangement could easily have been applied to a contemporary architectural style and still have achieved the same rate of day-one sales. The question is simply a matter of taste. Developing this project today I would certainly opt for a more contemporary style given the current preferences of international buyers.

However, if that approach had been adopted in the 1960s, when this project was first constructed, would those 1960s buildings look dated today, would they still be preferable and hold their value over the faux-Provençal style? As for the sense of place and community, Port Grimaud is not bad. There are a number of shops and restaurants which are a little touristy, but the development is always going to struggle to provide a more sophisticated offer with the everpopular San Tropez round the corner. Port Grimaud is only down the road from Cannes, so any designers or developers over in France for real estate trade show Mipim have no excuse for not popping down for a look.

Port Grimaud

Above right, top and bottom: Views of a typical residential enclave at Port Grimaud, where most houses are afforded direct river views and access to a mooring.

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Ranking Cities’ Liveability Don’t believe what you read in the papers.

These days we can’t discuss cities without referencing one of the many lists of ‘most liveable cities’ like those produced by Mercer, Monocle or the Economist. Most are primarily used to rate the challenges of living in a city so that multinationals can calculate the costs of relocating staff there. This is a useful exercise in its own right, but loses relevance when the press adopts these lists and puts them forward as indicators of the world’s greatest cities. There is a difference between what they measure and what makes a great place to live. The two should not be confused. These rankings do recognise the importance of infrastructure, such as access to schools, and of environmental issues like clean air. Such issues directly impact on a place’s liveability. Nevertheless, infrastructure is not what constitutes a great place; it is a prerequisite but not a distinction. And an over-emphasis on infrastructure and environment results in many of our greatest cities being ranked absurdly low.

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Great cities like New York, Chicago and London annually rank far down these lists in terms of their ‘liveability’, being out-performed by Stuttgart and Brussels. This fails to acknowledge that greatness leads to increased popularity, which in turn leads to a decrease in affordability and increase in congested infrastructure. However, from the perspective of considering how to shape a successful place, they are still the leading contenders to study. Much of what makes famous lower-ranking cities great is a diverse population, historic context, vibrancy, creative influence, endless leisure possibilities and independent retailers and restaurateurs. Yes, they may be expensive and congested, but so will anywhere that is popular to live in. These are the places we should be trying to re-create rather than taking ourselves off to study top-ranking Vienna and Zurich. They might be clean and safe but are they really the most desirable and fulfilling places in the world in which to live?

Great cities succeed by balancing the big-ticket attractions with intimate village life, as seen here with New York’s iconic Times Square and London’s leafy suburbs.

Above, left to right: Times Square, New York, and Chelsea, London.

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Geography We’ve discussed how land shaping and reclamation can define a district. But what of a city’s geography? Does it play a part in where we choose to live and work?

Many of the world’s major political or economic centres are located in nondescript geographical locations or where a city has grown so large that the natural benefits are no longer tangible. Examples that spring to mind are Johannesburg, São Paulo, Canberra, Moscow, Beijing and Delhi. What if we compare these cities with those same countries’ second cities, such as Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, St Petersburg, Hong Kong and even Mumbai? The political or economic centres occupy what could be described as less picturesque settings. The secondary cities, which often owe their origins to maritime activities, tend to boast greater beauty and have increasingly seen themselves sustained by creative-based industries. So does the natural environment dictate different qualities of life and do these cities in turn attract different types of people and industries? Broadly speaking, political or economic centres can be faster-paced, less community-orientated, introverted and socially divided, whereas the creative centres tend to be more laid-back, informal, friendly and tolerant. The professional is

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generally more focused on a high-density urban environment that provides corporate office space catering to speedy business, and restaurants and member’s clubs that facilitate networking. The creative type appreciates the informality encouraged by natural beauty and outdoor living, both of which facilitate the alternative thinking necessary for innovation. Compare America’s finance-dominated, densely populated east coast with its creative-dominated, sprawlingly populated west coast. Will we see this trend continue as the world becomes increasingly globalised and people are more free to relocate? Within city boundaries we can note familiar if less-pronounced trends. Different people migrate to different parts of cities, families to a life in suburbia dominated by long commutes for the perceived benefits of their children’s upbringing; the creative types to the edgier neighbourhoods, where there is a prevalence of pre-renovated industrial buildings and reduced formality; the wealthy to the leafier historic neighbourhoods. Each district offers a different environment and a lifestyle that generally attracts like-minded people. For major regeneration projects or the

positioning of new towns in developing countries, it is important to study an area’s geographic identity and understand what demographic it will most likely attract. At the same time, big business and natural beauty need not be mutually exclusive. When you hear of proposals for a new city in Lanzhou, China, where they are leveling 700 mountains to create a platform for another uniform city, one wonders in what direction urban development is going. Surely an undulating topography could help distinguish Lanzhou from its bland emerging Chinese counterparts? Is it not the Peak in Hong Kong or the hills of San Francisco that help make those cities unique and beautiful?

Top to bottom: Rio’s most valuable property fronts Ipanema Beach, where residents enjoy a run before work or a surf after a long day. The Palm, Dubai, reverses the concept at Port Grimaud by building out into the sea, offering homes beachfront access.

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Case Study

Geography: Sydney Harbour Sydney benefits from an amazing natural topography that results in almost endless miles of waterfront neighbourhoods and properties.

The land in Sydney slopes upwards as you move away from the shoreline, providing longer views towards the water even for properties that don’t benefit from direct frontage. The meandering coastline also creates a series of independent but connected neighbourhoods arranged around coves and beaches such as Bronte, Watsons and Manly. The result is a wonderful metropolitan arrangement and a really good example of the two sides of a city that we discussed earlier in Chapter 2. The city is comprised of a series of liveable districts that makes it a fantastic place to live but also a collective whole that is truly global, helping the city attract tourism and foreign direct investment.

Sydney

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As one moves away from the city centre, the inlets and their urban make-up become less dense and more suburban. Gradually as one moves outwards along the coast each neighbourhood seems increasingly relaxed and informal, all the way out to Manly. Although their strength is in the collective offer, a few of the coves or quays in the centre of Sydney are worth discussing, particularly Circular Key, Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo, Darling Harbour and the plans for Barangaroo.

Land slopes upward, providing longer views towards the water for properties without direct frontage, thus maximising value.

Circular Quay works because of its immediate proximity to the city and the fact that it has a major ferry terminal serving the wider metropolitan bay. Although the quay covers a large area enclosed by the Sydney Opera House on one side and Harbour Bridge on the other, it successfully provides intimately scaled spaces where people can gather around an outdoor café culture. The backdrop of city skyscrapers is juxtaposed against the historic buildings of the city’s oldest area, The Rocks. Here is an example to developing nations of the importance of protecting elements of the urban past and fusing them with shops, restaurants and markets to create a unique place for tourists and residents to enjoy. Darling Harbour appeals less to me because the new buildings and deficiency of engaging public realm results in a waterfront development which lacks personality; this is often an issue with new-build waterfront regeneration areas. However, it is functional and hosts a broad spectrum of activities, making it popular amongst young families. The next stage of the area’s development at Barangaroo is currently being masterplanned by Rogers, Stirk, Harbour and Partners.

Above and left: Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge flank both sizes of Circular Quay, creating an animated bustling harbour.

Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo is worth a quick mention. It is a 1,350-ft-long timber-piled wharf that has been renovated to house some unique residential and restaurant space, as well as a hotel. The building protrudes out into the bay and is the focal point of the neighbourhood, giving the area a recognisable identity. Anything that creates a unique identity helps boost property values.

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Case Study

The sustainable city: Masdar city, Abu Dhabi Masdar City is a new eco-city being developed in Abu Dhabi under the design leadership of Foster and Partners. For a number of years I worked on the masterplanning of Dongtan eco-city in China, a scheme to create a new zero-carbon satellite city outside Shanghai where we secured masterplan approval for the 42 million sq ft first phase. So I was very interested to visit a fellow eco-city that had managed to start construction.

Masdar City

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Although the numbers continue to fluctuate in these times of economic uncertainty, Masdar City covers just under 65 million sq ft and will be home to 45,000 people and 1,500 businesses when complete in 2025. A variety of renewable energy sources are proposed, combined with energy-reducing design elements to render the city self-sufficient. About a third of the first phase is complete and is home to the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. I would encourage anybody working within the property industry to visit Masdar City. I am not suggesting that Abu Dhabi is an environmental angel. One might question why Masdar City is being built on what would otherwise be low-value industrial land next to the airport, why the dates are being pushed back and whether the luxury market is really going to opt for shaded buildings in close proximity to each other rather than glass waterfront villas. I doubt Masdar City will ever be completely built as originally envisaged. However, if this political project can influence other nations and designers then it’s worthwhile; there is a lot to like about the project. The buildings are tightly packed and located around a public realm consisting of shaded courtyards and narrow pedestrian streets. As I maintain throughout this book, reducing public spaces down to a human scale brings people into greater contact and leads to a vibrant community. The close proximity of buildings can often appear relentless unless there is a diversity of façade materials and textures and Masdar City succeeds

Sustainable cities and buildings are likely to struggle as long as higher costs are not matched by premium sales values. on this front. This is achieved through traditional Islamic patterns that are incorporated into lattice sandstone and perforated steel, providing natural shading at the same time.

Left to right from opposite page: A residential courtyard in phase one is both naturally shaded and intimately sized to serve its immediate community. The ventilation tower diverts high-level winds downward to passively cool the courtyard. The main square of Masdar’s first phase consists of beautifully designed offices, residential and the Masdar Institute. One of the city’s driverless cars awaits a passenger. Electric taxis, which employ lowskill workers, would have been more socially sustainable than this marketing gimmick.

It is key for all developments to consider the reduction of energy required through passive design before considering the supply of sustainable energy. Too many developments default to glass box solutions that automatically increase air-conditioning requirements – the greatest user of energy in buildings. We must look first to reduce energy requirements by means such as solar shading, water recycling and natural ventilation before turning our minds to finding the most sustainable source for what energy we do require. Again, Masdar City puts the reduction of energy requirement first. Similarly, I have tried to show how offices such as O-10 and residential like

the Kanchanjunga Apartments can provide high value alternatives to energy-hungry glazing. There is a lot of eco-friendly talk bandied about by the property industry, 99% of which is empty – so-called ‘greenwash’. Until there is a clear and measurable uplift in value as a result of green initiatives, developers are unlikely to do more than what regulatory controls require of them. Masdar City is a provocative and encouraging example of a genuine attempt at a green city. Even if imperfect, this eco-city shows green technologies working on a rarely tested urban scale but it also creates an urban pattern of narrow alleys, shaded courtyards and undulating terraces that are conducive to a healthy and active community while also establishing the kind of high density occupation needed to meet an ever-growing population.

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The Global Property Market A new world order of cities has arisen, forming a global property market increasingly detached from host countries.

A network of leading global cities such as London, New York, Paris and Hong Kong has emerged, where their property markets are more readily compared with each other than with those of the countries they occupy.

In terms of property, the world’s leading capital cities are often more relevant to each other than to their national contexts. While they often hold the seats of power and are the economic catalysts for their country, their property values are measured in terms of how they compete with other international big-hitters. Comparing house prices in London with Manchester, Shanghai with Qingdao, or New York with Detroit, is of far less consequence than how these global cities fare against each other in terms of cost per square foot and growth potential.

As the number-one destination for foreign investment in real estate in recent years (because of the weak pound and being perceived as an investment safe-haven) London’s property market bears little relationship to the rest of the UK. This is true for many global cities as they forge their own interrelated worldwide property network. The dangerous legacy of this is the emergence of districts dominated by investment properties that remain unoccupied for long periods of the year.

Clockwise from top left: Miami, Kuala Lumpur, New York, Mumbai.

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Investor and Seasonal Cities

In March 2012 a Swiss national vote approved a prohibition on building second homes in communities where these already exceed 20% of the housing stock. Similar regulations are found elsewhere, such as in the UK’s National Parks, Austria and China.

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The world is becoming increasingly global and the wealthy in particular are increasingly less attached to a single location. It is common for most of the super wealthy to have homes in up to five cities; a primary home and a house in international bases such as London and New York, one for skiing and one for summering. So what? Well, I am all for a global population – it is good for regional development not to be completely tied to one location. But an area that is dominated by either non-primary residences, such as holiday homes, or investment property, firstly puts additional housing pressure on those permanent residents seeking property and secondly creates an absent population for much

of the year. The latter can have a profound effect on neighbourhoods that cannot support services such as shops and cafés in the absence of continued demand for goods. The gradual loss of services robs these areas of a sense of place and community. One might ponder what the future holds for London’s Kensington and Chelsea if the current trend of overseas purchasers continues. Overseas buyers currently account for 70% of new-build sales in prime central London. Gradually we may see a loss of the active street frontages that make the area so popular. Will value hold up over the coming decades if the area is only occupied for a couple of weeks during the Chelsea Flower Show

Left to right: Ladies enjoy a day out at the Chelsea Flower Show. The Flower Show is increasingly one of the highlights of London’s social calendar, drawing may non-resident homeowners to the city for the week. While diversity has always made London a progressive global capital, the increased prevalence of second, third and fourth homeowners in the city’s prime neighbourhoods has the potential to harm districts such as Knightsbridge and Chelsea where local shops, restaurants and services will suffer from the lack of permanent residents’ business.

and Wimbledon? This is not a new or unique problem. In the late 1970s, Welsh nationalists targeted holiday homes that they viewed as driving up house prices and compromising local culture. In 2012 we saw attacks on holiday homes in Corsica for similar reasons.

Of course, I understand that developers need to engage in overseas sales to drive revenue at a time when access to finance is limiting domestic sales. But we really do need to strive to create a resident population. This can be accomplished, in part, by:

Developers need to consider this problem when marketing new developments to overseas investors. In the US and Europe, the majority of new development is being sold to overseas purchasers. This obviously limits supply of housing to local markets, but it also results in dormant, unoccupied newly completed developments. These unoccupied developments cannot support shops, restaurants or social services that the few permanent residents long for and that are key to creating a sense of place rather than a soulless windswept development.

• Coming up with more innovative financial mechanisms to drive local sales. • Establishing a strong rental agency which encourages overseas investors to let units to locals rather than leave them unoccupied and targeting only capital appreciation. Developers might see this as unnecessarily taxing at a time when overseas sales are strong, but no single market demand is permanent. In multi-phase developments, if the first phase is unoccupied and devoid of services, the marketing of future phases is made all the more difficult.

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Slums and our Cities 32% of the world’s urban population live in slums. The social and urban impact of their ongoing redevelopment and gentrification is hugely significant.

Left to right: Rio de Janeiro prohibits construction on land with an incline greater than 30°. Consequently much of the city’s most prominent land with the best views is occupied by favelas. With large, extended families occupying the smallest spaces, people live their lives in full view. While life can be hard, open doors and close quarters all help to create a very strong sense of community, something lacking in most contemporary developments.

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The UN estimates that, in 2010, 889 million people lived in slums and that over the past decade the global slum population increased by 6 million a year. While this subject may not be hugely relevant to European and US readers, it certainly will be to anyone in the BRICS nations. I have been fortunate to visit some of the slums, shanties and favelas in India, South Africa and Brazil. One hesitates to visit these places not because of safety – a necessary consideration – but because of the increasing number of intrusive tour operators who arrange tours of the slums. Many of the operators are not always sensitive to locals and give little or none of their profits back to the communities. But I was fortunate to meet some fantastic people and organisations that introduced me to the local communities.

I refer to these slums and favelas as communities because that is what they are: groups of people living together with shared interests and participation. The one missing component in these communities is living under one and the same government. This can have profound effects, both positive and negative. One positive effect is an organic planning system, the only viable means of meeting the accommodation requirements of a large, fluctuating and mobile population. An obvious negative aspect is that crime syndicates often run these communities to the detriment of the honest majority.

In India, approximately 50% of the country lives below the poverty line. In a world that is witnessing continued population growth, developing countries are facing unprecedented challenges posed by a lack of physical, political and planning infrastructure as well as sufficient employment opportunities to meet their swelling populations.

Historically, Western nations relocated people into tower blocks without providing the necessary social infrastructure or employment opportunities. This malpractice only compounds the crime that often infects such communities.

India’s chaotic democratic system, coupled with the authorities’ apparent disconnect from the country’s poor, is frightening. Mass uncontrolled movement of millions results in an urban organism that grows and changes wildly. I was fortunate to spend time discussing India’s challenges with renowned architect Romi Khosla. Romi estimates that 70% of Delhi’s buildings are without official planning permits, shocking to anybody coming from an established Western planning system. However, he maintains that you cannot manage India and other developing nations by implementing unsuitable Western processes. Rapid population growth and the continual movement of people put so much pressure on infrastructural and human resources that governing bodies with archaic and bureaucratic planning systems cannot cope. Consequently those slums whose uncontrolled development would scare most urbanists are in fact the only systems fluid enough to cope with mass lowincome housing demands.

majority of development occurs instantly as demand requires. Buildings morph and expand into the next. A new family house becomes an extension of the last. Electricity wires are haphazardly intertwined, water and sewage find their natural path and when the family expands the house expands upwards. Rio’s favelas and South Africa’s shanty towns grow in a similarly organic way. You might ask why we’re discussing these slapdash neighbourhoods in a book about property development. But with the rapid progression of the BRICS, we need to carefully consider the future of these slums as the economic prospects of their residents increase – but more importantly as the land these communities occupy without legal tenure becomes a target for redevelopment and gentrification. The BRICS must learn from the high-rise social housing disasters of the West and not make the same mistakes. The number of people affected would be unprecedented. Historically, Western nations relocated people into tower blocks without providing the necessary social infrastructure or employment opportunities. This malpractice only compounds the crime that often infects such communities.This can only be bad news for the wider cities and developers alike. Corporate short-sightedness in search of a quick buck could have catastrophic consequences for millions of people.

What has evolved is an organic beast that is engaging to behold. In India there are regions subject to controlled masterplans, primarily areas affecting the middle and upper classes, but the

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Case Study

Slums and our cities: Dharavi Slum, Mumbai Regardless of promises, necessary infrastructure is rarely properly considered by private developers trying to maximise returns and by authorities that are not sophisticated enough to know what is best.

Mumbai

Mumbai is home to approximately 200 slums, with more than 50% of its population living below the poverty line. The Mumbai slum at the forefront of everybody’s mind is Dharavi, the setting for the movie Slumdog Millionaire (2008). It is more famous in Mumbai because it occupies the city’s most valuable land, adjacent to the central business district (CBD). Dharavi is a thriving community of industry, entrepreneurship and housing. Its central downtown location, beside the CBD and at the convergence of two primary railway lines, means it provides a key function within the city – an accessible supply of low-cost labour. It is a major centre for small manufacturing, textiles and recycling, with many residents directly contracted by international companies. The slum enjoys near-full employment and is the first-choice housing destination for the poor migrating to the city. Redevelopment plans have been afoot for over a decade at Dharavi with no tangible progress in sight. Developers see the land as prime for private residential and an extension of the CBD. Ideally they would like to see Dharavi levelled and the residents moved on. Regardless of the size of

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existing properties, it is proposed that residents living in Dharavi from before 2005 will be rehoused in 250 sq ft apartments in tower blocks located on the existing site. Employment and manufacturing industries will be relocated to the city edges. The remaining land will be given over to private development. Such a scheme has proved a political minefield and no decision-maker has been willing to bridge the divide between the private sector and the many community groups and NGOs working to protect the rights of the dwellers.

Clockwise from opposite page: Bustling street life at night in Dharavi, Mumbai’s most famous slum. A child plays with a ball in a quiet part of Dharavi. A view over the rooftops of Dharavi towards the central business district of Mumbai.

My issue with the redevelopment proposals isn’t the re-housing of residents into tower blocks in itself. The problem is the provision of the necessary social infrastructure, services and adequate open space to make the new neighbourhood truly liveable. Regardless of promises, this infrastructure is rarely properly considered by private developers trying to maximise returns and by authorities that are not sophisticated enough to know what is best. Additionally, the majority of the community’s work being relocated to the outskirts of the city will cause a plethora of needless problems. The separation of work from living creates dormant districts while increasing the pressure on transport infrastructure as well as generating commuting hours that severely impact on quality of life. This is magnified in a megatropolis like Mumbai, which is devoid of good public transport and where the residents of Dharavi could now be faced with a two or three hour daily commute in each direction. These problems are compounded by the proposal that only residents living in Dharavi pre-2005 will have rights to housing. The locals I spoke to believed that the population might have swollen by 30% since 2005, meaning hundreds of thousands not qualifying for housing. The majority of livelihoods in Dharavi are earned from informal enterprises run from people’s homes, in adjacent work shacks or even on the

streets outside. The prohibition of this would also inevitably result in a loss of people’s livelihoods, leading to increased crime and higher-thanaverage rates of suicide. Even in the rare cases when new homes like those proposed here are adequately provided with social services, community centres, schools, medical facilities and sufficient outside space so that the residents can cope with the alienating change of a new urban environment, removing proximity to work still causes these communities to fail. Mixed-use developments are critical to the success of all communities, but particularly the disadvantaged. So the current redevelopment proposals for Dharavi may remove a one-million-person slum from the doorstep of the global HQs in the adjacent CBD and free land for further private redevelopment, but those in favour need to wake up to the possibility that slum residents who loose employment or don’t get re-housed will turn to crime and pavement-living on their doorsteps. Although not always popular, Mumbai’s slums provide an urban order without which the city’s wealthier neighbourhoods would be infiltrated by the homeless seeking shelter. It’s easy to say ‘tear it down’. But what invariably follows, unless it is meticulously thought-out, is anything but easy to deal with. And there are encouraging examples of positive change without destruction and relocation. In recent years Rio’s favelas have been ‘pacified’ through police presence. Economic prosperity is slowing creeping in and there has been a resulting piecemeal building boom, with shacks being replaced with more structured buildings. As Mumbai’s most prosperous slum, Dharavi could develop naturally over time in a similar fashion. If pursuing a more direct redevelopment, it needs to be government-led and rehouse all residents and jobs in the existing location, allowing it to continue to provide vital low-cost labour to the downtown area.

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Case Study

Slums and our cities: Favelas, Rio de Janeiro The Favela Surf Club proves that community engagement needn’t be a chore, can be placed at the forefront and can have a positive impact on a brand.

Rio De Janeiro

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The ‘slums’ of Brazil are known as favelas. Having evolved during the mid-to-late 20th century, they occupy the hills around Rio de Janeiro, where developing on land with an incline greater than 30° is officially prohibited. Hence the undeveloped slopes of Rio became illegally occupied by the city’s poor and, like India’s slums, grew organically – outside planning and regulations – into huge communities, now mostly in excess of 10,000 per favela. Officially Rio has 763 of these favelas, housing a total estimated population of 1.4 million. The conditions and urban composition in Rio are similar to the slums in India, except that the incline of the hills make the favela structures all the more challenging but also more beautiful when viewed from a distance. The government ceased political and police involvement in the favelas during the 1970s and for decades afterwards they were run by drug gangs who controlled everything within the communities. Since 2011 or so, the police have started a process of ‘pacification’, retaking control of many of the favelas and maintaining a constant presence. Although there are ongoing problems and accusations of police injustices, the process of pacification has been welcomed by the inhabitants. While in Rio in 2012, I was lucky enough to stay with John Maier, an American journalist and photographer who had been living in Rio for nearly 25 years. John is one of life’s uniquely engaging characters, who unlike most cocooned expats has engaged with the “locals on the hill”, as they’re called, as much as he has with the wealthy “from the asphalt” – the name given to those living on the paved streets below the dusty favelas. John introduced me to the guys from the Favela Surf Club, who took us up the hill to see their headquarters and to introduce us to some other people working to improve the lives of those in the favela.

The Favela Surf Club was set up to offer kids from the favela free surfing lessons and equipment that otherwise would never be available to them. After years of struggling to survive, the club recently signed a five-year sponsorship arrangement with Nike. While Nike’s corporate motivations might not be to everyone’s liking here, it is nonetheless a symbiotic relationship where everybody benefits. The club gets its equipment and sponsored instructors and Nike is associated with a philanthropic venture that matches its brand positioning.

Left to right: Kids coming home from their half day schooling. Two principles of the Favela Surf Club and our guide: photographer and journalist John Maier.

One of the major social problems in the Brazilian slums is the lack of teaching resources, which results in only half-day education being provided by public schools. Half the kids go to school for four hours in the morning and the other half go for four hours in the afternoon. This means that kids are without supervision for large portions of the day while parents work, a problem particularly affecting single mothers. Many children struggle from an early age without structured activities for most of the day to keep them out of trouble and away from the drug gangs who are continuously recruiting.

It is an example to developers of how to engage a community in a positive and eye-catching way that can also build your brand. It might sound cynical, but creating community participation arrangements such as this, where sponsor and benefactor both benefit, is far more sustainable and valuable than the passive contribution of social development levies. You can learn more about the surf club by watching the documentary Rio Breaks (2009) directed by Justin Mitchell.

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The Best and worst The state of some of the world’s cities today.

1. Delhi

3. St Petersburg

Delhi is the ultimate lost opportunity. The city needs improved tourism infrastructure to help expose the wealth of its existing culture, which in turn will improve liveability and attract foreign investment.

St Petersburg epitomises the discussions in this book. It was modelled on the best European cites, which is arguably what makes it more desirable than its national counterparts. In a similar way, mature districts can be more appealing than new developments.

4. Paris Beauty lies around every corner in Paris, of a kind that cannot be matched by any other city, not even Rome. La Defense, its new commercial centre, provides the infrastructure for economic growth while protecting the historic centre. Its one mistake … Tour Monparnasse.

5. New York New York remains the one city I long to live in. It has a different scene to cater for all, from the fashionistas to the bohemians and city slickers. For me, its attraction comes from the theatre of daily life that prevails along its dense canyon-like streets.

6. Monaco Monaco is one city I debated leaving out. A beautiful setting undone by an ugly built environment, its character spoilt by a transient population.

2. Dubai I don’t want to be unjustly mean, but the day the tax incentives stop is the day the exodus will commence from this disjointed, vehicledominated city devoid of any sense of soul. One of my least favourite cities.

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7. Mumbai It’s all about the money in Mumbai. Don’t waste your time in search of a wealth of culture; for that, move to Delhi. Mumbai is the cosmopolitan centre for India’s new generation. It is the new city that never sleeps and where fortunes are made.

8. Beijing

11. Shanghai

15. Buenos Aires

Those who haven’t lived in Beijing struggle to understand its attraction. Unlike Shanghai, its charm comes from its underground cultural scene, which is not easily accessible to those just passing through to visit its many heritage landmarks.

Like Mumbai, Shanghai lacks the historic landmarks of its nation’s capital, but makes up for this in abundance with an electric and progressive atmosphere and a social life to die for.

Buenos Aires is an eceltic mix of historic European-styled neighbourhoods and a new waterfront district. Being the heart of Argentina’s economic recovery makes it an exciting and creative place to be right now.

9. Cape Town My other half would not take kindly to me comparing Cape Town, her hometown, to Sydney. Nevertheless, the comparisons are obvious – though it lacks the critical mass of population enjoyed by its Australian counterpart. A wonderful place deserving of equitable and progressive governance.

10. Tokyo If aliens visited Earth, Tokyo is where they would feel most at home. Futuristic, efficient and always slightly weird. If you are planning just one property research trip, head to Tokyo.

12. Barcelona Barcelona is the standard bearer for cultural-led regeneration, sparked by the 1992 Olympics, and resulting in a real and sustainable legacy of liveability, economic vitality and tourism.

13. Hong Kong They may call it ‘Asia-lite’, but the city is maturing from an economic centre into the Far-East’s leading light of business, culture and leisure.

14. San Francisco The benefits of geography, rolling topography and cultural diversity are encapsulated in San Francisco more than anywhere.

16. London London is a cultural melting pot with a diverse population where there is always something new to do. Yes, the transport isn’t always the best, but that’s the price of popularity so get over it.

17. Rio de Janeiro Rio’s endless waterfront and beaches provide residents with the perfect live/work balance. Recent police presence in the favelas is making them an increasingly safe place to live.

18. Chicago The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 provided the platform for a new dense downtown. Juxtaposed against the beautiful shoreline, this makes the city one of the most beautiful in America. Harsh winters, but my personal favourite. 02. cities and districts Living in Wonderland

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Photograph: The masterplan model for Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi, where there are proposals for new Guggenheim and Louvre galleries.

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03. Master planning Right Mix of Property Uses

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Critical Mass

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Case Study: Battersea and Nine Elms, London

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Phasing and Implementation

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Case Study: Taipingqiao, Shanghai

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The Various Stages of Development

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Pioneer Stage

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Case Study: Battersea Power Station, London

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Building a Place Brand

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A Global Study of Masterplans

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Case Study: One World Trade Center, New York

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Case Study: Grand Canal Dock, Dublin

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Case Study: Rockefeller Center, New York

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Case Study: Etihad Towers, Abu Dhabi

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Case Study: La Défense, Paris

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Case Study: The Gate Precinct

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Case Study: Downtown Dubai

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Case Study: Gurgaon, Delhi

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Case Study: Malmö, Sweden

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Case Study: The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, Cape Town

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Masterplanning is as much a consideration of how a place will function as it is about urban form.

playing When looking at cities in Chapter 2 we discussed the importance of diversity, infrastructure, density, facilities and liveability and how these are critical in successful placemaking. But these elements also need to be considered alongside the technical masterplanning issues discussed in this chapter.

Virtual Population weekend

morning

afternoon

evening

Living

Living

Living

working

shopping When starting a masterplan, we have to realise that place is about experience and not just about focusing exclusively on the physical urban form. A great place is not all about the buildings on the site but about the people, things and happenings taking place between buildings. Getting this right is what differentiates great places from just another neighbourhood. Preparing a masterplan is usually about ensuring that buildings and spaces are in the right places, with contextual consideration of how the place will actually function invariably left until a much later stage. This has to change. As well as the aesthetic and urban form, we need to consider the future use and social make-up of a place at the outset.

c u l t u r e w

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e

l

l

b

e

i

n

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playing dining playing

Virtual Population weekday

morning

afternoon

evening

Living

Living working

Right: These two graphics demonstrate how virtual populations vary throughout different times of the day and at different points in the week. During weekday afternoons, a working population is key to place animation and to making retail offerings viable outside of the weekend rush. Conversely, a resident population is critical to evening footfall and to ensuring that districts are not dead after 6pm, as experienced in many of the world’s central business districts.

event

shopping w

c u l t u r e e l l b e i

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Urban form and architecture is important, but without the right mix of uses, critical mass and correct implementation, a welldesigned urban form may still prove unpopular. A masterplan is a comprehensive document by a developer or a planning authority that outlines the strategic vision for a large geographical area. It generally covers a long time-period and addresses the usual range of topics such as urban form, transport, utilities, open spaces, etc. Entire books have been written about the design side of masterplanning. There are a million individual aspects to consider and understand, such as the sensitivity of residential value to good views, balancing the adequate provision of daylight, creating spaces with a human scale, pedestrian flow-patterns – the list could go on and on. Every site is different and, given a discerning developer, capable designers and a supportive planning authority, each will determine its own unique solutions.

What I want to discuss here are the techniques necessary to seed a new, lively neighbourhood in which people will want to live and work. Believe it or not, this is not solely driven by the urban form or the quality of the architecture but by something much more complex.

In short, getting mixed uses right ensures a lively 24/7 community. You might even throw in a gallery or cultural icon so as not to feel out of touch with current (and somewhat clichéd) regeneration practices – something discussed at greater length in Chapter 7.

Aside from design, in my opinion there are three core building blocks to successful masterplanning – and unfortunately they are often overlooked. These are: the right mix of uses, critical mass and phased implementation. All three elements must be considered before an architect’s pen touches paper. Without them, a well-designed urban form can still prove unsuccessful.

A large critical mass consisting of a diverse population is essential to success because it can sustain this balanced mix of uses.

The right mix of uses is perhaps most critical to a viable masterplan. By this phrase I mean the balance between residential, commercial and other forms of property. Depending on the mission statement of the development, the ingredients will vary. The regeneration of a disused dockland, for instance, might require a resident population large enough to keep the place secure in the evenings and vibrant at weekends, a working population large enough to make the site active during the day, and retail and leisure facilities that are extensive and differentiated enough to service the resident and working populations while also making the area a destination for visitors.

Lastly, phased implementation of a masterplan is perhaps the most common victim of oversight. Too often planners and developers get caught up in an overall vision that may not be realised for decades, and forget to consider the creation of sustainable interim communities.

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I had the pleasure of staying at the Ritz hotel at Tokyo Midtown in 2007. This dense collection of mixed-use buildings creates a vibrancy that is complemented by a large sweeping park which is both a wonderful green amenity as well as a platform for a number of staged events. It has a critical mass of attractions to establish itself as a destination address. The attention to detail and quality in the choice of materials is outstanding, particularly around the lower level retail. It shares a lot of common attributes with another Tokyo development, Roppongi Hills.

These three elements of critical mass, mixed use and phased implementation are all core ingredients in creating a place-brand. We’ll look at each in a little more before finishing this chapter by exploring the idea of a place-brand itself. One can conceive the greatest urban layout or spend millions on iconic buildings but without content and quantity it can be largely irrelevant.

Clockwise from above: A view up at the main tower at Roppongi Hills, with Louise Bourgeois’ sculpture in the foreground. The first of two images of More London. Here a critical mass of 1.5 million sq ft of office space was sufficient to seed a new commercial zone for London. Although I like the development, at times it lacks personality, with a uniformity of glass-box architecture against a granite landscape.

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Right Mix of Property Uses

Mixed-use development is simply the creation of neighbourhoods or stand-alone buildings with more than one purpose. For years, particularly during the 20th century, planners favoured single-use zoning. But the benefits of mixed-use development have been increasingly understood of late – including reduced pressure on transport, better security, higher values and improved quality of life. Mixed communities tend to be more animated, with different people living, working, dining and playing in the same area, leaving them constantly populated and vibrant. Anyone who has ever attended an evening event in the City of London, or passed through it at the weekend, will know how empty and devoid of character it is when everyone’s gone home. Canary Wharf was the same until moves were made to introduce more residential and retail presence.

Unfortunately, we are still seeing too many single-use developments where work and living are separated, serving to create commercial neighbourhoods that are dead throughout the evenings and residential neighbourhoods that are empty throughout the day. This also serves to limit the retail and leisure offers in each place, since they are only supported for certain periods of the day – not to mention the additional and unnecessary pressure put on transport infrastructure and increased commuting hours which reduce quality of life. People such as Jane Jacobs, who wrote the renowned Death and Life of Great American Cities, have been advocating mixed-use principles since the 1960s, but many continue to pay little heed.

Top to bottom: Puerto Madero is an archetypal postindustrial waterfront regeneration … … with a customary cultural institution and Calatrava bridge for good measure. Coleccion Fortabat gallery by architect Rafael Vinoly.

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Critical Mass

Once you are committed to the creation of a mixed-use environment you need to consider it in the context of critical mass, which is driven by density. Density is the quantum of built floor space as a factor of the area of development land. A tall tower will have a high density (or plot ratio) several times the area of land it is built on, while a detached home will only occupy a small proportion of its plot with more green space. One shouldn’t automatically label high-density schemes as over-development or low-density schemes as under-development. Overdevelopment and under-development can be equally problematic; the former often overshadowed and lacking in open space, the latter an underutilisation of land in a world of everincreasing population. I return to the point of critical mass throughout this book and it is one of the overarching principles of the successful development of

urban environments. Simply put, critical mass is a sufficient amount of people in a neighbourhood such that the area becomes self-sustaining and facilitates further growth. Critical mass is vital to a community. There needs to be a sufficient resident population to support basic social facilities such as a newsagent and grocery store, a laundrette and a local pub or café where residents can meet, in turn strengthening the sense of community. Without the optimum density and consequential critical mass of population, you have communities without any social infrastructure and lacking lively public places for the residents to gather and interact. As discussed, when you expand the mix of property uses to include daytime uses – such as providing a series of workspaces, studios and offices – you have established a critical mass of daytime population. These people will help support the social facilities throughout the

day, making local businesses more viable and extensive. This is the principle of combining critical mass and mix of uses on the most basic village level, but it can be endlessly scaled up to neighbourhood, district and citywide levels. The elements of critical mass and mix of uses are interdependent. Establishing your ideal mix and critical mass is not an exact science, but it is hugely important. There are a plethora of schemes around London that lack the critical mass of people to support services. You only have to visit the many riverside schemes to see un-let or closed-down ground floor retail units where there isn’t a diverse and large enough population to support trade. This has a negative impact on the quality of life of people living or working in these communities, and creates a vicious circle – making people far less likely to want to move there in turn.

Right: Facts and figures at Battersea Power Station. Density does not necessarily go hand in hand with high-rise towers. Both Islington and Kensington & Chelsea are London’s two highest-density boroughs, but both remain among the most popular and valuable. The same can be said of Paris in the ranking of European capitals.

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Case Study

Mixed use and critical mass: Battersea and Nine Elms, London At Battersea Power Station, years of work culminated in 2011 with the granting of the largest single planning approval ever in London. Mixed use and critical mass was at its heart.

London

In 2011, planning permission was granted for an eight million sq ft town centre development to form the heart of a larger regeneration area extending more than 22 million sq ft along the banks of the Thames and only a mile and a half from the Houses of Parliament. Considering the mix of uses and critical mass was fundamental as we planned both our own development and assisted the Greater London Authority’s masterplanning of the wider area. • Initially we worked out our resident population and number of housing units based upon the uplift in capacity arising from a major improvement in the area’s transport infrastructure and an optimum massing allowing for suitable building heights. The building heights were constrained by London’s many historic view corridors. • Once we established the number of homes and residents we calculated the likely requirements for retail, leisure and community space, based on national and regional statistics for the amount of relevant floor space required per person. • Next we addressed the optimum amount of office space required to create both a critical mass of daytime population to sustain the retail and social infrastructure during weekdays as well as a sufficient amount of offices to establish a new commercial district for London. We had witnessed office districts like More London, where restaurants and retail suffered until the amount of office space reached the critical mass of working population. We estimated this to be anything in excess of 1.5 million sq ft of offices.

• So we ended up with an optimum balance of 3,500 residential units and 1.5 million sq ft of offices, accommodating in excess of 10,000 workers, and 900,000 sq ft of retail, food, beverage and leisure as well as everything else needed to serve a new town centre, such as galleries, theatre and music venues, cinema and hotels. In a major regeneration area like Nine Elms, where there will be multiple developers with different land holdings, proper land-use zoning by the authorities is critical. While it might go against your instincts and competitive nature, open dialogue and cooperation between the developers is critical to creating a joined-up approach. In addition, a local authority/private developer working group should be established at the outset to address key issues such as transport, energy, public realm and place branding.

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Phasing and Implementation Take your time and tell an unfolding story.

The final ingredient of a successful masterplan is its implementation and phasing, again something to be considered at the outset of the masterplanning process. Complex planning systems, slow construction and market absorption of product means that development can be a slow process. I have been to hundreds of masterplan presentations around the world that showed fantastic computeranimated videos of what new districts would be like when complete in ten years’ time (which usually means 20 years). Large masterplans are rarely built out the way they were originally envisaged – changing trends and market conditions ensure that. So initial marketing materials rarely reflect the final scheme and certainly not the isolated portion of the scheme that people will live and work in as part of the first phase.

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As wonderful as a masterplan may be, not everything can arrive at once, so in addition to your long-term vision you need to also plan for interim phases of development, each with its own character. Each phase must be aimed at the right target market and you need to be aware that these will evolve during each phase of development. This is particularly true for regeneration projects, where the first phase may be in an undeveloped area and subject to adjacent construction for a number of years. Consequently phase one may be more appealing to younger aspiring purchasers who want to invest in progressive areas than it will be to mature purchasers with families and more disposable income. Hence your first phases could offer smaller properties in the less desirable locations of the masterplan, holding back the higher value property with the best views until the area is more established.

Left to right: The first phase of development at London’s King’s Cross included the relocation of Central Saint Martins College of Art. The inclusion of a university is a great way to seed the early stages of a new neighbourhood. Students bring a liveliness to an area and are often more willing to be the first new residents than mature purchasers and tenants who can be reluctant to move to an area before it has been established.

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Case Study

Phasing and implementation: Taipingqiao, Shanghai One of the most successful executions of a masterplan I have seen is the Taipingqiao redevelopment project in Shanghai. I spent a lot of time in the area; my company was kind enough to put me up there for two years while I was based in China.

Shanghai

Taipingqiao, Shanghai is a fascinating example of the benefits that come with thoughtful phasing. The 130-acre, 13-million sq ft masterplan consists of three areas: • the retail area of Xintiandi • Corporate Avenue, with grade A offices and hotels • a prime residential zone. At the centre of the development, and naturally separating these three zones, is a 130,000 sq ft lake within a park occupying an entire city block. The park and lake link the three component areas together but also create a necessary separation between them so that residents are not endlessly confronted with the hive of activity around the pedestrian entertainment street of Xintiandi, which in turn is close enough to serve the office workers but is not a distraction during office hours. The greatest success of the project is not solely in a wonderful urban masterplan by S.O.M. or even the developer, Shui On Land’s, commitment to creating a vibrant mixed use district – but rather in its implementation. The landholding is only two blocks removed from one of Shanghai’s primary commercial streets, Huaihai Road. Most traditional developers would merely have extended the existing urban environment. The values in the area are amongst the highest in Shanghai and demand in the increasingly constrained historic Puxi area is sufficient that the buildings would have been snapped up. But Shui On Land was determined to create a new address around a self-sustaining destination for Shanghai, which could establish new levels of sales values for the area. The challenge they faced – like all developers of multi-phased masterplans – was that not even Shanghai’s rampant noughties market could absorb all this property in one go. It would have

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Top to bottom: Historic shikumen housing creates intimately scaled streets. Aerial image showing the new Taipingqiao masterplan built around the historic retail area and lake.

to be a phased development. So Shui On Land committed themselves to creating a first phase of development that communicated everything the completed development would be once finished in 10–15 years. The first phase was completed in 2003 and consisted of two important elements: a retail offer different from anything else in the city and a restful park in an otherwise restless city. The huge People’s Square and Park nearby is too large, lacking in human scale and managed by a government obsessed with crowd control, lending appeal to the alternative at Taipingqiao Park. The danger of this approach came in the fact that

retail takes time to mature, particularly when it is disconnected from a city’s main thoroughfare, and this coupled with the infrastructure cost of a large non-revenue generating lake/park is a big expense to absorb in the first phase. Undoubtedly, wherever possible, it is important for developers to reduce their outgoings in the first phase. However, by taking the risk and introducing both of these elements within the first phase, the developer instantly created one of the most desirable addresses in Shanghai. The firm I worked for purchased a number of units in the second phase of residential development, along with Chinese celebrities such

as basketball player Yao Ming. Already these were the most expensive units in the city. The developer had successfully managed to establish the highest values in the city on a nondescript plot of land simply through the creation of a fantastic mixed-use masterplan and most importantly the communication of the overall vision in the first phase. Certainly a high-risk development approach, but with multiple residential phases remaining to be built out it has proved a hugely profitable decision.

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The Various Stages of Development When debating this at Battersea we considered that a long-term development could be broken down into a number of stages.

1. Meanwhile stage

3. Emerging stage

5. Mature stage

The meanwhile stage covers the temporary and dramatic introduction of the site to the public – it takes place during the planning and initial construction. At Battersea the public had never been allowed close to the building so it was critical to get people accustomed to it as a destination. (More on this stage in Chapter 8, which focuses on meanwhile use.)

At the emerging stage, people have seen the place being established and noticed the developing community. Purchasers and investors are now more mainstream and a little more riskaverse than the pioneers.

The final, mature stage is where the development settles into its long-term cycle. It is finally an acceptable option for the most conservative purchasers. If any pioneers are still around, and still pioneering, they tend to be the ones selling to the more mature customers coming in.

2. Pioneer stage Many post-industrial redevelopments create new communities where there was little previous residential presence – this is the pioneer stage. Those likely to move to the first phase tend to be pioneering younger purchasers eager to search out value and take a risk on a new neighbourhood.

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4. Established stage The established stage is the pinnacle of the development. Media and public focus is at its highest. It is the newest talked about district in the city. Interest spikes and this is the period when demand for property is at its highest.

Top to bottom: A computer-generated image capturing the animated ground floor of phase one, which includes independent restaurants, retail, foodstores, business studios, theatre/boutique cinema, art galleries, gym, spa and wellbeing facilities. The extensive masterplan at Battersea Power Station. At its centre is the historic listed building surrounded by 16 new buildings. The first phase of development is located west of the Power Station. Because this first phase preceeded any work inside the Power Station itself, it was critical that the building captured the mixed-use essence of the overall development.

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Pioneer Stage Sowing the seeds of development from the outset.

What makes Palermo in Buenos Aires, New York’s Meatpacking District or Shanghai’s French Concession some of the most popular places to live? It is the sense of a vibrant community created by a diverse mix of uses and people. This may be achievable once your entire masterplan is built out, but what is more challenging is how you capture this essence in a smaller first phase.

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No matter how your scheme is phased, you need to communicate its vibrancy in phase one. Where possible, the first phase should not be dominated by a single-use such as residential. It is the variety of uses such as coffee shops, galleries, and leisure facilities which will help establish a sense of community in the first phase – a balancing act that merits serious attention.

Case Study

PIONEER STAGE: BATTERSEA POWER STATION, LONDON Much of the Battersea scheme’s final public spaces are excluded from the first phase as they will be inside the listed Power Station building. This posed a dilemma that had to be solved if the pioneer stage was to be a success.

LONDON

At Battersea, the listed Power Station building will not be the first phase to be developed because of the cost of its remediation. However, the Power Station will contain many of the eventual public spaces – including retail, offices and leisure. This presented a potentially catastrophic pitfall. A purely residential first phase would have been typical of all waterfront development in London, and the public would have been instantly disappointed by the scheme. Soulless residential buildings sitting next to the Power Station would run the risk of losing public trust and we could have struggled to get them to return to the site two years later when the retail, leisure and major public spaces opened within the listed building. So our first phase at Battersea was planned to consist of revenue-generating residential, supported by a viable mix of commercially active spaces. The residential elements were raised up above the ground floor podium, which had an array of commercial uses and created active street frontages, rather than dull residential streetscapes with views to gated courtyards that continue to sterilise the streets of our cities the world over. Across the entire ground floor we provided a diversity of commercial space in an attempt to seed our pioneering vibrant community. We provided small studios and workspaces on flexible leases to attract creative companies whose employees would establish a daytime population. We provided waterfront restaurants with a leasing strategy that encouraged letting to independent or local operators as well as established traders. This would create an offer different from London’s homogenous chain brands.

would help drive evening footfall for restaurants and repay the investor through turnover leases. It was hoped that linking up with a local arts university to provide postgraduate workshops, with the students in turn curating a gallery space, would add another attraction. University students can be a great way to animate communities in the early stages of development, as demonstrated with Ravensbourne College at Greenwich and Central Saint Martins at King’s Cross. Around the new building, we aimed to open up parts of the site for events. During the planning period we were already drawing 200,000 people to the site annually, which provided income from temporary events, but more importantly helped establish the brand of the development. Possible phase one events being considered might include Cirque du Soleil taking up residence for three months in a big top as well as a public park with an ongoing calendar of events. Such events serve to animate your initial stage of development and are critical to establishing yourself as a genuine place where people want to live. This in turn drives sales rates. Some events generate income while others require financial support, but whatever your final budget you can calculate their benefit in increased column inches in the press and social media. This positive and independent press coverage can be far more productive than spending thousands on self-promotion spreads in the property pages of the Sunday newspapers. Site animation is discussed further in Chapter 8 when looking at meanwhile uses.

By creating something unique we hoped to draw diners from further afield to this destination and increase both our client base and exposure to the site. We considered relocating a fringe theatre to the site at a discount rent, the presence of which 03. Masterplanning Living in Wonderland

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Building a Place Brand Developers need to be less hung up on naming and ‘branding’ projects and focus on what real actions are being taken to deliver great places and products.

A place brand is something we most commonly associate with nations or cities, which often actively manage their image to attract people, business, investment and tourism. We are familiar with brands such as The Big Apple, The Eternal City and Sin City. Some cities have even positioned themselves as counterparts to more desirable cities, none more frequently namechecked than Paris – with everywhere from Beirut to Shanghai having been referred to as the Paris of the East. But place branding is also scalable to districts, neighbourhoods and consequently largescale regenerative masterplanning. At a municipal level, why do creative companies move to New York’s Meatpacking District, oligarchs to London’s Knightsbridge or BoBos (Bourgeois Bohemians) to Paris’s Bastille district? These neighbourhoods all have a brand image that evolved over time and attracts like-minded people or those aspiring to be part of that club. Small infill development sites within an established area normally link into the existing place brand and target that same demographic. However, what can we do when we have a large tract of development land without any identity; how do we establish a place brand that makes people aspire to live there and drives sales values?

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Apple and Orange are both companies and types of fruit. Apple is not a more successful brand than Orange because of its name or logo but rather because of its commitment to delivering great products coupled with its corporate ethos.

Understanding the difference between brand identity and brand image Left to right from opposite page: Apple and Orange store signs. Emerging metropolitan brand Montevideo, Uruguay.

Ultimately, successful place-branding comes down to moving beyond brand identity towards brand image. Brand identity is the sum total of a development’s visual iconography, including signage, logos and taglines. It is often the focus of developers, who get hung up on the names and visual language of their projects. This is misguided but understandable: after all, developers pay creative agencies hundreds of thousands of pounds in the hope that they will develop a name and logo for their projects that will capture the imagination and elevate their sales above competitors’. However, the simple fact is that unless developers choose a name with negative connotations, what a development is called is largely irrelevant. Creating a brand image is what is important. Brand image is the collective opinion of a development’s customer base about the developer’s company, property or place. This is of foremost importance. It is not something that brand identity can really influence. Rather, it is the result of a coherent brand strategy, corporate approach and real actions taken.

In the past, developers had more control over their brand image, since it was exposed to customers largely through advertisements in newspapers and articles written by closely controlled reporters. Earlier we touched on why social media is having a limited impact on property development compared to other industries – understandably house-proud or selfinterested homeowners are unlikely to unleash searing critiques of its products. But for schemes in development, it can be another thing entirely. An increasingly diffuse and immediate public voice means developers can no longer make empty statements. They’re pointless. Experience is what matters now. Developers need to build real experiences that deliver potential customers a direct and positive interaction with a scheme. To highlight the difference between brand identity and image, consider the companies Apple and Orange. Both are technology companies and both are named after a fruit. The reason that Apple is one of the most successful companies in the word and an aspirational brand is not because an apple is a cooler fruit than an orange. Apple’s strong brand image is the result of delivering quality products and a cool corporate ethos. Simply put, the public will judge you by what you do and not what you say.

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Brand building through symbolic action So what can we do to build a meaningful brand image in advance of opening a scheme or even building a scheme? More often than not we need to attract purchasers and tenants in order to complete presales or lettings prior to construction, so establishing a strong brand image at the outset is critical. Much of the focus of pre-construction branding is too often on brand identity: advertising in the property press and Sunday papers. That vast expenditure would be better focused on real action or what Simon Anholt (foremost thinker on nation branding) refers to as “symbolic action”. Anholt argues that the idea that an image “can be shifted by an instrument as weak as marketing communication is an extravagant delusion”. He maintains that countries that have improved their international reputation have done so as a result of economic or political progress, which can be at most aided by advertising or PR campaigns. The “symbolic action” adopted at national or municipal level might be to lower business rates, which will attract foreign direct investment, or to improve infrastructure and civil rights. Meaningful actions count, not the shallow gestures adopted by many aspiring nations such as hosting a Formula 1 grand prix or the FIFA World Cup.

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The same principles apply to urban development, where substance delivered through action is key to the emergence of a place brand and can only be assisted by associated logos, taglines and advertising. In development this might translate into organising events or festivals that reflect your brand vision and expose people to the project. Boxpark, discussed in Chapter 8 on meanwhile uses, is a perfect example of brand-building in advance of building a scheme. By building a temporary retail pop-up in advance of delivering a major retail scheme on the same site, the developer engaged the public and seeded the area as a shopping destination. In a heritage project, an effective symbolic action might be something like early expenditure on refurbishment works, helping to demonstrate real commitment to the project. These actions cost money but will be rewarded by positive independent press and viral internet discussion, both of which are more valuable than expensive self-scripted advertisements.

Above: The typical public face of contemporary developments displayed on expensive billboards: well-dressed, smiling models enjoying a café culture usually absent from the finished development.

A Global Study of Masterplans Having discussed the importance of the correct mix of uses, critical mass and phased implementation I will now focus on some global examples of masterplans.

A collection of masterplans I have worked on (clockwise from top left): Qingdao, China. Rive Gauche, Paris. Chongming Island, Shanghai. Battersea Power Station, London. Grand Canal Dock, Dublin.

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Case Study

Master planning: One World Trade Center, New York Layers of history help establish authenticity and a unique identity. This is certainly the case at One WTC and you have to hope that the masterplan does it justice.

New York

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Some friends of mine were kind enough to arrange for me to visit the construction site at One World Trade Center in late 2012. It is a site I am reasonably familiar with, having first visited it in my 20s and spent a night partying at the top of the old Twin Towers – an experience to remember. I have been back a few times whenever on business in the city, but to get an in-depth introduction to the new masterplan and stand on the unclad 90th floor of the new tower with the wind blowing through my hair was a fantastic opportunity. There is an aura about the place and undoubtedly a passion and pride around the development. In Chapter 2 we talked about how layers of history help establish authenticity and a unique identity. This is certainly the case here. The important thing is that a masterplan respects it, does it justice and builds on it. In essence, the masterplan includes four new office buildings located above a major subterranean retail mall arranged around the new Calatrava transport hub. There will be a performing arts centre designed by Frank Gehry, and of course the memorial park with the already iconic footprint fountains – two giant waterfalls that cascade down into the earth in the footprint of the original Twin Towers. For me, the success of the masterplan will lie in the integration of the various elements. I love that they have placed the park as the central setting for everything. I love that they have broken the uniformity of the tall office towers with the introduction of two striking lower-rise architectural elements designed by Calatrava and Gehry. There is nothing worse than endless runs of similar-height contemporary architecture creating an artificial horizon. But I have concerns. It may be unfair of me to express them, given I do not have a deep understanding of the complexities and sensitivities that must have surrounded every decision made to date, but I will mention them nonetheless.

No provision of residential space – not even a hotel – seems to me a major oversight. It would have ensured that the site had an evening population and life after dark. The second and greatest concern for me is the interface between the commercial and memorial elements. Westfield, discussed in Chapter 6, are in charge of the subterranean retail element. These guys are very successful, but at times can be a one-dimensional retail developer. How a major commercial shopping centre abuts the memorial park is crucial to this place working or not. I think you can have an underground mall here, so long as the street-level uses of the buildings dissolve the commerciality of the mall as you move towards the memorial park. The public and ground floors of the buildings need to have a café-led culture, with some small independent shops and local galleries. This will act as the necessary buffer between the two opposing elements of consumerism and remembrance. Left to right:

And the park equally needs to transition in the opposite direction: from a place of remembrance around the fountains to a place of relaxation and in turn animation. This should not be a fenced graveyard but rather an open place that naturally extends outwards and where people can go and eat a sandwich at lunchtime. I don’t see why it can’t achieve this and also be a peaceful but useable setting without compromising its inherent function as a place of remembrance.

One World Trade Center. Looking down on the engineering masterplan and the ‘footprint fountains’.

There is a good plan in place, but only time will tell if the disparate elements can be fused into a coherent whole.

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Case Study

Master planning: Grand Canal Dock, Dublin Grand Canal Dock is a great example for studying strong urban form, public realm, mixed use, critical mass, specialist planning authority and coordinated implementation.

Dublin

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Grand Canal Dock was the first large-scale masterplan I worked with. The L-shaped dock is situated on the south side of the River Liffey in arguably the city’s two most prestigious postcodes: Dublin 2 and 4. As recently as ten years ago the area was a redundant postindustrial landscape of open plots and old warehouses. A state-run agency known as the Dublin Docklands Development Authority (DDDA) was created and charged with the area’s regeneration. The DDDA first prepared a consolidated masterplan vision for the entire area, for which it secured planning approval. The advantage of this was that in due course developers could apply for fast-track planning approval through the DDDA if their proposals complied with the massing and land-use parameters set out in the authority’s approved masterplan. However, if you wanted to secure planning permission for a proposal that was a material contravention of the masterplan you could still apply through the traditional route.

The DDDA was thus both planning authority and one of the largest landowners in the area. This created a number of obvious conflicts and ultimately led to its downfall. Still, while an authority’s interest in landownership and planning must be kept separate, I think that from a planning perspective the approach was largely positive and resulted in one of the Celtic Tiger’s better legacies. The natural topography, which affords long runs of waterfront, is an immediate bonus. Nearly all development plots within the area had at least one waterfront aspect. Secondly, its proximity to the city centre meant that demand for property was always going to be strong. Multiple development partners resulted in a diversity of architectural styles, making it an appealing place to explore. The DDDA limited building heights to the same level, with the exception of a few key landmarks, something I believe always takes away from the architectural interest of an area – but fortunately some developers, including my previous employers, got planning permission for taller structures, which made the area more architecturally interesting. The centrepiece of the area is the water-fronting Grand Canal Square, which benefits from a wonderful landscape design by Martha Schwartz and the dynamic architecture of the Grand Canal Theatre, designed by Daniel Libeskind. The theatre helps draw in an evening population that creates life around the square, as well as providing footfall to the restaurants and pubs. There are a number of small commercial galleries and independent retailers that all combine to create a lively neighbourhood identity. Although it had its faults, I think the establishment of a designated planning authority with the ability to fast-track planning approvals essential to attracting investment and tenants worked very well here. Having qualified staff fully immersed and focused on one area proved to be beneficial, as did the ability to still seek planning in contravention of the masterplan.

Left to right from opposite page: The sleek Alto Vetro tower by my previous employer was delivered outside the guidance of the area’s approved masterplan. A map of the wider masterplan, with the Millennium Tower in the background – the first tall building introduced to seed wider investment in the area.

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Case Study

Master planning: Rockefeller Center, New York Built between 1932 and 1940, the Rockefeller Center is an iconic mixed-use scheme. Although nearly three quarters of a century has passed since its development, it is a foremost example of urban planning for a city centre development site and holds many insights that can still be applied by today’s developers and designers.

As I have mentioned, the greatest opportunity provided by major masterplans is the ability to define a new neighbourhood that best meets the current demands and trends of a city. The large scale allows a developer to establish an individual identity and as a consequence it can set a new benchmark for property values, but like ‘The Rock’ an area must still relate and connect with the existing urban fabric rather than exclude the city – as many gated communities developed today do to their detriment. At the Rockefeller Center, this connection is achieved physically though the strong urban entrances that invite the passerby into the scheme, none more so than the connection to bustling Fifth Avenue. Here the vista and the incorporation of striking public art serves to draw people in.

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At 8 million sq ft, located on 22 acres, the 1930 Rockefeller Center development was sufficiently large to successfully define its own address, while simultaneously knitting itself into the surrounding fabric of the city. Therein lies the first lesson.

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But connectivity to the city is also achieved through the provision of building uses. The incorporation of Radio City Music Hall at the Center, and the animation of public piazzas with events such as the famous ice-skating rink and seasonal Christmas tree, create a destination to which people will travel. The inclusion of this 6,000 person music hall is not necessarily the most profitable use of built space when considered in isolation, but its ability to draw over 2 million people onto the property creates additional footfall to drive restaurants and retail, which in turn maintains the popularity of the place and drives office leasing. The Rockefeller Center also demonstrates the brand synergy that can be created by securing the right office tenants. More often than not office tenants quietly occupy premises in the absence of any public awareness. However, here tenants such as NBC and various chat shows and TV programmes elevate the brand of the office complex and draw other tenants who want to be associated with a hip and happening location. So it often makes sense to offer more competitive lease terms to tenants that can elevate a location in lieu of achieving higher rents on day one from more anonymous tenants. You can always get them on the rent review. There are some elements at the Center that shouldn’t be replicated, such as the subterranean approach to retail – this is a missed opportunity, particularly in today’s shopping-obsessed society – but all in all we can learn a lot from this development. Indeed, when you consider the poor economy that existed at the time the Center was developed, its success is even more amazing. There was an emphasis on the importance of good design, construction and building quality at a time when one might otherwise have been inclined to skimp on costs.

Left to right from opposite page: Radio City Music Hall is a fantastic way to sustain constant footfall to the development. 30 Rock is the central 70-storey tower, home to Saturday Night Live, NBC and the famous Rainbow Room restaurant.

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Case Study

Master planning: Etihad Towers, Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi is disjointed with fractured land parcels. This high density complex should be a catalyst for more sustainable development of its downtown area.

Abu Dhabi

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Far younger than the Rockefeller Center, and designed by Australian architects DBI Design, the Etihad Towers development in Abu Dhabi is one of the few state-of-the-art developments in that city. Like everything else there, it sits in isolation, but its moderate success comes from the initial decision to create a mixed-use scheme of residential, hotel, office and retail. Secondly, the density/critical mass of the development helps create a buzz that is often lacking in the rest of Abu Dhabi. The architecture is also sharp and sleek – such quality is often skimped on. The five towers, the tallest of which is 76 storeys and over 900 ft high, are located around a split-level podium that separates the entrances for the various uses so that privacy and security are maintained. Retail forms a common element between the various uses, even if one fears for its viability. Although luxury retail associated with five-star hotel podiums is nothing new, here there appears to be too much retail to be sustained by the hotel and the development but not enough critical mass to attract shoppers from afar. It may end up falling between two stools.

The development consists of 884 residential apartments, ranging from one to five bedrooms, situated in three towers with state-of-the-art facilities. Although the site is tight and this is a high-density development they have managed to create a serene pool deck, bar and a private beachfront setting. The area is designed so that it feels enclosed, protected and intimate – a welcome oasis away from the city.

Clockwise from above: A view from the pool and bar area towards the surrounding beach and lagoon. The tightly packed towers create dynamic views and are arranged to avoid direct overlooking. A view in the direction of the development highlights the density and sleek architecture, which stands out as a marker for a new area of regeneration at this end of Abu Dhabi’s main bay.

While the region has a long way to come in terms of placemaking, this is a good scheme and one that people can look to as a prototype for highdensity developments.

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Case Study

Master planning: La Défense, Paris The three key ingredients for La Défense’s success are instructive: its positioning on Paris’s historic axis, a defining icon, and separation of pedestrians and vehicles.

Paris

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La Défense is the major modern business district in Paris. The primary aim of this development was to provide large modern office buildings with the expansive floor-plates demanded by multinational tenants that could not be provided for within the constrained historic centre. Canary Wharf plays a similar role in London (though the City has since competed with large modern offices of its own), as does Pudong in Shanghai. Located several miles west of the historic city, the positioning of La Défense is a great metropolitan planning decision. It is located at the end of the five-mile-long historic axis, which runs from the Louvre, through the Champs Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe, culminating at La Défense. By doing this Paris has managed to place the tall modern buildings that are economically fundamental to its future away from the old centre. Furthermore, by placing the buildings in a prominent location at the terminating point of the historic vista, the business district remains visually and spiritually connected to the city. La Défense is located at the centre of an orbital motorway that could so easily have resulted in a road- and traffic-dominated public realm. Thankfully the masterplan’s greatest success lies in the creation of a raised podium, which separates cars and trains from pedestrians above. It is a great shame that so many of the current developments I have visited in China and India have not looked to Paris as an example of what they should be doing. Gurgaon in India, featured later in this chapter, is one of the poorest planned new towns I have ever visited. Shanghai’s Pudong is collectively masterplanned but China’s belief that the automobile is still the ultimate symbol of progress has resulted in a commercial district where cars are prioritised and your chances of safely crossing the road are frighteningly low. Given the current levels of urbanisation around the world, developing nations need to look and learn from the best – and they could do a lot worse than visiting La Défense.

Left to right: La Grande Arche. View from La Défense down the historic axis towards central Paris.

La Défense’s creation of a raised central pedestrianised public realm from which all buildings can be accessed is, as said, a masterstroke. Traffic, in turn, leaves the motorway below at various junctions and enters car parking and drop-off areas on the lower level. Large quantities of free-flowing vehicular and train movements can be managed while pedestrians are free to move above and enjoy the uninterrupted landscaped areas. By raising the pedestrian deck up above the natural level of traffic, an additional level of car parking is also created without the cost of subterranean construction. I love podium developments like this. Pedestrian movements are kept to a vibrant and animated centre while traffic is kept to the perimeter and underground. It works equally well on a smaller scale at Chiswick Park in London and at Josola Biz Park in Delhi.

Shortcomings and criticism While there is a lot to praise about the urban form of its masterplan, La Défense, like the first phases of Canary Wharf, suffers from a lack of residential. While Canary Wharf has improved in this area – along with an increase in leisure, dining and retail facilities to retain people beyond 6pm – La

Défense still suffers. I think the original masterplan missed a trick. Although the 2006–2015 masterplan for the area introduced additional residential, I suspect it may be too late to force in an artificial community. Had it been planned and positioned as luxury international apartment living at the outset, it could have been hugely successful; Paris, after all, is a city where there are few alternatives to small apartments constrained by historic conservation areas. Increased affordability would also have been attractive to young, aspiring traders. Paris could have swallowed up large, American-style highrise luxury apartments with the associated personal service, management and residents’ facilities, including spas, gyms, cinemas, cleaning, restaurants, etc. Canary Wharf managed to reposition itself as a mixed-use community following the opening of the Jubilee Line. Whether it is too late for La Défense, only time will tell.

An iconic centrepiece La Défense is centred around a piece of iconic architecture, the product of a design competition that commenced in the 1980s. This competition resulted in the development of La Grande Arche, which was eventually constructed in the early 1990s.

I love this building for three reasons. Firstly, it is a great example of a landmark which, though tall, doesn’t rely solely on height to create impact. Secondly, its form is a clever and contemporary response to the historic context, providing a visual link to the centre of Paris. Finally, it became the globally recognisable icon for the district and went on to influence others such as the Gate Precinct, Dubai (the next case study). Interestingly, for technical reasons the building doesn’t sit square to the axis, which allows you to perceive the depth of the arch rather than viewing it square on. Fifteen years ago I was lucky enough to take the freestanding glass elevators to the viewing deck at the top of La Grande Arche. Unfortunately this has subsequently been closed and today the elevators sit rotting next to the decaying visitor hut, a sad disservice to a wonderful building.

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Case Study

Master planning: The Gate Precinct, Dubai This masterplan’s success is predicated on the mix of uses, diversity of public spaces, authenticity and unique experience.

Dubai

The Gate Precinct in Dubai forms part of the Dubai International Financial Centre. It is an admirable development that stands apart from the city’s countless high-rise towers. The Gate Precinct is different to what is happening in Dubai on many fronts, none less than the creation of a variety of outside spaces that are distinct, take into account climatic conditions and are enlivened with activity. The centrepiece of the development, The Gate, is a 40-storey building designed by Gensler/Hyder. The building’s form is that of an arch, certainly influenced by La Grande Arche in Paris, but stockier. The Gate building is positioned as the focal point of the masterplan, and the water bodies that surround the building and the deep shaded area beneath the arch provide a sort of urban oasis in a city where there are few pleasant outside seating areas. While this is a place of business, it projects a sense of calm – one can sit and enjoy a sandwich away from the relentlessness of the city and the sun. What helps to create the sense of peace is the transition of levels between The Gate and the surrounding buildings. The Gate sits on a level below an elevated horseshoe terrace which is made active by restaurants and cafés occupying the ground floors of the RMJM-designed office buildings. This separation of levels offers views from the stage-like setting to the central Gate building below. Diners assume the role of the audience watching people go about their day. The success of many public spaces is due to the creation of different tempos like this, and opportunities for people watching. The elevation of the surrounding horseshoe also facilitates the efficient management of traffic below this podium level. As at La Défense, cars enter parking from the perimeter roads below the raised podiums, separating vehicles and pedestrians. This street-level parking below the

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Left to right: The residential buildings of the Gate Village, which shun Dubai’s typical glass box approach, are reflected in the windows of the ground floor shops accommodating a variety of galleries and design stores. The Gate building forms the centrepiece of the Gate Precinct development in Dubai.

pedestrianised podium is enclosed by perimeter live/work studios so that the surrounding neighbourhood is not fronted by lifeless car parks as is often the case in Dubai (where aboveground parking is common because of the sandy conditions and endless supply of land). Adjacent to this main area is the Gate Village, a sub-district of the main commercial square. This village, designed by Hopkins Architects, is a fantastic retreat from the soulless sameness that faces you on every corner in Dubai. The complex consists of ten buildings located around pedestrian streets of varying width which meander between larger piazzas, leading the visitor on a voyage of discovery. The experience is furthered by animation at street level, with a

collection of galleries, boutiques and restaurants. One moves freely through the development, excited to discover what is around the next corner. The architects say that “the height and mass of the buildings is designed to shade the podium streets naturally, as in traditional Arab villages, tempering the harsh climate”. This is certainly the case and, like the experience at Masdar in Abu Dhabi (Chapter 2), it is the scale of these tight streets that helps create a sense of intimacy and a lively community. This sense of community is further enhanced by the inclusion of both office and apartment uses in the buildings above, ensuring that people occupy the spaces throughout the day and evening alike.

Like any successful development, the community is strengthened by active post-development management and involvement. The galleries, boutiques and restaurant tenants at the Gate Village organise a series of art nights, cultural evenings that help bring the resident community and art enthusiasts together, attracting everyone from art collectors and bankers to young creatives and families. It is not one element alone that makes the Gate Precinct a success. Several factors are at play: diversity of public spaces, animation at street level, tax incentives, separation of people and vehicles, mix of uses, unique retail, and pro-active post-development management, all of which help create an authentic, real place. 03. Masterplanning Living in Wonderland

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Case Study

Master planning: Downtown Dubai The universally recognisable Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, forms part of a much more interesting masterplan known as Downtown Dubai.

Dubai

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Downtown Dubai is a 500-acre masterplan with the world’s tallest tower and the world’s largest shopping centre at its centre. But this masterplan is far more interesting and offers more lessons than the Burj Khalifa tower for which it is better known. Not unlike the Taipingqiao masterplan already discussed, an artificial lake – known as Dubai Lake – holds the development together. The near cruciform lake splits the development into neighbourhoods. In the northeast quarter sits the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalif. Directly adjacent to this is the Dubai Mall, an inexplicably large retail and entertainment centre with over 1,200 stores inside. (I discuss the mall further in Chapter 6 when looking at retail.)

Designed by SOM, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest manmade structure in the world at over 2,500 ft. It consists of 3.3 million sq ft of floor space, housing apartments, offices and the Armani Hotel.

Left: The Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest building and one of the few ‘icons’ in Dubai that will leave you awestruck.

The mall and the tower are connected by a tiered landscape that steps down to create an amphitheatre fronting the lake. This area comes to life every 30 minutes with a spectacular fountain and music display. For impact it is comparable with the display at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. This extraordinary fountain draws people out of the shopping mall – a rare and pleasant gesture – and once outside visitors are enticed along meandering lakefront promenades made active by outdoor cafés and restaurants. Over the bridge from the mall is a run of eateries and a contemporary take on a souk (a traditional Arabic market). While somewhat twee, this proves popular and is an alternative to the conventional mall. The lakefront has a number of entertainment platforms, such as an 11,000-capacity park, 3,000-capacity steps and a 1,500-capacity plaza. These spaces hold public and private events and with the backdrop of the lake and the Khalifa tower, coupled with one of the nicest landscaped public realms in Dubai, it is no wonder the place is buzzing with people. The tower gives the masterplan identity. Arguably, without it, the area wouldn’t have been put on the map. Yet while the tower draws people to the area, the masterplan still works to deliver on the back of such artificially generated footfall to ensure repeat visitors and longevity. The tower creates the brand but a brand is sustained by more than this: and it is the complete masterplan that delivers the substance. So both the tower and the wider area masterplan are crucial to the success of the development. Without the tower the development would have been a regional shopping centre, just another residential district in an oversupplied Dubai

market. Without the masterplan, the tower would have been an underwhelming tick in the box of tourist activity. Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, deserves some additional focus of its own. The tower is composed of three elements arranged around a central core. The Y-shaped structure incorporates setbacks along each of its three wings as it gradually reduces to a point at the top. The arrangement is an update on the reducing approach applied by the same architect at the Sears Tower, Chicago (completed in 1973). It is a very simple and effective approach to tower construction, although it reduces the amount of salable floor space on the most valuable upper floors. This is the fate of most towers, though not Rafael Vinoly’s ‘Walkie Talkie’ in London, which widens as it rises, thus increasing the floor space on more valuable higher floors and providing more space for public realm at ground level. This is not the place for a debate about the merits of tall buildings. Every tower is individual and its economics need to be considered on an individual basis. I have worked on a number of tower designs in Europe and China and the challenge is always financial; most technical issues can be resolved. Apparently there are now case study courses at universities in the UAE that examine the Burj Khalifa tower and there is plenty you can read about its mechanics and ‘blend of Islamic and modern Western architecture’ – which I must say is a bit of a marketing stretch. Perhaps one would be better off studying the Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai (Chapter 2) as a more successful example of fusing historic indigenous and Western architecture.

Most stand-alone tower developments struggle financially but this need not mean they aren’t profitable. Often the challenge isn’t presented by the profit margins but rather by the quantum of cost associated with such a large single phase of development and the resulting levels of debt and equity that need to be raised in one go. You cannot phase a tower as you could a low-rise building that can be built and sold in several parts. A tower can produce profit margins of over 30%, but if you can’t raise the unrealistically large quantum of finance at the outset, then you would do best to forget it. Aside from the global economic crisis that hit during the development of the Khalifa, and the widely reported drop in sales values of up to 70%, I would be surprised if the tower itself was ever likely to be financially viable. But the advantage here was that the tower formed the centrepiece of a wider masterplan and the tower as a symbol and a brand could increase the profile and consequently the value of the wider development. The creation of this value premium across associated phases can often allow a developer to justify the premium cost of a landmark tower by spreading the costs across other phases that benefit from uplift in value. Towers can play an important and profitable role for a developer in a wider masterplan, however in the absence of the ability to create associated value across multiple phases of a development one should consider carefully the development of a building of over 30 storeys and always check the egos at the door. While developers all like to think highly of their particular abilities, much of what we do is at the mercy of economic cycles. Given the long construction times associated with towers, it is easy to get caught out. 03. Masterplanning Living in Wonderland

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Case Study

Master planning: Gurgaon, Delhi Did someone forget to create a masterplan?

Delhi

Gurgaon, Delhi has seen plenty of development over the past ten to 15 years, with major multinationals and IT companies moving to the area for three primary reasons: affordable rents at a discount of more than 50% to central Delhi, large floor-plates unavailable in the historically constrained New Delhi, and access to the airport. However, development has occurred in the absence of any apparent coherent masterplan, resulting in a traffic-dominated public realm, a lack of green space and no money being apportioned to infrastructure and services. The roads between development plots are a combination of continually crumbling tarmac, dust and gravel. Ribbon development of office and retail buildings has occurred without zoning control and all stand independently along three primary roads. Residential then fills the plots of land behind the main road frontages. While there is talk of a more coordinated masterplan approach for the latest phase, this seems to be a claim without any real substance. The latest phase is the development of the Golf Course Extension Road, which as the name suggests is the ribbon development of a fourth main road almost completing the fourth side of a square. Land is simply zoned commercial or residential, allowing a developer to choose whether to develop office or retail uses without any consideration of the most suitable location for a district retail centre. If your neighbour beats you to it and develops a retail mall first, there is nothing to prevent you from still building one next door. There is no such thing as sequential retail tests. On one road there are approximately eight multi-level malls, with four sitting directly adjacent to each other. The residential developments on the last phase that I visited will have sufficient provision of services to meet the daily requirements of their

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residents and eliminate the need for them to leave the complex. This is normally bad neighbourhood planning but in Gurgaon it actually might not be a bad thing, so poor is the district’s public realm. Although developers are apparently obliged to pay development levies for public works outside of their site it seems that the authorities aren’t investing appropriately. The result is people spending entire days in their office buildings, before spending leisure time in the plethora of shopping centres ahead of returning home with all travel between being by car because the area is unwalkable. Gurgaon represents a lost opportunity. Greater governmental control of the area and the application of a coordinated masterplan is crucial; Gurgaon is one of the greatest examples of the poor result that comes from the absence of a coordinated approach. In developed countries we are forever complaining about the interference and control exercised by planning authorities, but this is an example of what transpires in the absence of control. The area is large enough to merit the establishment of a bespoke independent development authority, such as at Dublin’s Grand Canal Dock. If it had its time again, then I would suggest a raised podium approach. This has proven successful in La Défense, in part at Canary Wharf, and on a smaller scale at Chiswick Business Park. The area would have benefited from a central elevated area clear of traffic, with the focus on the creation of a pedestrianised public realm. The traffic should have been kept to large perimeter roads, with vehicular access to buildings from car parking below the raised podium. The pedestrianised podium could then have been animated with greened landscape, leisure activities and a single, coherent retail offer.

Top to botom: The Westin Hotel forms one of the gateways to Gurgaon, and yet this globally recognised hotel brand sits isolated, like other developments, without sufficient infrastructure or public realm. India is a mishmash of new and old, rich and poor, which often provides much of the character of a place. But in an area like Gurgaon, lacking in human scale, this uncoordinated approach seems more alienating than charming.

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Case Study

opening of Malmö University College in 1998 provided the educated workforce critical to those companies considering relocating to the area.

Master planning: Malmö, Sweden

The focus of new development in Malmö is around an area known as the Western Harbour. What we can learn from Malmö is the need to create an interesting place first, followed by sustainability second. Malmö wasn’t primarily marketed as a green neighbourhood; that wasn’t enough to make it a desirable place to live. The co-creators instead focused on creating a great place to live, with beautiful architecture, and positioned the sustainable element as an added bonus. (Indeed, there is an argument that longterm sustainability should really become the norm rather than a unique selling point.)

Malmö is one of the few contemporary municipal districts that has successfully established a sense of place to rival even the most popular historic European neighbourhoods.

Malmö is Sweden’s third largest city by population, with more than 300,000 residents. As a town it struggled in the post-industrial era in the 1970s and 80s. With the loss of shipbuilding industries and other manufacturing jobs, the city had the highest unemployment rate in Sweden in 1995. But the construction of the Øresund Bridge, which I visited when under construction in 1995, gave it the infrastructure needed to reposition the city. It now regularly attracts top IT and biotech companies.

Malmö

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The bridge and Malmö’s consequent proximity to Copenhagen has greatly benefited both cities. Many Malmö residents now work in Copenhagen, and a number of Danish citizens have moved to the greener and cheaper pastures of Malmö. The

The authority opted for a diverse mix of architecture typologies and a range of building heights. This created a varying landscape often lacking in post-industrial waterfront developments (one of the shortcomings of the redevelopment of Dublin’s docklands). This diversity, coupled with winding roads and a contrasting colour palette, helps avoid the predictable sterility of so many masterplans. Along with improved infrastructure, higher education and culture, the masterplanners played their final clichéd but successful regenerative trump card: the iconic centrepiece. At just over 600 ft and 54 storeys, it is the tallest building in Scandinavia. Calatrava’s Turning Torso is constructed around a central core, while each floor gradually rotates through 90° between top and bottom. It has served its purpose, becoming the image that defines the city and a tourist attraction in its own right. The one reported negative of living in Malmö’s Western Harbour is the endless study tours peering in apartment windows.

Case Study

Master planning: The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, Cape Town This South African development shows that masterplanned areas that provide engaging, animated spaces can be more important than the provision of expensive and iconic architecture.

The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront is an immensely popular development in Cape Town’s historic harbour, so much so that it is the country’s most visited destination. The name comes from the fact that Queen Victoria’s son Prince Alfred tipped the first load of stone to start construction of the city’s harbour in 1860. It is now home to waterfront apartments, a major shopping centre, restaurants opening out onto the docks, hotels and a feast of cultural and historic activities, including boat trips to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years. The redevelopment of the V&A started in the 1990s and was a real pioneer and benchmark for waterfront masterplans that followed. While the first completed structures, including the shopping centre, have become a little tired, it remains hugely popular because of the critical mass of activity and diverse mix of uses.

Cape Town

need for expensive and engaging architecture unnecessary. Gunwharf Quays at Portsmouth, which is arguably a similar success and in a similar harbour-side location, does exactly the same thing. Neither is particularly beautiful, but they are pleasant, safe and fun environments to hang out, particularly for young families. The boats which pass the V&A are more often industrial than pleasure craft, but the fact that the area is animated with activity is what is really important. My better half is from Cape Town and we rarely visit the V&A on our annual trip unless she has a particular craving for Marcel’s frozen yogurt. Personally I find it too touristy, too generic; its transparency renders it lacking in adventure and authenticity. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the reasons for its success and celebrate them.

The architecture of those early buildings was very basic, but the animation of public spaces with active calendars of events and the creation of places to eat and enjoy a view rendered the

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Photograph: “Reflections at Keppel Bay” in Singapore, designed by Daniel Libeskind.

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04. Living / Residential Manhattan’s Residential Revolution

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Variety of Unit Typology

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Case Study: The Barbican, London

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Podium Design

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Outside Space

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Amenities 110 Facilities 112 Services 114

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In developed countries there is a tendency to consider homes as investment commodities, with the focus on capital appreciation. While this is important, in many contemporary developments it can compromise the quality of housing and the concept of a cherished home.

The physical nature of the buildings we live in is the next vital aspect of liveable places. What are the positives, what are the shortcomings and how might we evolve the contemporary home in the future? These questions also feed into the issue of the facilities offered in new-build developments and how we can strike a balance between the serviced lifestyle on the one hand, and the prevalence of isolated, self-contained compounds – damaging the urban fabric of our wider cities – on the other. Buildings like the Trident Towers in Mumbai represent the global homogenous answer to the question of what kind of home people today want to live in. But is it the right answer? Today only the quality of facilities, interiors and build varies between countries, with India still lagging behind the EU, the US and the other BRICS markets. The style, though, is always the same. But there’s no real reason that this should be so. In fact, there could be every reason for it to stop and for variety and customisation to flourish. After all, the current Mini Cooper comes in over a million varieties when all customer options are allowed for. Why don’t we get this range when buying the most expensive product of our lives – our home?

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Left: Trident Towers, Mumbai. The global homogenous architectural answer.

There are a number of fundamental areas of concern with contemporary residential design – variety of unit types, interface with the surrounding streetscape and the balance between on-site amenities and the wider neighbourhood.

Left to right: Housing in Montevideo, Uruguay. The opposite of default design solutions in Dublin … … and São Paulo.

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Contemporary living Why is it that nearly all new-build residential is limited in the variety of unit types offered, limited in specification options and limited in flexibility – failing to allow people with different needs to occupy rooms in different ways? What we are overwhelmingly faced with today are magnolia solutions to satisfy the majority. But this majority isn’t actually made up of residents at all: they’re investors who will never actually occupy the units. We all know the apartments I am talking about. In fact, a lot of us are probably forced to live in them, and haven’t the heart to criticise our own homes. As discussed in the introduction to this book, development, and in particular residential development, is rarely subject to open consumer criticism. Social media and the rise of public opinion will not keep residential designers and developers on their toes because we won’t publicly put down our own homes. So we are letting designers and developers off the hook. Meanwhile designers and developers don’t invest nearly enough in research and development and don’t offer choice. I don’t just mean superficial colour options and kitchen units, but rather different layout options, flexible spaces and moveable walls. In terms of research, they don’t force themselves away from routine daily tasks and assess what competitors are doing. How often are research trips undertaken in search of cutting-edge projects? Most development firms won’t even have a design director – a different role to that

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of an architect, who is less skilled at managing product development, capturing consumer trends and maximising commercial value. The property industry falls short of the automotive industry, where on average they pump 5% of profits back into R&D. Why can’t developers cater for everything from empty shells, where you design your own bespoke finish, to fully furnished turnkey homes? We make excuses such as that standardisation reduces costs and makes homes more affordable or we highlight the difficulty of managing individual requests and the logistics of purchasers undertaking their own individual fit-out. Yes, these are challenges, but they are far from insurmountable. It would be perrfectly possible, for example, to give new purchasers a three-month window before the completion of a building – while the developer is busy with the final touches and commissioning – to bring in their own designers and approved fit-out contractors. The lazy answer is to say it is too difficult to allow purchasers to fit their own dream kitchen. But they do all across China. This chapter doesn’t seek to find all the solutions to individual examples because there are too many, but rather encourages and challenges designers of homes to think more creatively. What’s the drawback? At worst, it will differentiate your property from your competitors’. But more likely it will increase market absorption of units and result in a premium value.

Growing populations and fixed land supply mean that designers and developers don’t have to try that hard. But when you can customise everything these days, often from the ground up – your Nikes, cars, t-shirts – why is residential development still stuck in the Model-T Ford approach where the only colour you can have is black?

Top to bottom: Well-designed real homes in Sydney. One Hyde Park in London has become a symbol for unoccupied, investmentdriven product development.

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Manhattan’s Residential Revolution

Clockwise from top left: 18 Gramercy Park South exterior. Frank Gehry’s 8 Spruce St. Spruce St interior. Gramercy Park interior. Rafael Vinoly inspects his 432 Park Ave designs. One57 Penthouse view over Central Park.

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variety of unit TypoLogy Where possible, developments should offer a range of units that accommodate a mixed demographic – this creates a healthy community and allows residents to remain in the same neighbourhood for the duration of their lives by trading up or down.

The next chapter looks at the benefits of providing a variety of office space – key to attracting a diverse working population, which in turn brings innovation and creativity to an area. But the same variety is also vital for residential. Too often developments have a limited number of unit types. Developers focus on investor demand because that is the sector that drives most sales. So apartments are designed primarily with the investors’ requirements in mind, never mind that the investors will never actually have to live in the properties. Should a purchaser seeking owneroccupation show up, they will just have to fit into those investor-orientated units. The most common investor units are one- and two-bedroom apartments. These simply do not satisfy the requirements of a diverse range of purchasers or indeed renters, who end up living in investment properties leased by third parties. Developers churn out these units because they appeal to the widest demographic of purchasers and eliminate the risk of being left with a stock of less popular units. This is a genuine hurdle, and understandable. But in the long term, it has to be counterproductive to

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give in and go for the easy option – not least to the value of those investment properties. A mix of unit types results in a colourful resident population. A workable mix might be a number of one-bedroom apartments for young singles, silver surfers and divorcees; two-bedroom apartments for young families and downsizers who might have family visiting occasionally; townhouses for the larger mature families; and penthouses for the lucky ones. But there are few developments that provide a varied mix of unit types like this. As well as leading to bland neighbourhoods in the shortterm, this also means that in the long-term no purchaser can actually live within their neighbourhood their entire lives if they choose. So neighbourhoods develop little in the way of community over time. And people have no incentive to invest time in developing one. A place cannot help but suffer from this. Why should we have to move when our circumstances change? If we love the area we live in, why should we have to get to know new neighbours, a new commute or new doctors and dentists?

Left to right: As well as high-rise apartments, the Barbican’s mix includes townhouses, pictured here, with direct access fronting the residents’ courtyards. One of the Barbican’s three landmark towers which house a broad mix of unit types. In the foreground is the recently refurbished Frobisher Crescent.

Case Study

Variety of unity typology: The Barbican, London Communities require stability to flourish but too often developments focus on only one or two types of unit, resulting in an endless turnover of population as people’s lives change.

The Barbican in London may not be to everyone’s taste, but one thing it has got right is a diverse mix of units. You can find people who have lived in the Barbican for most of their life, occupying two or three different unit types at various stages. You have townhouses located on the ground floors, with direct access to landscaped gardens with dense tree canopies – perfectly capable of serving a mature family’s requirements (the girls could even attend school on campus). Then you have a fantastic array of apartments above, with a total of 119 different combinations. The recently refurbished Frobisher Crescent – previously an office building – includes a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments.

Some buildings within the estate have become tired, but hopefully the Crescent will encourage further refurbishment and repair as the Barbican faces increased competition from new developments that have caught onto the benefits of providing residential accommodation within London’s business district.

While this might be over the top, it means you really can spend your entire life living there – and many people do just that. This adds to the richness of the community and generates pride of place.

London

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Podium Design A podium with a mix of commercial uses can activate street frontages, providing the surrounding urban environment with a human scale. But the Beijing approach, of vast podiums separated like islands between oceans of highways, needs to be avoided.

Gated communities have been around for a long time and have always provoked debate. A gated community can be a low-density suburban development, where housing is enclosed behind a perimeter wall and accessed through securitycontrolled gates. In urban centres, on the other hand, they typically consist of apartments arranged around secure courtyards for use by residents only. Both forms of gated communities commonly provide the daily services and facilities required by residents, removing the need to leave the compound. Gated communities are usually associated with higher value property. Unfortunately, these developments can have a negative physical and social impact. Physically, a preponderance of gated schemes can result in an urban environment dominated by inactive streets that merely serve as transport routes. Socially, these unconnected but adjacent entities can result in districts with no real sense of community.

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At NEO Bankside, next to London’s Tate Modern, public use at the ground floor of each building and an accessible public realm remove the need for a podium.

Kanchanjunga in Mumbai separates high value residential amenity from the busy streets below through the use of a podium shopping centre.

Today residential purchasers increasingly demand both security and provision of facilities and services. However, perhaps there is a better way of satisfying this demand while protecting the urban fabric of our cities, particularly when it comes to high-density urban developments. I have found that incorporating a podium design can address these issues. A podium is where residential blocks are developed above a ground floor commercial plinth. The podium provides active commercial ground floor frontages, which maintain a strong sense of community with enlivened streets. Meanwhile secure residential facilities and outside space can be provided one floor above on the roof of the commercial podium. This separation creates a natural security barrier between the public use on the ground floor level and the residents’ private lives above. More importantly, at street level the urban fabric is animated, rather than being dominated by

views into residential courtyards through security gates. There is always demand for commercial space. Podium space can be separated between smaller units suitable for accommodating local shops, cafés or galleries along the main street frontages and the deeper space behind made available for schools, gyms and sports clubs, multipurpose halls, residents’ facilities or work studios and screening rooms. Indeed, incorporating a good state-run or private primary school into the ground floor podium space can increase your residential values and sales rates. There is an identifiable correlation between house prices and proximity to good schools. The value impact could be significant, particularly if your lease agreement with the school reserves school places for purchasers of apartments above.

Left to right from opposite page: NEO Bankside, London, where the scheme benefits from the absence of a podium by opening spaces between buildings to the public and populating the ground floor with cafés and galleries. Kanchanjunga Apartments, Mumbai, provides residential and amenity space above ground floor retail. Edificio Copan, São Paulo, though ageing, was a pioneer of vertical residential arranged above a ground floor village.

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Undoubtedly the arrangement and leasing of a multi-tenanted podium will require more intensive work. Larger developers with 20 schemes may shy away from such solutions because they perceive the return on effort as less rewarding than developing additional residential projects. But that is not necessarily true.

Secondly, this is about creating better places. After all, the public and press will gradually associate you with your improved efforts. Such practical work is what builds a corporate brand that can really convince people to buy into future developments, particularly when selling off-plan.

Firstly, most purchasers want to buy into a place that is integrated with its urban environment and will pay more for a well-planned, functioning community.

Clockwise from opposite page: Podium designs in Dubai commonly fail to work because of a lack of public realm. Hotel Unique, São Paulo … … and 20 Fenchurch Street, London, reverse the trend by providing more amenities at roof level, allowing greater levels of public realm below.

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Outside space The majority of balconies in new-build developments are tiny bolton spaces, too narrow even for a table and four chairs. Designers and developers need to find ways of providing more generous usable outside spaces.

Populations continue to soar. Larger populations result in higher density occupation of land and greater urbanisation. So private open space will become increasingly important this century – fewer children will have the gardens to play in that we had growing up. Independent outside areas are a luxury; the majority will be reduced to a balcony space. We need to design these in the best possible way. Why don’t developers provide greater outside space? Their theory is that the market doesn’t value external space on a per-sq-ft basis when compared with internal space. But the majority of developers still recognise that a large balcony or terrace can command a premium. There is also a physical challenge in incorporating larger outside space, whereby the building needs to either step back to accommodate terraces – which results in a loss of space on upper floors – or you have to cantilever greater distances at greater cost and with possible over-shading of apartments on the floors below.

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There is no easy solution, but developers need to be aware of the increasing premium that the provision of large private outdoor space is likely to command in an ever more populated world. Smart design solutions have been adopted on both Aqua Tower and Marina City in Chicago where, though built decades apart, both incorporate deep balconies. My favourite, though never realised, was Calatrava’s proposals for 80 South St in New York City. Here he took the concept of a detached townhouse and garden and stacked them vertically. The owner could visually define their home and garden as an independent entity – it just happened to be part of a high-rise. At the time of writing, proposals for the Ohm Tower in Mumbai include the provision of glass-fronted swimming pools in lieu of balconies. Interesting – though I have seen this unsuccessfully tried on a number of occasions. Usability is also a key factor. We tend to design uniform outdoor space regardless

of geographical location. A terrace design for California is not necessarily suitable for a wet and windy UK or the monsoon season in India. Deeper, shaded terraces like those in the Kanchanjunga Apartments in Mumbai are a good response to the latter problems, but what about the wet and windy climates? Winter gardens can be a useful addition where one can enclose balconies in adverse weather and open them up like a traditional balcony space in summer. Because the space is enclosable it can be fitted out more in line with internal

spaces, and opening internal doors allows an extension of the inside space during winter months when the balcony would be otherwise unusable. Architect Ian Simpson showed us his winter garden designs at the Hilton Tower in Manchester. When we visited in -4° January snow, living rooms were opened out into the enclosed balconies, which even in such cold were still adequately heated by passive solar gain. The spaces varied from six-ft deep balconies to his own triple-height enclosed olive grove.

True or not, it certainly provided much amusement for the less fortunate locals when I visited. Leaving aside the arguments about over-indulgence, what I think is more interesting is the form of the tower, which comprises a varied stepping façade incorporating a multitude of different-sized terraces. I think a lot could be taken from its form to create a multi-occupied tower consisting of small apartments with balconies alongside larger family-sized duplex and triplex homes with sufficient outside space for children to play.

The final project I’d like to mention is Antilia in Mumbai, dubbed the most expensive house in the world. The 27-floor skyscraper is the residence of the Reliance Group chairman, Mukesh Ambani, although it is rumoured that he still hasn’t moved in because the building doesn’t comply with Vastu Shastra, India’s version of Feng Shui.

Left to right from opposite page: Much outside space on new-builds is, for all intents and purposes, scarcely more roomy than an old-fashioned ledge. Antilia in Mumbai, at 27 storeys, is the most expensive family home in the world. Its varied terraces could be a prototype for outside terraces in a multi-tenanted building.

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Amenities Residential amenities consist of both hardware and software – facilities and services.

Residential amenities consist of both facilities and services. Facilities are the hardware, and for any large-scale development the key components can include anything from games rooms to a business centre. The second component is the software, the services. These can include apartment-cleaning, room service, shopping, a concierge, and so on. American developments, particularly in New York, have set the pace on resident services, but China and to a lesser extent India are catching on quickly.

Left to right: Pan Peninsula, when completed in 2007, set new standards in amenity space in London. Hyatt Capital Gate, Abu Dhabi. One57, New York, consists of 135 high-end residential apartments located above a Park Hyatt Hotel, which will provide services to the apartments above. Penthouses have reportedly sold for as much as $90m.

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These days you can find everything for the benefit of the residents, from pools and spas to restaurants, business lounges and cinemas. In some cases the offer is so broad the resident need never leave the compound. As mentioned earlier, this can be a negative. Gated residential developments, where facilities and services are so extensive that both the development and its

residents are alienated from the surrounding neighbourhood, can have little to offer in the way of community – and at nearby street-level result in dead districts. While I am up for on-your-doorstep facilities, we need to strike a balance between the serviced and secure lifestyle demanded by many purchasers and maintaining a sense of wider community. Critical mass is once again hugely important when it comes to amenities. Simply put, the larger the scheme, the greater the number of services and facilities that can be funded. In Europe we are a little behind the Americans and the Far East in the breadth of what is provided – probably because our constrained historic city centres traditionally have resulted in smaller-scale developments.

Pan Peninsula was London’s first American-esque highly serviced residential tower in London. While competitors have now caught up, it was one of the first to introduce residents to a gym, spa, cinema, concierge and bar/restaurant. America certainly set the pace on the standards of facilities and services but Asian countries are catching up quickly and have overtaken on the provision of facilities, even if the service standards are still not up to scratch. The Delano Hotel on Miami’s South Beach has a wonderfully designed pool and outside lounge area. These facilities are becoming common at the highest-end residential developments and often employ the same designers as the buildings themselves.

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Facilities

One of the greatest experiences I’ve enjoyed was living at Lakeville Regency in Shanghai. The scheme contained 800 units of private and serviced apartments. Underneath the concourse sat a world of adventure and activity housed in 64,500 sq ft of space. Facilities included an 82 ft pool, gym, spa, recording studio, karaoke rooms, snooker rooms, indoor tennis court, indoor multiutility court, golf simulator and restaurants. In Europe we would consider that a lot of space to set aside for a scheme of 800 units, but there is no doubting its selling power. The development commenced its main sales and marketing push having completed the construction of these facilities in the lower ground levels. So when purchasing units off plan for the un-built blocks above ground, people were able to walk around and sample the facilities. I noticed purchasers spent as much time considering the facilities as they did the show apartments. They were instantly attracted by the thought of what their life might be like living here. Getting a potential purchaser to visualise – and desire – living in your development has huge selling power. The irony of Lakeville Regency was that once people moved in they rarely ended up

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using the facilities the way they imagined. But it was the scheme’s differentiating factor in a city oversupplied with anonymous schemes. At Lakeville much of the amenities space was in the basement, so the developer could provide wide-ranging facilities without using valuable above-ground space. It is often the case that such facilities are located in cheap, dark spaces otherwise unsuitable for residential use. At Lakeville all apartments were located in tall towers with views so it made sense to locate facilities in such a space. But what about a site which perhaps has a lot of apartments with poor views and only a limited amount of frontage with strong views to water? In that case it may make sense to provide some facilities within the higher value waterfront space. Yes, you may have to sacrifice a waterfront apartment, but it allows all the lower-value apartments without views a place to go to enjoy the view – be it a gym, pool or residential club house. Giving the purchasers of those apartments with poor aspects access to a place with a view of the river will increase the saleability and possibly the value of their homes. This should cover the cost of losing one river-fronting apartment.

Regardless of where amenities are located, design is important. You can go to the websites of people like Philippe Starck and see some wonderful examples of the work they have done. But the layout of the space is even more critical.

separate all these areas into self-contained and antisocial rooms, the designer uses changes in levels and screens to offer privacy to each space but enough transparency for everything to feel populated, lively and welcoming.

I often find these facilities consist of a number of compartmentalised rooms, each with its own function – be it cinema, library or business centre. These secluded rooms can be very uninviting and antisocial. You sit in dark isolation, behind closed doors – with other residents nervous of entering, not knowing who or what is going on inside at any given time. I believe the model for all resident clubhouses should be the Virgin Lounge at Heathrow’s Terminal 3.

Well-designed and extensive facilities provide an opportunity for neighbours to meet and interact. We know less and less about those who live next door, and while anonymity and peace after a long day’s work are valuable, most of us will acknowledge it is nice to have occasional conversations. In addition to structured facilities, generous corridors and entrance halls can facilitate traditional ‘over the garden fence’ conversations.

The Virgin Lounge works for me because it is made up of individual areas that are sufficiently independent but at the same time flow into each other and are interconnected. You arrive into a central area, with seating suitable for working or lounging. Off this are dining areas, a bar, spa, TV room, poolroom and a business area. Rather than

I always feel that Richard Rogers’ typical external glass elevators (e.g. at NEO Bankside) serve this purpose by naturally lighting apartment lobbies, encouraging neighbours to linger and converse and also offering views that can stimulate conversation amongst strangers.

Clockwise from far right: A Starck-designed courtyard pool in Argentina to lounge beside. Expect to see more of this as we move towards a new age of resort-style living. Virgin Lounge, Heathrow Airport. Frank Gehry’s 8 Spruce St, New York, where residents enjoy pools, gyms, restaurants and tailored ‘NYbG Attache’ services. Left: Yoo in Punta del Este, Uruguay, is an example of a development where well-designed residents’ facilities can’t compensate for poorly designed, small apartments.

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Services

The second factor that is ever-popular in residential schemes as our lives become increasingly busy is the provision of residential services – a concierge to order you a taxi or sign for your deliveries and so on. This may often be a well-trained security guard who doubles as the doorman. Such services are fairly regular and provided by the building’s management company, funded by the service charge that the residents pay annually. More extensive services can also be provided, such as daily cleaning, on-demand room service, restaurant and theatre reservations, shopping services and collecting your dry cleaning. These additional services can be provided in three ways: • internally, by the development, if a scheme is large enough to fund them • in a mixed-use development, where a hotel is located adjacent to residential, the hotel operator will often provide the services at a price • through a contracted third party such as Quintessentially.

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These third parties effectively create members’ clubs where you pay an annual fee in return for access to otherwise limited services. It is common for companies such as banks and, increasingly, developers, to employ these agencies to reward customer loyalty. But there is more you can do if you are fortunate enough to be developing a major mixed-use scheme. For example, if the development includes residential, retail, office and leisure, all sorts of crossover opportunities exist – such as introducing clauses in restaurant leases that require operators to hold a number of tables for the benefit of residents making a late booking. Other examples might include requiring cinema or theatre tenants to make tickets for premieres available to residents, or previews of fashion sales at the development’s retail stores. You could even go so far as offering carbon credits against residents’ energy bills from time spent jogging on kinetically enabled running machines at the gym. While such features may not increase the value of the real estate, they do differentiate it from competitors and foster a reputation for excellence that will benefit developers in future marketing campaigns.

Clockwise from right: As well as great facilities, people now also demand hotelstandard service on a daily basis. Residential developments commonly team up with hotel operators to provide an array of services to apartment residents. This is a global practice and allows hotel operators to supplement their income and developers to charge premiums on residential sales values depending on the strength of the hotel brand. Recent examples include the The Shard … … and One Hyde Park, both in London. It is a common practice of the Four Seasons.

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Photograph: Alternative office space, New York.

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05. Working / Offices The Evolution of the Modern Office

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The Multifaceted Corporate Office

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Case Study: Battersea Power Station, London

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Case Study: ANZ Centre, Melbourne

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Case Study: Kings Place, London

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Diversity in Office Design

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Case Study: 0-14, Dubai

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Case Study: British Council, Delhi

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Case Study: Central Saint Giles, London

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Enabling Office Diversity

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Case Study: Workspace Group, London

Members’ Clubs and Hubs

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High occupancy costs, demand for increased flexibility in work practices by employees and increased connectivity are changing how we design office space.

Workplaces are under constant review and analysis because the cost of occupying a building is one of the largest outgoings faced by employers. Today’s highest specification offices are a world away from the offices of the 1980s. Remarkable headway in end-product development has seen the widespread use of raised floors, suspended ceilings and full-height façade glazing. This is the opposite of the residential market, where such improvements are slow to evolve and the homes we occupied a century ago are as desirable as most of those being built today. The two markets, then, could not be more different. When building offices, developers compete to satisfy long lists of corporate requirements set out in pre-let agreements. Reduced demand and more informed tenants results in developers having to work a lot harder for success. You can see the results of that in everimproving buildings.

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Clockwise from left: Front door to an office building, Buenos Aires. A funky office space at Kennington Park studio complex, Kennington, London. Free wireless is creating a broad array of potential places to work, such as here at Union Square, New York.

People are always debating the future of the workplace and this has become increasingly pertinent with the development of the internet. Increased connectivity ignited doomsday forecasts about the end of the office building and led to predictions that we would all be working from home, but 20 years after these initial predictions it is clearly not going to happen. Instead we have witnessed a hybrid solution emerging in the past five years, with increased flexible working arrangements becoming the norm. Companies are seeking to cut overheads by increasing the number of people that can occupy an office building, using hot-desking arrangements and allowing more staff to work from home, something that also improves work/ family balance. This development has been further facilitated by the increase of informal work environments in towns and cities. These can include anything from coffee shops to touchdown members’ clubs to a wifi-enabled public realm where people are happy to work outdoors in the sun – such as at Union Square in New York. The availability of more diverse workspaces has meant that companies are happier to reduce

their requirement for staff to be located full-time in the office. But the head office is still here to stay. I attended a workplace conference at New London Architecture recently where traditional corporate letting agents were debating with purveyors of temporary ‘touchdown’ spaces, each trying to show why the other’s business model was redundant. The truth is that the future will be a fusion of both environments. Companies need oversight of their business and staff; a major corporate entity will never function solely around staff working at home and in coffee shops and where all intellectual capital is stored in the cloud. But also gone is the day when everyone is compelled to have a fixed desk in the office. If slow-moving, glacier-like entities such as the British government have adapted to the flexible, no-fixed-desk future, you know it is here to stay. So what we will see over the coming decade is the continued development of increasingly efficient corporate office space, combined with even more temporary work environments and members’ hubs. This is going to have important impacts on design and placemaking.

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The evolution of the modern office High occupancy costs, demand for increased flexibility in work practices by employees and increased connectivity are changing how we design office space.

The modern office building is changing for the better. In the recent past we moved from cellular offices with limited communication and innovation to fields of open plan offices. Arguably neither was the right solution. More recently, young trendy employers have become obsessed with the inclusion of informal chill-out areas where you can play table-tennis or have a snooze or even take a slide rather than the stairs between floors. Internet companies are increasingly valuing youthful knowledge and creativity in lieu of more traditional hierarchical structures and some have felt the need to convert offices into playgrounds to stop the kids from being poached by another company with better toys for the boys. But these first generation internet kids will get older, they will get mortgages and experience the responsibilities of children and then the need to be entertained will be replaced by the need for security. So I am not advocating the conversion of offices in to playgrounds, but I do think the coming decade will see a better balance between what the traditional corporate office offered and more creative informal environments.

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Below is a list of the most common company objectives according to officer designers Hassell Studio, showing the relevant design responses needed for each one.

Company objectives and design responses • Attract and retain staff – accessibility and amenities. • Flexibility to meet changing needs – diverse, reconfigurable space. • Collaboration and creativity – mobility, with a range of space suitable for solo, group and informal work. • Value for money – efficient space-planning, high utilisation, minimum space per person, maximised unassigned space. While many of the entertainment gimmicks of recent years are likely to disappear, a real legacy of more liveable work spaces will emerge as we move from fixed desks to more flexible and creatively stimulating environments.

Right: A collection of iconic office buildings in the City of London. From left to right, Rogers’ Lloyd’s Building, 30 St Mary Axe (otherwise known as the Gherkin) and the Willis Building – the latter two buildings both by Foster.

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The Multifaceted Corporate Office

How can the design responses key to meeting corporate needs – as discussed a moment ago – be realised? A diverse mix of space within a single office building comes first. There is a growing need for traditional corporate space and informal space. The solution is a single consolidated office that offers these different spaces in a coordinated manner. After all, we will always require a proportion of fixed desks to work from – but how often have you heard somebody saying, ‘So we were in the pub and we had a great idea … ’. Addressing problems in more informal environments can lead to more original solutions. The best ideas often come to people at lunch, when out jogging or even sitting in the bath. So providing informal spaces within a building can facilitate this. Such spaces include areas set aside for creative working groups – but also stairwells and courtyards designed in such a way that they accommodate and encourage spontaneous conversation. Where traditionally an office building might have consisted of an entrance reception, floors of cellular or open plan offices with intermittent

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meeting rooms, now such buildings are increasingly becoming more complex organisms. Today as little as 30% of a well-designed office might be standard desk space, with the rest a mix of hot-desking, cellularised meeting rooms, informal open meeting areas, restaurant and café facilities, active hubs, quiet space, gyms and playrooms. Generally most of the employees (except for some of the fixed administrative and accounting departments) will move between the various spaces, depending on the nature of the work they are doing at the time. Much of the creative conceptual work might occur in informal open meeting spaces, perched around the open atrium. More of the problem-solving might be done in a formal meeting room. And report writers will be allocated hot desks in the quiet zones. While it takes active management of both staff movement and work tasks, such a mix of space allows managers to deploy staff to environments that best suit the nature of their work at the time, while at the same time maximising flexibility and occupancy and thus reducing overheads.

Left to right: Petrobras’ offices in Rio, Brazil where employees enjoy a network of multiple-storey recessed terraces, offering extensive outside space with views over the city. Battersea Power Station site.

Case Study

The multifaceted corporate office: Battersea Power Station, London London has a bourgeoning creative economy but it lacks the large-scale industrial office space sought by creative companies who have grown too large for the historic centre. Where supply does exist, it is often located in areas lacking the social infrastructure required to satisfy staff needs.

Battersea Power Station provided a unique opportunity to deliver grade A specification office space located within an iconic industrial environment. Above all this space should prove very attractive to mid- and large-sized creative companies, who struggle to find unique office space on a large scale. The photograph here shows the space between the four chimneys where the office space will be located. We arranged this area in the Power Station as a diverse mix of work spaces, consisting of active hubs, meeting rooms, quiet space away from the active atria and areas of traditional desk space. Taking the Power Station’s unique London offer and placing it at the centre of a culturally-led mixed-use environment is key to its future success. The war on talent and fight for staff retention will lead companies to choose locations that bring together retail, dining, hotels and venue space around an actively curated public realm.

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Case Study

The multifaceted corporate office: ANZ Centre, Melbourne One office building that has deservedly gained huge recognition recently is Hassell Architects’ ANZ Centre, Melbourne. I was very happy to spend some time with these designers discussing the project.

Melbourne

The success of the ANZ Centre in Melbourne lies in making a major corporate HQ, extending to 140,000 sq ft and home to 6,500 people, into a light, airy and active village. Traditionally it has been creative companies that have pioneered the move to more progressive and engaging workplaces, but here one of Australia’s largest banks has been bold enough to take on such a substantial experiment at its high profile headquarters rather than at a satellite office. A large atrium punctuates the centre of the building. The floor of the atrium is open to the public and animated with cafés, public art and a visitor centre. The colourful atrium is instantly uplifting, with active hubs and meeting areas perched above and enlivening the edges of the floors fronting the atrium, which helps draw life from the ground floor up through the building. These perched hubs, many with café-style seating, help to create intimate creative zones in a building that feels like an organic city. More formal meeting places and standard seating are located in quieter zones away from the activity around the atrium. A similar approach has proved successful in the progressive HQ of another Australian bank, Macquarie. There the Clive Wilkinson-designed building also animates its atrium, with 26 glass enclosed meeting pods; it also employs flexible workspace. Staff are designated an ‘anchor point’, with a locker and storage, and choose on a daily basis where they will work within the buildings, something that is proving popular with employees. Both are a long way from ANZ Gothic Bank, built in the 19th century, and if a commercial bank can pull this off in the single largest tenanted building in Australia, then there are no excuses for the rest of us. In an age when the banking sector has experienced major negative PR, this building is the perfect response – a symbol of transparency and openness. I recently visited a more typically reserved bank’s HQ in London, whose reported sick days had increased significantly since moving into a soulless, albeit efficient, new office. They

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claimed that their latest ‘progressive’ endeavour of allowing office staff to bring pot plants into work to create a sense of green and thus forge a connection with the building would definitely solve the problem. It made me realise how far behind the curve some occupiers and developers still are in the race to attract and retain staff.

From top to bottom: A view of the vast ANZ Centre, extending to over 800,000 sq ft. (Photo by Hassel and Lend Lease.) The central atrium of the ANZ Centre, which opens up the building to an animated public concourse below. (Photo by Hassel and Lend Lease.)

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Case Study

More than just an office: Kings Place, London People often ask me if I think the benefits of mixed-use placemaking can be applied to individual buildings. There is no doubt that scale allows a developer better scope for placemaking but occasionally you come across a standalone building that creates something more than just a physical provider of space. Kings Place in the King’s Cross area of London is one such example.

Kings Place is an office building that was developed largely in isolation years before the wider regeneration of the King’s Cross area had started and yet it managed to attract highprofile tenants to an area they might otherwise not have considered, and at a rent that was unprecedented in the local market at the time. How did it achieve this? The developer did what the name suggested and created a ‘place’ rather than a building. The building opened in 2008 and referred to itself as “a hub for music, art, dialogue and food, also providing world-class conferencing, events and office space”. While the majority of the building above ground floor is office accommodation, the developer sought to use the lower-value bottom levels to provide a mix of uses that would draw the public into the building, generate animation and ultimately become the defining identity for the building. From the street you enter a large atrium that forms the central hub of the building, bringing natural light in from above, and extending downwards to open up the two lower ground floors. This entrance atrium houses a coffee shop which draws office workers down from their desk spaces above, allowing them to hold meetings or socialise in the lounge-like seating areas. Unusually the public are permitted to enter and use this space, which would more commonly be off limits behind security barriers. But the result is an open meeting space buzzing with activity.

Anti-clockwise from top right:

London

Café and seating animate the atrium floor. The building’s waving façade. The lower ground floor atrium provides access to auditoria while doubling as a gallery and pre-venue social area. Pangolin Gallery animates the ground floor frontage of the building. Signage for a gallery exhibition.

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The developer did what the name ‘Kings Place’ suggested and created a ‘place’ rather than a building. From here the atrium draws you down to the lower floors which house an art gallery and two auditoria with capacities for 450 and 300 people. The auditoria provide additional meeting and presentation space to tenants, bring in additional revenue as conference venues and in the evening play host to a packed calendar of concert events. There is also a more formal waterfront restaurant and bar, which succeeds on the footfall generated day and night by the auditoria.

The default solution for the developer would have been to simply create an office building behind closed doors with lower-value office accommodation, a small staff restaurant and staff gym on the lower floors. What Kings Place has succeeded in demonstrating is that with ingenuity and a lot of hard work you can create a building that surpasses and as a result elevates the surrounding area, but more importantly that you can achieve unprecedented rental values and attract high-profile tenants such as the Guardian and the Observer newspapers by creating a great place. In 2009 the British Council for Offices named Kings Place ‘Best Commercial Workspace’ and the ‘Best of The Best’, their highest accolade. Visit London named it ‘Business Venue of the Year’ in 2010.

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Diversity in Office Design Providing a mix of office accommodation so as to seed a diverse community will increase innovation – critical to successful office locations.

I constantly return to the importance of diversity throughout this book. Most developers maintain that in a solely residential development it is preferable to create a scheme largely marketed at the same demographic. Particularly if you are developing a high-end residential scheme, you wouldn’t look to diversify the population with the introduction of lower value housing because this diminishes the perception of exclusivity and impacts sales values. However, in mixed-use schemes and workplace environments there is an argument for the creation of a diverse population. Diversity in society helps us to grow and open our minds to different ways of life and different ways of doing things. It also promotes more tolerance, which in turn helps us to accept different cultures, and even adopt alternative methods of doing things. Diversity and its associated benefits, such as better decision-making and improved problem-solving, are often prevalent in creative districts. So how does this translate to design and development? Well, in terms of space, the more diverse a development is, the broader the range of companies and industries it appeals to – as well as creating a progressive and popular office

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location. This means having something for everyone, from the home-based entrepreneur to the FTSE 100 firm. It also means having both small and large dynamic spaces, from studios to flagship HQs, which will bring exciting people and their organisations together and help to create a flourishing business community. The ability to provide a range of types of office space as well as unit sizes is important if it can be achieved. We are all familiar with the traditional plate-glass façades that dominate every global city, but there is also huge demand for the sort of commercial space that the average developer doesn’t think about. This includes old warehouses crammed between or beneath railway lines, or stripped-out and refurbished obsolete offices. While many of the big companies insist on letting off-the-shelf grade A boxes, other companies prefer a unique environment that they believe reflects the individuality of their company. But why should it only be the start-ups and creative companies that occupy the interesting buildings? We need to create an integrated campus that provides a range of unit sizes across a combination of new-build glass boxes and buildings with more personality. This isn’t always

easy to do because it is not always possible to find historic or warehouse buildings in proximity to open development land. But even on a site that lacks historic buildings ripe for renovation, it is still possible to develop new buildings attractive to those not seeking universal glass boxes. We can turn to the O-14 building in Dubai and Central Saint Giles as just two examples of such developments.

Clockwise from opposite page: ‘Tech City’ in East London is emerging as the UK’s response to Silicon Valley. The district’s edginess attracts creative entrepreneurs and its proximity to the financial district is important. A development I worked on for a number of years, combining industrial warehousing space alongside new-build grade A corporate space. Industrial office space attracting progressive Chinese companies at 1933 Shanghai, a converted slaughterhouse. Creative office space at Chelsea Market in New York, home to established companies like EMI. Flexible working arrangements.

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Case Study

Diversity in office design: 0-14, Dubai O-14 is a striking, trendy and environmentally responsive building in a city of repetitive glass boxes.

Dubai

One of my favourite buildings in Dubai is O-14, located in Business Bay and designed by RUR Architecture. In my opinion Dubai has only a very limited number of striking landmarks: these include the Burj Al Arab, Khalifa and the Palm, as well as the overall juxtaposition of the city against the desert. For the most part the other buildings are dull, unsophisticated and poorly designed and constructed. What I like about O-14 is that it flies in the face of what everybody else is doing in Dubai – energy-consuming air-conditioned glass boxes. But O-14 is different not just for the sake of being different. It is architecturally distinctive while also being one of the few buildings that is passively responsive to the temperate environment. And it still manages to be trendy and current. This 330 ft tall, 23-storey building has a floor area of 300,000 sq ft, an ideal size for a stand-alone office building that can appeal to both multitenanted and single occupier markets. What is unique is its façade treatment, where there is a three-foot void between an external concrete façade and an internal glazed façade. This void allows hot air to rise and cool air to come in from below, creating a chimney effect, while simultaneously providing shading from the harsh sunlight and passively reducing solar heat gain. The external façade – effectively an exoskeleton – is 15 inches thick and made of concrete perforated by over 1,000 openings of various sizes. These openings control solar gain while affording dynamic views out for the occupants. The external structural façade carries much of the lateral load and facilitates greater column-free floor-plates. When you study the building you can see that the visual specification of the internal glazed wall is not as high as neighbouring buildings because it doesn’t need to be – the aesthetic is created by the exoskeleton. The construction cost saved on the internal façade in turn funds the construction

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of the outer concrete skin and should allow such buildings to be constructed within or below budgets of more typical glazed buildings while also reducing the energy cost of occupying the building. I think this building is a prime example of how a building’s appearance can add to a company’s brand. Creative companies are increasingly seeking one-off buildings that reflect their corporate image. Identikit looking-glass towers cannot do this. Many creative industries don’t want to occupy what they perceive as characterless glass boxes and often search instead for industrial refurbishments, but these aren’t always available.

O-14 is a leading example of a new build that is socially and environmentally responsive. This is in turn communicated through a cool and unique aesthetic. It is this that appeals to open-minded companies. I think such clever architectural solutions will be increasingly in demand over the coming decade, striking a balance between individuality, sustainability and functionality. The one downside for O-14 is its location in Dubai’s Business Bay, disconnected from any meaningful sense of place and likely to be isolated for the long term in the absence of sustainable demand in the Dubai market.

Left to right: The exoskeleton provides a passive environmental solution in the harsh Dubai climate as well as an individual identity attractive to independent companies. O-14 may struggle long term as it forms part of the Business Bay, which is increasingly isolated in a Dubai where demand has evaporated.

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Case Study

Diversity in office design: British Council, Delhi This building shows the value of respect for historic context through a contemporary application of traditional materials and the fusion of art and architecture.

Delhi

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The British Council Office Building in Delhi is one of my favourite buildings full stop. A series of receding terraces are set like a stage behind a flat vertical façade and as the building steps back, a void is created between the various terraced levels and the outer frame. This void contains a series of external but shaded interconnecting stairs and terraces which allow people to move through the building’s levels without having to head for antisocial elevators. This increases social interaction, facilitates ad hoc meetings and provides places for people to contemplate or simply take a coffee break. This building was designed more than 20 years ago by Charles Correa, and is an example to office designers today of the need for flexible workspace and the benefits of creating spaces within an office that encourage informal interaction which can boost creativity. At the rear of the buildings is a splendid courtyard formed by a continuation outwards of the building frame. This creates a sense of containment and an intimate space for employees’ lunches and for more formal events. The only criticism I would have is that the entrance foyer should have been afforded double

height as it lacks the volume needed to create a sense of arrival. For the viewer on the street this stage-like setting informalises a political institution which would traditionally be introverted and uninviting. The building’s final trick is the mural on the stepped façade, designed by the renowned British artist Howard Hodgkin, which is a wonderful fusion of art and architecture and a forerunner to the plethora of recent embedded art such as that found at Oxeye, St John Street in London. Top to bottom: The façade of Oxeye, London, where developers are increasingly embedding art in architecture using existing construction budgets. See Chapter 7. The main façade of the British Council, Delhi.

Case Study

Diversity in office design: Central Saint Giles, London The architect Renzo Piano said of this development’s bold colour that “cities should not be boring or repetitive”. Central Saint Giles is certainly a departure from London’s norm.

London

I must admit, when I first moved to London and Central Saint Giles was under construction I didn’t have any time for it. I used to debate its merits with its planning director. Its day-glow façades – consisting of 130,000 green, orange, lime and yellow glazed terracotta tiles – were a little too European for my liking and certainly attracted controversy and debate amongst the city’s property sector. Having just moved from Shanghai I was more in favour of the proposals for the Shard. But your ideas and feelings change as your relationship with a city grows, and over time I became less enamored with the Shard, mainly because of its rather disconnected location away from the rest of London’s tall buildings, and Central Saint Giles became more appealing. Functionally it is a state-of-the-art building, with sufficient space to cater for the largest creative companies that have grown too large for the area’s historic stock. Rather than developing a bland glass box that wouldn’t have appealed to the area’s existing office market, its colourful and in-your-face façade fashioned a positive counterbalance with the colour of nearby Covent Garden. The architect Renzo Piano said of the colour, “cities should not be boring or repetitive”, and it is certainly a departure from London’s norm. It provides the individuality desired by its prospective creative tenants and it wasn’t long before it was fully let to the likes of Google. So it was a bold and ultimately successful move, although I am not so sure how aware its institutional developer was of these aspects at the outset. Top to bottom: The multicoloured, tiled façades of Central Saint Giles, reflected in a nearby window. The bright yet soft façades are a nice juxtaposition with Covent Garden’s brightly coloured traditional buildings such as Neal’s Yard.

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Enabling Office Diversity In addition to large institutional office space, a mix of smaller office space and studios on flexible lease terms will improve the diversity of the tenant mix.

Providing space that meets the demands of the smallest companies is also important. Small studio space can be provided easily enough but the lease terms need to be given equal attention. While many large corporations are happy to accept long lease terms and often prefer these where there is a significant fit-out cost, many smaller tenants can’t commit to such long-term undertakings. A huge percentage of UK companies are 1–10 person enterprises, with employee numbers that can vary greatly depending on seasonal business.

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Many small firms are also part of the creative industry, an area in which most mature economic markets are witnessing explosive growth. Capitalising on this market is increasingly critical for developers, particularly when other traditional occupiers are rationalising and reducing their office requirements. It is a largely untapped market and these tenants can add a trend factor to an area of redevelopment. Such SMEs are increasingly having their space requirements met by flexible studio offers and members’ hubs.

Left to right from this page: A typical studio space from the outside, very different to the modern glass façade office building (in which it is reflected) – and with arguably more character. The sign for Clerkenwell Workshops, one of the many workhub sites of Workspace Group across London.

Case Study

Enabling office diversity: Workspace Group, London Workspace provides over 4 million sq ft of studio accommodation on flexible leases to its 4,000 tenants across London.

London

One of the most successful purveyors of studio space is Workspace Group, based in London. I have spent a bit of time with the guys there, and must admit that they have a fantastic model and attitude for what they do. They focus on leasing to small and mediumsized creative industries on flexible terms. Such small businesses need to increase and decrease their workforce rapidly in response to varying workloads. For example, an animation company may need to resource-up in response to a specific project and might require additional space at short notice. Workspace allows such companies to take space on a three-month lease, thus allowing them to scale up or down. Similarly, start-up companies can establish an office with only a three-month rental commitment in case things don’t work out. This is certainly a management-intensive process for Workspace Group, particularly when they administer 4,000 tenants with an average lease holding of 1,000 sq ft and an average tenant turnover of 25% per annum – of which half trade up or down and half leave. Even with this level of turnover, they maintain occupancy across their portfolio in excess of 85%. The upside is that, because of the small nature of units and flexible lease terms, Workspace can charge rental premiums over other buildings in the same neighbourhood. A lot of developers would shun this type of development because of the risk associated with start-up companies, but Workspace say the strength they need is in the creative industry as a whole rather than individual tenants. The creative industry is collectively so strong in Britain, with over 250,000 start-ups being established every year, that the size and force of the industry is enough to support Workspace’s business model. Far from being a shaky enterprise, Workspace Group is a listed real estate investment trust backed by the formidable Hermes Group.

In addition to flexible leases and small units, it is the common areas and management that is fundamental to the success of Workspace’s offices. Each of their developments contain a central shared area that always boasts a café with wifi, facilitating social gathering and collaboration. Each site has a manager/curator who as well as managing leasing looks after events to bring creatives together. At Westbourne Studios, we visited a photo shoot where the manager had brought together two tenants unknown to each other – one a photographer and the other a model agency. This crosscollaboration is good for tenants and for the landlord. In addition to the central café, other amenities include always popular screening rooms, gallery space, nightclubs, games rooms, and so on.

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Members’ Clubs and Hubs A variety of members’ hubs have began to spring up offering pay-asyou-go desk space to freelancers and alternative space to corporations. Examples include The Hub, Hospital Club and Soho House.

We discussed how most companies are moving from 100% allocated desks within their offices towards more flexible working arrangements. This trend of major corporations, coupled with the growing number of small creative companies and start-ups without a permanent office, has resulted in a rise in alternative working environments. On the previous pages I discussed café working, studio accommodation and wifi-enabled public realm. But there is another solution, based on traditional members’ clubs. These clubs may share something of the basic set-up and business model of old-fashioned gentlemen-only establishments, but the similiarities stop right there. These are a new take on the concept, open and lively and focused more on providing top environments for day-long working and networking. One example is The Hub, which describes itself as a co-working space for social entrepreneurs. The Hub’s buildings bring together a café to encourage social interaction and idea sharing, hot-desk space and meeting rooms. The business targets an occupancy of one person per 45 sq ft

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rather than the 130 sq ft one might find in a traditional office. The Hub is used by individual members, such as writers and designers, right through to corporate members such as Virgin. These larger corporations use The Hub when they are undertaking creative brainstorming and product launches and also when they require additional space that their permanent offices can’t meet. Although anyone can join The Hub’s global network in 25 cities, membership is supposedly limited to people who share The Hub’s philosophy. So, for example, if you are an NGO, a philanthropic venture or support sustainability, then you are granted greater access. But don’t worry, if this one isn’t for you, there are a plethora of alternative clubs with different manifestos. While Workspace Group’s cafés and common areas are open to the public to come and network, they are now also starting to roll out their ‘touchdown’ concept, which is in effect a pay-as-you-go members’ access to hot desk space across their portfolio of locations without the social profiling of The Hub. It is great for

freelancers who just want a desk whenever it suits them. At the other end of the market you have places like the Hospital Club and Soho House. These exclusive establishments are all about connecting, creating and collaborating – so long as you are invited to do so or have the money to open the door. They are sleek, sexy and beautifully styled facilities, housing bars, spas and recording studios occupied by the well-heeled of the media industry. Regardless of what set you fit into, there is little contesting the continuing increase of nontraditional workspace – it’s here to support rather than replace the traditional office space, but it’s definitely here for good.

Opposite page: Neuehouse in New York is a private membership work collective targeting creative companies. It provides hotdesks, serviced office space and networking facilities.

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Photograph: Shopping on London’s Bond Street.

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06. Shopping / Retail Impact of Internet Retailing

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Shopping Centres vs the High Street

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Case Study: Xintiandi, Shanghai

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Case Study: Westfield, London

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Case Study: Dubai Mall

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Case Study: Mall of the Emirates, Dubai

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Alternative Centres

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Case Study: Aldar Central Market, Abu Dhabi

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Case Study: Chelsea Market, New York

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Clone Towns

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Independent Retail

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Case Study: Marylebone High Street

Diversity of Retail Offer

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Markets 160 Retail Theatre, Curatorship and Events

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Shopping is increasingly the pastime choice of the masses. How is the internet and globalisation of retailers affecting our shopping habits and urban environment?

Shopping – we all do it, whether we love it or hate it. But with yearly online retail sales eating into high street trade, what does the future hold for our town centres and for retail developers and investors? If everybody is shopping via their computers, are high streets doomed? At the same time as the high street’s basic future is threatened, throughout the world we are increasingly faced with the same shops and brands on our high streets and in our shopping centres. Be it a trip to New York, Dubai or Hong Kong, diversity of choice is diminishing and each place we visit is becoming less unique and more familiar. What is the long-term impact of both of these phenomena and how will they affect our local neighbourhood centres and capital cities?

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Impact of internet retailing The internet will never compete with the retail experience that has become a leisure pastime for many.

The high street was historically at the heart of our communities, but over the past five years we have seen a plethora of businesses closing their doors. Where once we had active streets and shopping centres, we are now witnessing a surge in vacant units, reducing the critical mass of the retail offer and footfall, hurting those stores still operating. In such economically troubled times it is difficult to distinguish how much retail is being affected by the increase in online shopping and how much is the result of recession-driven belt-tightening. A potential indicator of the impact of the internet can be seen by the effect on bookshops, where internet sales are compounded by changes in reading habits with the development of products such as the Kindle. eBook sales now outstrip the sale of printed books (though only as a whole and not for every book), and the future of the bookshop is in jeopardy. Beyond the bookshop, there is little doubt that online giants such as Amazon, Net-a-Porter and Ocado are also having a widespread and profound impact.

Is this the beginning of the end of shops as we know them? I don’t believe so. Before the internet was even a concept, shopping had established itself as a social pastime. Ladies in particular love spending a Thursday evening or Saturday afternoon with their friends out exploring the streets with a few quid in their pockets, not knowing what they will end up buying. It is as much about participating in the shopping experience as what you buy. The internet will never replicate that, and so what we may see is a weeding out of the poorer retail locations and increased prosperity for those retail pitches that create a sense of adventure and an offer that varies – bringing something new every time you return.

Left to right from opposite page: Dubai Mall is the world’s largest shopping mall, attracting more than 50m visitors per annum, more than all of New York. Bookshops at Cecil Court, London. Internet book sales, compounded by eBooks, have resulted in the closure of bookshops across the EU and US.

So what makes for a successful retail destination that can survive the onslaught of online shopping? Well, for starters, giving the shopper something they can’t find online: a unique experience.

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Shopping Centres vs The High Street The location of shopping centres needs to be carefully considered when developed in the context of an existing town centre so that both can flourish.

For decades there has been an ongoing debate about the merits of shopping centres versus the high street. It is a difficult topic to address because it is one of the most complex and contentious subjects in all real estate. You can look back to the first generation malls in the USA and measure the detrimental impact on town centres and communities across the country. At the time people didn’t foresee such impact but it can still be felt today. A few years back I travelled around parts of Illinois and New Jersey where town centres still remain desolate to this day. Nowadays we have sequential tests to determine the most suitable locations for new retail development, but many town centres still struggle as a result of out-of-town shopping centres and now the viability of both is called into question by recession and the internet. What is the answer? Personally I am a high street kind of guy. I love wandering around town centres, exploring the streetscape in anticipation of coming across something unexpected – be it a store, public space or building. But I don’t have three small children in tow, or a minivan to park and pay for and the wind and rain to huddle from while carrying the weekly shopping for five.

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So undoubtedly the shopping centres provide an important service, particularly for young families, teenagers whose parents are more comfortable having them in a controlled environment and the older and less mobile. So they are not going away in a hurry. We need to strike a balance between the two. We can’t do away with our town centres, which will always be the focal point of our communities and which support small local

businesses. But equally shopping centres exist, service a demand and are profitable and unless that changes, they are also here to stay. Above all, finding a balance means that the location of shopping centres needs to be carefully considered when developed in the context of an existing town centre so that both can flourish.

An ideal scenario might be the migration of branded or chain retailers to shopping centres, facilitating a flexibility in lease and rent terms on the high street, thus allowing the provision of independent boutique shops and restaurants there. This would create more diverse high streets, with a make-up differing from town to town, creating more variety and interest and putting an end to the plague of ‘clone streets’. However, when creating new communities, particularly in developing countries, a shopping centre should never be proposed in lieu of a high street. The high street and its associated squares and parks will always be what defines the identity of a place. New towns such as Gurgaon in India, which have seen the development of a multitude of new shopping centres rather than a town centre, are poorer for it.

At the outset, planning authorities must carefully assess the future catchment of a new community and insist on a balance between high streets and shopping centres. In the absence of sufficient demand to support both elements, the provision of a high street with adequate parking facilities and public transport, a mix of small and large retail units and a consolidated retail management structure should be the preferred option. Meanwhile the development of spaces to accommodate cafés and pop-up markets adjacent to well-established high streets will give these new life, as at the Duke of York Square on the King’s Road in Chelsea.

Clockwise from opposite page: Shopping streets around Seven Dials, London, offer a mix of independent, boutique and larger chain stores, coupled with everchanging street theatre – making the area a major draw. The wonderful shopping streets and high fashion around Rua Oscar Freire in São Paulo. Singapore’s Orchard Road, which centrally locates a series of shopping centres along its primary high street, creating the best of both worlds. Shopping is the new (inter)national pastime and the satisfaction of spending a day with friends wandering the shops will always beat sitting in front of an internet shopping site. However, it will mean the continued success of engaging retail offers and the likely demise of inferior and ‘clone’ shopping encounters.

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Case Study

Shopping/ retail: Xintiandi, Shanghai Xintiandi is the retail element of the wider Taipingqiao masterplan in Shanghai’s French Concession. Having lived and socialised there for more than two years I think it is one of the most successful redevelopment projects in China.

Xintiandi, Shanghai may not be the most progressive development, or even the most authentic, but it is certainly one of the most popular and profitable. Xintiandi is the destination of choice for tourists and for Shanghai’s affluent and emerging middle classes. It consists of two city blocks of car-free shopping, dining and entertainment. This seeded the wider neighbourhood’s regeneration and helped it become one of the most desirable addresses in the city. While the rest of Shanghai was being demolished without any consideration for historic context and legacy, Xintiandi looked to the past and rebuilt its shikumen housing (originally constructed in the late 19th and early 20th century), made up of two- and three-storey stone dwellings with small courtyards behind high external walls running along alleyways. Their quality and appearance is certainly far nicer than what the majority of Chinese would have actually lived in in the past, but it just manages to remain on the chic side of twee. As a consequence, the scale of the development leads to much of the area’s success. Like medieval parts of European towns such as San Sebastián or Nice, the narrow alleyways create a sense of intimacy, particularly when they open out into larger squares and courtyards that are crammed with outdoor dining opportunities. The sense of excitement and buzz is palpable and the tactile historic vernacular adds to the human scale in a way that contemporary glass architecture couldn’t.

Shanghai

Critical mass is, as always, crucial and there are multitudes of dining opportunities, everything from European, Japanese, Taiwanese and Right: The historic shikumen houses in Shanghai now house shops, restaurants and bars with a new shopping centre forming the termination of the pedestrian street.

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Chinese. Mixed amongst the restaurants are bars, clubs and international and boutique retailers, including the wonderful Shanghai Tang. What is interesting is that a newly constructed shopping mall forms the terminus to the southern end of the traditional high street. Although the first-phase shopping centre was lacking retail – something added by the latest extension – it is a great example of a traditional outdoor high street working alongside a modern shopping centre, the latter providing the larger serviced space required by international brands. While established cities will have to continue to struggle with balancing traditional town centres with out-of-town shopping centres, new city masterplanners would do well to research the symbiotic relationship between these two retail entities at Xintiandi. Bastakiya in Dubai tried something similar with the reconstruction of traditional wind tower housing. Unfortunately, Bastakiya lacks the critical mass of retail, eateries and culture required to be successful. And in any event, with a society largely obsessed with everything fashionable, few residents visit it – though it draws a small number of tourists eager to photograph a few ‘traditional’ buildings.

Case Study

Shopping/ retail: Westfield, London Shopping mall development has unquestionably evolved since the first generation of malls in the 1950s and 1960s – Westfield’s London developments exemplify this well.

Early malls were vast sprawling buildings situated like an island in a sea of surface car parking. These were more often than not built on greenfield sites and were an essential part of suburban life. Since then we have seen fast-paced design evolution. Malls are now larger and brighter, increasingly dense, provide a more comprehensive and diverse retail experience and greater leisure and dining facilities. In Chapter 4 we discussed some of the reasons behind a lack of apartment design evolution, but retail is a more transient and fluid sector. Consumers are less and less bound to one retail location, and if a development is not designed, leased and managed well, they change their shopping habits and go elsewhere. This has kept developers on their toes. It has also left a lot of countries facing the dilemma of what to do with obsolete shopping centres. Above:

I was fortunate enough to visit some pre-eminent retail developments recently, including Dubai Mall, the two Westfield Malls in London and Elements Mall in Hong Kong.

Westfield White City

London

I will start with the two Westfield malls in London. The first is known as White City and consists of 1.6 million sq ft in Shepherd’s Bush. It opened in 2008. It is a good scheme, set around a simple circulation route over two levels. This layout delivers all shoppers past every store with as little confusion as possible, in my opinion always the way to develop a shopping mall – straightforward and easily navigable. The large central atrium hosts events, is lined with food and beverage units and links clearly to the cinema on the upper level. The mall sits above a bright and safe car parking area, reassuring to women shoppers in particular.

Westfield Stratford

The outside areas of Westfield White City, which include a food-street, attempt to provide an alternative to internal areas.

Stratford. In design terms for me this is nowhere near as successful as its predecessor, White City. The mall is part-inside part-outside. I don’t have a problem with this in principle, but from a circulation point it doesn’t work well here. The inside consists of a triple-level crescent-shaped mall and once you arrive at the end of it you are faced with the dilemma of heading back down the crescent in the direction you came, albeit on the next level, or proceeding outside where an un-engaging streetscape takes you back to your starting point. I support the desire to create an external street to connect to the Olympic Park, but the chosen solution doesn’t work for me – they have ended up with neither a coherent shopping centre nor a proper high street.

In 2011, Westfield opened their second London mall as part of the Olympic development at 06. Shopping / retail Living in Wonderland

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Case Study

Shopping/ retail: Dubai Mall Forget any mall you have visited, Dubai Mall is on a different level to anything you have ever seen.

There are some monster malls in China, as well as historically renowned schemes like the Mall of America in Minnesota, but they just don’t compare to the Dubai Mall and its 1,200 shops. Fifty-four million visitors passed through its doors in 2011, surpassing the total number of visitors to New York City. I visited at 9pm on a Sunday in 2012 and you could barely move in the place. For somewhere so large, the design and circulation is fairly straightforward and customers can easily find their way around. With so many stores, almost anything you want can be purchased here. The luxury brands are grouped together and it was interesting to see that there was a far higher concentration of Emirati and Chinese shoppers in this area than in the rest of the mall. The luxury section has its own dedicated entrance and set-down area; you will never see such a collection of supercars on an area the size of a tennis court. Cleverly, the tourist points of interest such as the aquarium and the entrance to the Burj Khalifa are accessed from within the mall, which helps drive footfall. Unfortunately, though, the resulting confusion and jostling makes it tempting to skip a visit to Burj, particularly if you haven’t pre-booked and end up paying the $40 entrance price. But what I like about the Dubai Mall more than most is the provision of outside theatrelike spaces, the fountain show and waterfront restaurants. It gets people outside to relax and is a positive counterbalance to the mass hysteria of consumerism inside, particularly for children.

Dubai

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Case Study

Shopping/ retail: Mall of the Emirates, Dubai When first built, Mall of the Emirates was off-pitch and in the middle of nowhere – a bit of a trend for Dubai. But its size, quality and offering were all sufficient to draw the masses and it became one of the most talkedabout malls in the world.

Dubai

I met up with the developers of the Mall of the Emirates to discuss their retail portfolio. The Mall of the Emirates is still the jewel in their crown, with more recent ventures struggling to find their feet. Undoubtedly sticking a 2,500 ft-long ski slope to the side of a shopping mall in the middle of the desert gave it instant fame. However, with ‘ice bars’ proving ever popular, I will never understand why the restaurants surrounding the ski slope were not provided with outdoor terraces where non-skiers could wrap up and enjoy the novelty of eating in a snowy environment while watching the skiers. Although it is still less than ten years old, certain parts of the mall – such as the leisure and gaming zones – have become a little tired. In recent years it has been over-shadowed by the Dubai Mall, the critical mass of which is probably sufficient to satisfy the entire city’s retail demand and which is therefore in danger of obliterating all the competition. But what can you expect in a town where retailplanning controls are lax, where one family can control a hundred retail franchises and where sequential testing to find the most suitable site closest to the town centre is not high on the agenda?

Clockwise from above right: Shoppers enjoying the light-filled atmosphere of the Mall of the Emirates. The artificial ski slope which adjoins the Mall of the Emirates. The AMGs and Rolls-Royces queue up at the entrance to Dubai Mall. Emiratis tend to gather around the luxury brand section of Dubai Mall.

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Case Study

Alternative centres: Aldar Central Market, Abu Dhabi Retail development is such a complex beast that venturing outside of tried-and-tested methods is risky.

Abu Dhabi

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I had the opportunity to visit Aldar Central Market in Abu Dhabi, a mixed-use scheme designed by Norman Foster’s offices, who certainly seem to have positioned themselves as the favourite architects in the city, also working on Masdar City (Chapter 2), Zayed National Museum (Chapter 7) and Al Raha. While I am not a fan of the Aldar development as a whole – having a particular dislike for the design of the two existing towers and the negative space between them – I definitely appreciate Foster’s contemporary interpretation of a traditional souk which sits below the towers. In a world dominated by uniform shopping malls, this is a modern-day interpretation of a traditional Middle Eastern souk or market. Developers who allow architects to go off-piste in such manner can often end up the owners of financially crippling white elephants, particularly in retail.

Time will tell how successful this scheme will be, but you must admire both the architect and the developer for attempting to create a unique retail offer respectful of the region’s traditional retail and its architecture. In addition to generic shopping malls you get a lot of pastiche and kitsch souk developments across the UAE. But at Aldar, the external rectilinear form is strikingly simple and allows the Islamic motif façade to express its heritage. Inside, the narrow alleys carve through the three storeys of retail accommodation, creating dynamic vertical spaces that draw your eye forwards and upwards.

Left to right from opposite page: A view of one of the many entrances to the souk. A typical circulation route, showing use of natural material. Signage and narrow walkways limit views of upper retail levels.

These alleyways converge on a courtyard atrium that is animated with dining areas on the ground floor and filled with natural light from above. The local vernacular is expressed throughout in the rich array of materials – with widespread use of wood, natural stone floors and exposed ironwork on lifts and staircases. The only other retail development where I have seen such a rich use of natural and tactile materials was at Tokyo Midtown in Japan.

holdings. Consequently the layout consists of small units located around multiple crisscrossing alleyways rather than a mall layout with one single circulation loop onto which all the shops face. The challenge is how to logically arrange so many small units around an overly complex maze of circulation routes and not frustrate and confuse the customer. The result is that more often than not the less prime retail frontages suffer; this can result in business failures. I fear that Aldar may suffer that fate, particularly on the upper levels. I think this challenge could have been mitigated if the main courtyard atrium was placed at the centre of the scheme rather than off to one side. That way all alleyways could have started at an entrance to the building and converged in the centre, allowing the customer to stand in the central atrium and be able to see all the circulation routes coming together in one location, thus making the scheme easier to navigate. I truly hope it succeeds, though its success is likely to rely more on attracting the tourist trade than the locals.

The difficulty posed by designing souks, as with most markets, is that the unit sizes are very small. Unlike international retailers who want large units, market traders favour smaller units to reduce rental payments and cater for lower stock

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Case Study

Alternative centres: Chelsea Market, New York Chelsea Market in New York is a wonderfully organic epicurean experience and an inspiring example of an effective alternative centre.

Located in the refurbished biscuit factory where the Oreo cookie was invented, Chelsea Market in New York is now the place for casual lunches, while also being home to creative companies in the studio space on its upper floors. This is one development that I am not going to harp on trying to explain because you just need to go and spend a Saturday afternoon there with a big group of friends (it’s also the first-date destination from Heaven). It is home to wonderful lobster restaurants, delis and juice bars – all working together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. The building is rough and unfinished. The developers haven’t tried to plaster over the cracks and pacify the past. And it is all the richer for it. The Chelsea Market is everything that is almost impossible to recreate in contemporary development for two reasons.

New York

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Secondly, developers are often shackled by financing constraints that require them to lease space to established chain restaurants, who reduce risk by offering parent company guarantees and who can commit to leasing space years in advance of independent operators. For those who can find ways to overcome these hurdles, I have little doubt that investing more effort in creating unique destinations like Chelsea Market will result in a more profitable business model and a world of more interesting places.

Clockwise from opposite page: A view of Chelsea Market from street level, with retail on the ground floor and offices above. Its main hall is a million miles away from a sterile shopping centre. The tenant line up is a collection of independent operators with sufficient critical mass to make it a genuine destination.

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Clone Towns Bringing about a renaissance of variation.

The report ‘Re-imagining the High Street: Escape from Clone Town Britain’ cites the following facts: 41% of UK towns are ‘clone towns’ where more than half the stores are chains. And a further 23% are on the verge of becoming clone towns. This is a global issue: the dominance of high streets by global and national brands is resulting in a loss of identity across the world. Places are increasingly homogeneous and uninteresting to visit. The dominance of chains is particularly facilitated by higher rents, pricing smaller independent stores out of the market. Chain stores also often come with parent company guarantees, making them a more secure investment for landlords. How can we expect to see change? The public can vote with their feet and seek out independent traders or locally made products. Landlords can be more creative and understand the additional value that a unique retail offer can provide – not just in one store but to a whole area. And where possible we should be designing space that supplies a range of units, accommodating the inescapable demand for chain stores, as well as smaller units on flexible rental terms that satisfy local retailers who can add depth to an area and increase footfall. Fortunately, we are in a time of change, and people are already voting with their feet.

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Globalisation has led to people increasingly seeking out unique experiences. When retail therapy is the primary pastime, many retail developers and managers would be wise to respond accordingly. True, there is a greater possibility that an independent store or coffee shop will fail where a multinational Starbucks wouldn’t. But therein lies the problem. When retail is solely run as an investment on behalf of pension funds, any creative management is eliminated. Stores are let at the highest rent to the retailer with the strongest covenant. This seems safe, but as high street sterility leads to people keeping away and the web taking over, it will prove anything but safe. This form of management is ripping the heart out of people’s shopping experience. It will inevitably fail. Independents will come and go but their strength lies in independent shops as a whole – there will always be another enthusiastic new start-up ready take a vacated unit. And while this approach may be a little more management-intensive, it keeps an area’s retail offer fresh and brings customers back – as Marylebone High Street shows.

Left to right, top to bottom: Even chain shops can be made to feel unique if they are accommodated in more interesting built environments. Leadenhall Market in the City makes all shops comply with its de-branded signage. Spitalfields takes a similar, if not quite as strict, approach. Unconventional locations, such as railway arches, can make even global chains like Nando’s and Wagamama a more individual experience. Adapting to a traditional space adds to a shop and a place’s character. We need to move away from the grim dominance of generic streetscapes. Even if you must have a Starbucks, try and individualise. This kind of streetscape – Hobbs, Eat, Pret A Manger and HSBC – provides no more satisfaction or diversity than shopping online. Areas like these last two images – characterless, generic, with brands swamping the buildings rather than adapting to them – are the most susceptible to long-term deterioration.

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Independent Retail Show me something special.

Retail is an important ingredient in the creation of a new neighbourhood or town centre. It serves not only the functional requirements of a community but is also what binds a place together – it’s where people meet, it’s the catalyst for animation, and the right offer of stores and eateries is part of what ensures a vibrant community 24/7. The choice of retail is of course dictated by an area’s demographic. Absolute consideration must be given to such factors as disposable income and seasonality. Equally, while getting the retail offer wrong can be financially unviable, it can also have a negative impact on the soul of a place, damaging the values of adjacent residential and commercial property. Every global city’s retail attractiveness is typically measured in terms of turnover and the presence of leading global retail brands. While the retail centre of a major city needs to tick these boxes in order to satisfy the requirements of its residents and tourists, what is just as important is the strength of a city’s local shopping. While we demand easy access to global brands, a city or a town’s character is defined by its entrepreneurial retailers, the one-off shops that offer something the customer can’t get anywhere else. In the Middle East, various families control extensive portfolios of international brand franchises. This makes leasing a retail development easier, given that a few deals with

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Clockwise from left: Independent shopping in Paraty, Brazil. An intimate café provides a welcome change from youknow-where! Palermo in Buenos Aires has a great selection of one-off shops and cafés such as La Fábrica Del Taco.

a small number of families could deliver you 250 tenancies for a new shopping centre. But the flip side is a prevalence of the same stores in every mall across the region. To highlight the importance of retail in establishing the character of a place, I would look to somewhere like Brighton, on the south coast of England. As part of the millennium celebrations, the British government sought to designate some towns as new cities. Two contenders were Brighton and Reading.

Despite being smaller and less economically successful, Brighton won the designation. It was reported that Brighton’s diverse independent retail offer was regarded as one of the driving factors in the decision – Reading’s domination by chain stores, with a sterile, nondescript town centre, counted against it. So while there will continue to be demand for chain stores, they need to be carefully selected so that a community doesn’t become a clone of every other soulless centre. It is a place’s unique independent offerings that give it depth of character and ultimately make it attractive.

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Case Study

Alternative centres: Marylebone High Street, London Marylebone High Street is a shopping street located at the northern extremity of London’s West End. After decades of gradual decline and the recession of the 1990s, almost one third of the area’s shops were left vacant. Today, though, things couldn’t be more different. What happened?

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It used to be said that you could fire a cannon ball down Marylebone High Street with no risk of hitting anybody. That is a distant memory from today; it’s now considered one of the city’s best streets (with Radio 4 listeners awarding it that accolade in 2002). So how did its revitalisation take place? Single ownership and management is one of the key advantages that shopping centres have over the high street. The shops on the majority of the world’s struggling high streets are independently owned and suspicion and competition are often barriers to dialogue and cooperation between shop owners. If high streets are to reposition themselves, the first step is to establish working town centre partnerships. Fortunately for Marylebone, the street comprised part of the Howard de Walden Estate. This facilitated the realisation of a singular, progressive vision. The estate understood that revitalising the street would be the catalyst for uplifting surrounding residential and office values and they recognised the importance of community facilities, including the provision of a primary school, in repositioning the area. The first step was securing two key anchors, a supermarket and destination-driven design store. The first challenge for a traditional high street is providing suitably large units to house anchor stores in often constrained built environments. But they managed this and duly attracted Waitrose, up-market supermarket and workers’ cooperative, and the Conran Shop, a furniture and design store. Although higher rental bids were made by less desirable, low-cost supermarkets, the estate manager understood the brand value of Waitrose in the positioning and marketing of the wider retail offer. The key lesson here is that the highest rental offer is not always the most valuable. Through active management and intensive negotiations, the estate then succeeded in removing many of the less suitable retailers, including charity stores and travel agencies, leaving the small independent retailers with

Clockwise from top left: Waitrose acted as one of the first anchors; The Marylebone cocktail bar offers a welcome break from shopping; Unique shops like the Natural Kitchen sit alongside more established brands; The Conran Shop was the second anchor; Monocle, another unique shop; One of the established, interesting brands on this high street – The Kooples.

exclusive offers that would service the needs of the local residents but also become a destination in a West End dominated by either chain stores or the luxury sector. Continued active management through markets and community events has kept the area fresh. A marker of its success has been that in recent economically challenging times the retail rents, footfall and low vacancy rates have outperformed most other retail streets in the capital. Its popularity has recently come into question, with the estate introducing more mainstream chain stores as the area became more successful. However, Marylebone remains a fantastic example of the success that can be achieved with consolidated management, a non-conformist vision and hard work.

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Diversity of Retail Offer A butcher, a baker, a candlestick-maker.

It is not just the dominance of chain stores but also a lack of variety of store types that limits an area’s retail offer. Such lack of variety is often created by an over-dominance of fashion retailers instead of a broad spectrum of store types such as music, homeware, bookshops, food, toys, sport and cinemas or theatres. Not only will a successful shopping district balance chains and independents but it will do so across a diverse range of retail types. We all understand that it is important to match a retail offer to the requirements of the catchment population, but it is also good to have an assorted offer that will help to keep the area active for longer. For example, appealing solely to professionals can result in lower trade during evening or weekend periods. This is something we can observe in the City of London or Pudong in Shanghai once the working population has retreated home. Likewise, offering destination shopping that only targets tourists means that areas can become desolate in the off-season. Diversity keeps the streetscape active for the greatest possible time by appealing to as many sectors as possible.

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Now if you can combine a mixture of retail types with a combination of independents and brands across all retail sectors then there is potential for success. So rather than simply diversifying retail types to include a cinema and then opting for the obvious Vue or Cineworld, why not opt for a Picture House or Electric Cinema. Or introduce quirky bookshops like those on Cecil Court in London instead of a Waterstones or a Barnes & Noble, an Eataly instead of a Tesco, SCP Homeware instead of an Ikea. While a mix of shop types is encouraged to enliven retail pitches, not all types proactively enrich an area. Professional services and an overprovision of electronic stores and phone shops can be deadly.

Above: Diverse retail offers can include food retailers such as fishmongers, butchers and vintners in lieu of a large supermarket. Pictured is the English Market in Cork on the south coast of Ireland.

Food retail (butcher, baker, supermarket)

Mechanicscar Mechanics, car accessory accessories

DIY/ Builders

Stationery, Stationary, books

Off-licence Off licence

Newsagent, tobacconist

Music/ games/DVD

Camera/photo developing

Healthcareshop shop Heathcare or orpharmacy pharmacy Garden Centre/florists

Barber/ hair salon/ beautician

Other betting shop, casino, jewellers, charity

Estate Agent Dry cleaning/ launderette

Post office

Household/ homewares Professional (insurance, accountancy, legal)

Pet shop/ supplies

Department store, catalogue store Electronic/IT Travel agents

Clothing retailer Toys/sport/ cycling

Restaurant, takeaway, coffee shop

Pub/bar

CINEMA

Cinema/ theatre

Markets

In 2011 the British government commissioned a study that, according to the prime minister, would help “create vibrant and diverse town centres and bring back the bustle to our high streets”. Mary Portas was commissioned to undertake the report. In the end she made more than 30 recommendations. One of the foremost of these was the use of markets as a low-cost way to bring vitality and authenticity back to retail. And while there is no one-stop solution to the future of retailing, I strongly believe that markets can be used in a positive way across the world’s towns and cities. So far I hope that I have established an argument for the benefits of retail diversity. And markets can offer a range of goods that speak about and reflect a local community in a way that has been lost with the preponderance of chain stores and global brands. Markets expose shoppers to small local traders who with their original products attract customers in search of items that aren’t available elsewhere.

This, coupled with the unique personalities of the stall owners, adds a depth to the shopping experience. From an investment perspective, markets allow property managers to offer a broad unparalleled retail offer to consumers without the risks often associated with independent retailers. Small independent retailers face a greater likelihood of their businesses failing. Markets are lower-cost entities than fixed property and are perfectly suited to the fluid nature of changing retailer demands. The flexibility and temporary nature of the space allows for different market themes at various times, bringing customers ever-changing offers – and encouraging them to return more often. One weekend it could be a food market, then fashion, books, music or art. Markets can be a quick and easy way to dilute the impact of a clone street. Two of my favourite markets are the Saturday Night Market in Goa, India and the San Telmo Feria in Buenos Aires. The first is a weekly Above: Borough Market has proved hugely popular with London’s upwardly mobile but has had to actively prohibit leasing to food chains in order to protect its authenticity and popularity. Top to bottom, opposite page: Musicians entertain market shoppers as the sun goes down on Feria de San Telmo in Buenos Aires. A Lisbon friend sells her handmade crafts. The Goa Market in India. The Farmers Market, LA.

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Saturday night bazaar, incorporating hundreds of stalls selling an eclectic mix of largely locally crafted goods. The focus is on fashion; here you will discover gems you can’t get online or in multinational chains. The shopping is coupled with live events, music and a food fair. The experience is the key to its success. People don’t come with prepared shopping lists but rather to explore and to spend money on whatever takes their fancy. It is the heart of the community, where people gather on a weekly basis. Families visit earlier in the evening, while couples and the unattached party late into the night. The San Telmo Market is located in the bohemian and slightly run down district of the same name.

Packed with artisans and musicians, the streets are awash with jewellery, clothing and antique sellers. The buzz and the ever-changing nature of the market make it a major citywide draw and is critical to the success of the established resident shop traders, whose enterprises would not be as profitable without the market. It would be a mistake to assume that a market will cheapen the image of a neighbourhood. One only has to look as the success of Borough Market in London, home to the upwardly mobile. The Christmas markets of northern Europe have begun to draw in tourists from afar, and have also spread well beyond their traditional homelands.

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Retail Theatre, Curatorship and Events

Except perhaps for the few days before Christmas, the visceral pleasure of a day’s shopping will always win out over an afternoon in front of the computer. The strongest shopping destinations cater for a range of experiences and engage the shopper. These locations will always command an advantage over competitors. People like the physical stimulation of the real world; the more reasons you give them to visit the better. My boss used to wax lyrical about a previous development he worked on called Gunwharf Quays, in Portsmouth, on the south coast of England. The scheme wasn’t expected to be a successful retail destination but it has proved to be a huge hit, attracting over ten million people per annum, making it one of the most unlikely successful schemes in the country.

When you visit you will see it is not the architectural quality that draws people there but the mix of units, intimate scale, open areas – and, in particular, the management’s attitude to event organisation. Gunwharf Quays organises over 300 free events a year. These are critical in drawing new and repeat visitors to the site. Events such as a round-the-world yacht race, fireworks and markets have been funded by the tenants’ service charge and matched by a landlord’s contribution. The landlord is happy to contribute as the increased footfall leads to increased turnover, from which he benefits in the form of turnover leases. We need to start considering these events less as a function of management and more as a form of curatorship. Developers could appoint a consultant curator on an annual basis so that the

Clockwise from this page: Covent Garden actively promotes events that drive retail footfall. Better Bankside demonstrates how independent parties can come together and cooperate under a single banner. Retailers could learn a lot from the curatorship programme undertaken to draw people to London’s South Bank.

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vibe is always in flux and remains exciting. Like an exhibition or theatre, a successful site needs to be continuously animated with activities that are constantly changing and visually surprising. Sites should seek to have a number of major annual events that capture media attention and help build the place-brand, drawing people from afar. A constantly running calendar of lower-key events would supplement this and appeal to the immediate surrounding market. This is critical to establishing repeat visits, which is where long-term economic sustainability is created. While not necessarily a retail example, the active

curatorship of London’s South Bank is a model worth studying. Not all events need to be funded. There are a myriad of cultural institutions and event companies that constantly require space to host events. In ever-congested cities, available spaces are increasingly rare. If you can provide a number of event platforms, be it an amphitheatre or simply an open serviced plot, the greater the number of events you can attract and generate income from. This is discussed further in Chapter 8, on meanwhile uses.

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Photograph: A graffiti’d train in Buenos Aires.

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07. Art and Culture Using Culture to Seed Regeneration Case Study: Millennium Park, Chicago

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Case Study: SoHo, New York

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Case Study: Bilbao, Spain

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Embedded Art

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Sculpture 178 Graffiti 180 182

Urban Intervention Case Study: The High Line, New York

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In this chapter I want to look at ways of incorporating art and culture into the urban realm and examples of where it has been successful, as well as examining the question: what is the point of fusing culture with development?

Twenty years ago when we talked about art and culture as part of development we would probably have been referring to a private sculpture which the developer commissioned, to be made by their favourite artist and to sit as the centrepiece of an atrium or public square. There are some blue-chip traditionalists still stuck in this mode, but generally the development community has grasped the idea of art and culture being so much more than this. It is almost a cliché to see a grey-suited developer promote every new development as the next ‘cultural district’.

Left to right: White Cube Gallery in Hoxton helped to elevate and reposition the area. Soho House and Boxpark in the trendy creative district of East London’s Shoreditch. Top to bottom, opposite page: Getting a good dose of culture at a young age while visiting I. M. Pei’s new pyramid at the Louvre in Paris with my two brothers. India is a hotbed of culture but so little of this is translated into contemporary placemaking.

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Working at Battersea, I was concerned that while we were successfully developing an urban masterplan of buildings containing commercial and residential uses, all set around a well-planned public realm, there was a danger that the development proposals lacked an identity. There was nothing for people to relate to and help them envisage what the area might be like when complete. It is critical that both planning authorities and the target sales market are able to envisage the life and substance of a development proposal. Such identity must be developed early on. It started me thinking that with its industrial past, iconic brick building and location on the periphery of central London, Battersea Power Station could be positioned as a sort of creative district. But why not a corporate finance centre or peaceful residential community? Well, to answer that, my team undertook some research and produced a paper called ‘Impact of Culture on Value’. The report effectively concluded that there is a correlation between property values and cultural vitality. I think it is certainly true that

developments associated with cultural and historic amenities command a premium value because these amenities tend to attract and retain workers and residents, breathe creativity and generally improve the quality of life. This is particularly true in deprived areas or areas of regeneration, where the introduction of a major cultural entity or the revival of a historic building can seed a new identity for the area. This in turn generates interest, attracts visitors, employment and residents and grows a community. These communities are often creatively focused due to the nature of those first pioneering people who are attracted to a new district. It is this final point that makes this subject critical to development. Where you are creating a new development in an area devoid of identity, those most willing to seed this new area and put their stamp on it are often creative types – designers, artists and independents. Consequently, positioning your development in order to attract such people can be vital. It establishes a sense of place that will attract more traditional occupiers in due course.

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Using Culture to Seed Regeneration Culture and art are the platforms that attract creative industries, which in turn drive progress and economic growth.

One of the greatest challenges of major regeneration is attracting people to an area that has been unloved and unwanted. You can attract people through low-cost housing, and entice businesses through a variety of tax incentives, but the sole use of these tools can result in sterile communities that will suffer future social problems. Buying into the concept that culture breathes creativity is key. The provision of a centrepiece – be it a gallery, art school, sculpture park or any urban intervention of note – can be a catalyst for growth. And there are a myriad of examples. On a grand scale you have Millennium Park in Chicago and the Guggenheim in Bilbao, right through to local-scale projects such as Escadaria Selarón in Rio and graffiti projects in Buenos Aires. Creativity drives progress and economic growth; it is culture and the arts that attract creativity to an area in the form of people and businesses.

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Creativity is increasingly important – since 1998 growth in the UK’s creative industries has outperformed every other industrial sector. This trend is replicated across the developed world, and is likely to continue in developing countries like China and India as their domestic intellectual capital continues to grow. So who are these companies? The UK Department for Culture, Media & Sport defines the creative industries as “those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property”. The department recognises 12 creative sectors: advertising, architecture, arts and antique markets, crafts, design, fashion, film, video and photography, software, gaming and electronic publishing, music and performing arts, publishing, television and radio.

Think of companies you know working across these 12 sectors and put them in the context of the cities with which you are most familiar. Where are they most often located? Is it not usually away from the typical commercial centres, in trendy areas or areas with access to interesting and individual buildings? Very often it will be in post-industrial areas, where a new community can be seeded, where there is more freedom to create and where they are not seen to conform. Such areas include places like the Meatpacking District in New York, Shoreditch in London and the Bastille in Paris. The fact that creative industries tend to migrate to nonestablished parts of our cities makes them the perfect target tenants, particularly for the early phases of major regeneration and development projects.

But major development companies tend to be seen as square and untrendy by the majority of creatives: each group wears rather different uniforms, one a suit and loafers, the other cardigans, drainpipes and dark-rimmed glasses. Creatives are automatically cynical about developers and are frankly concerned about what the association with mainstream corporate development will mean for their brand image. So a developer who starts to market their scheme as a creative district will immediately repel any such target tenants. The first rule of seeding a creative district is never to use the words creative district. The scenes creatives seek out have grown organically and authentically. Trying to artificially seed a cultural vibe in a new development project is an immensely difficult task. One wrong step, too much commercial emphasis, and you won’t be attracting anybody.

Right: Frank Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall, which has contributed to the economics of its tenant, the Philharmonic, and to LA’s Downtown community.

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So what’s the right approach to making an area genuinely creative? First you need a catalyst. At Battersea it was simple. You have an iconic industrial building that, through dereliction over the past 30 years and its association with cultural icons such as Pink Floyd, has been made an immediate draw for independent creatives as well as some of the more mainstream players. But what if you don’t have a great big hulking power station in the centre of your site? What cultural elements can be used to draw in those first creative pioneers? Bilbao has become the archetype of all case studies since the introduction of the Guggenheim museum reinvented the city. Since then it seems like every local government with a regeneration challenge believes that dropping a museum into the area is the default answer. Parks are another popular choice and we will discuss Millennium Park in Chicago in a moment. The introduction of an arts university, with students breathing life into the area, or a well-organised market or fair can also work. On a smaller scale, it can be one man’s simple urban intervention or the provision of affordable studios that bring like-minded artists together. Some of my favourite examples are discussed over the coming pages.

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For a developer, supporting most of these ventures will cost money and the size of your budget will be scalable against the size of the development project. But regardless of the size of your budget what is most important to remember is that it pays to support the arts; culture and philanthropic endeavours are critical to attracting the sort of businesses and people that will shape your development for the better. Equally, creatives and artistic ventures need to be less cynical and realise that this is a symbiotic relationship; they can receive support in terms of investment or low-cost space for seeding a new area. It can be win-win for both suits and drainpipes. I am not suggesting that developers set a manifesto that limits occupants to those companies within the 12 cultural sectors. I am merely highlighting that these are the sectors most open to moving to non-traditional locations, whose trend-setting ways will in turn attract traditional industry sectors. A prime example of this was seen at King’s Cross, where the developer Argent sought to relocate Central Saint Martins Art College to the site and by so doing attracted more corporate tenants who wanted to move to what was now seen as a more discerning neighbourhood.

Left to right: Like SoHo in New York, Shoreditch in London has been experiencing similar organic regeneration over the past decade. This shift has unquestionably been led by a street culture which attracted creative companies and was soon followed by more established culture and retail offers. Now it is a district that increasingly appeals to a wider demographic and is witnessing gentrification, with new developments popping up amongst the existing urban background. Millennium Park in Chicago.

Case Study

Seeding regeneratioN: Millennium Park, Chicago When I lived in Chicago in 2001, the area that is now Millennium Park was not a destination of choice for locals or tourists. Things are very different now.

Back in 2001 I would go to what later became Millennium Park for events like Taste of Chicago, but generally it was an open swathe of uninteresting parkland and people stayed away. However, since its formal opening in July 2004, the 25-acre site has transformed the face of the city and set a global precedent for cultural-led regeneration. The free-entry park provides multiple points of interest and regular events that draw in the crowds. Attractions include the Gehry-designed 4,000 person capacity concert pavilion, the Cloud Gate sculpture, Crown Fountain, wonderfully planted Lurie Garden, the iconic BP pedestrian bridge as well as galleries, restaurants, ice rinks and theatres.

Chicago

The forecast cost of the park was significant, at over $220m. The final total came in closer to $480m; it was a significant investment in the city. Has it been worth it? Well, as early as 2000 it was reported that commercial buildings on nearby parts of Michigan Avenue were seeing substantial rises in value as a result of the construction of the park – then only just underway. Condominium projects experienced record sales values and sales rates. Most developers and agents attributed the sales success to the park; sales contracts were

being signed at a faster pace than in any other downtown neighbourhood. The ‘Millennium Park Economic Impact Study’ prepared by URS and Goodman Williams, and released in 2005, projected a $1.4 billion positive impact on adjacent real estate values over the next ten years. The park played a role in attracting Boeing and BP subsidiary Innovene to locate their HQs here, bringing major tax revenues to the authorities. Millennium Park was obviously a governmentlevel investment, but the principles remain true for all development – they are scalable. Public space which is animated through the provision of physical art and a managed calendar of events is a viable investment, seeing returns in terms of increased footfall and associated expenditure as well as increased property values for those who live nearby.

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Case Study

Seeding regeneratioN: SoHo, New York New York’s SoHo is the original organic creative district.

culture grew to a critical mass, and drew nonartists into the area – firstly to hang out and party, but in due course because it became a desirable place to live. The association with arts and culture led to the social and economic success of the area, and ultimately to increased demand for property. A spike in the area’s real estate values from the late 1980s onwards showed a growth that surpassed much of the rest of the city of New York.

In this chapter I focus on projects that have invested in culture in order to kick-start regeneration. Interestingly, many of these cultural regeneration principles originate in SoHo, New York City, which reinvented itself the same way – but in an organic and naturally occurring process. SoHo is the archetypal example of inner city regeneration and gentrification. The period of SoHo to focus on is the postwar era, when its castiron buildings were largely home to warehousing, small factories, printing plants – or were simply unoccupied. It was in the 1960s that artists became interested in the area’s empty buildings, with their high ceilings, open plan lofts and large windows. There was a diminishing demand for these buildings. So artists increasingly took up illegal occupation, largely unopposed. By 1971 so widespread was the occupation by artists that the city rezoned the area from industrial use, officially allowing joint live/work quarters for artists. Over time the prevalence of artists brought a new vibe to the area and cafés, bars, local shops and galleries began to spring up. This new street

New York Top to bottom: SoHo’s cast-iron converted warehouses and factories give the area a unique aesthetic. The district’s streets are a mecca of international and one-off retailers. Balthazar: one of my favourite lunchtime haunts anywhere in the world.

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Of course, this led to the next stage of gentrification, as the area was ultimately rendered too expensive for the artists who had established it. This is a universal phenomenon. In fact, many of the artists were content to move on and seek out more edgy environments. This same natural process needs to be understood and considered as part of urbanregeneration projects controlled by property developers. A project is likely to go through a series of phases, as outlined in Chapter 3. The positioning of the project will evolve over time, with the delivery of suitable stock to a younger, edgier consumer in the earlier phases through to the more mature, higher value purchaser/investor in later stages. Like SoHo, developments will evolve over the early years till they find their own level of maturity, and will attract different people during this period of change; how you react to that is a key factor.

Case Study

Seeding regeneratioN: M50, Shanghai Over 100 artists’ studios and galleries occupy these abandoned warehouses and established a desirable neighbourhood that made them a prime target for redevelopment.

50 Moganshan Lu (also known as M50) is a must-see for anyone visiting Shanghai, whether interested in art or not; it was a favourite monthly refuge for me when I was living there. Set up a little over ten years ago, it is a collection of government-owned former industrial warehouses situated around a series of now pedestrianised routes, containing over 100 working artists’ studios and associated galleries. The first artists were attracted in 2000 to the large open plan post-industrial space and cheap rent. In recent years you only have to glance at soaring auction prices in Hong Kong to see the demand for Chinese contemporary art, and while Beijing and Hong Kong are the traditional centres, Moganshan puts Shanghai on the map. Wandering the vast labyrinth of galleries is a great way to spend five hours; they offer everything from recognised names in contemporary art to a lot of less expensive and arguably confused post-Cultural Revolution experiments. It is home to ShanghART, Art Scene and my friends at Nutall. With the rapid expansion of the city and the artists’ elevation of the area as a trendy destination, it became an obvious target for redevelopment. The government had plans to clean Suzhou Creek, which runs past the warehouses, and private developers closed in on the opportunity for high-rise residential towers. The warehouses were earmarked for demolition and were within two weeks of being razed to the ground before years of lobbying by the artists and local communities were finally heeded. The warehouses still stand today.

Shanghai

In a country not renowned for heritage sentimentality, appeasing community lobbyists or the rights of existing tenants, it is quite amazing that M50 has survived. This is hopefully a sign of a more considered planning approach in China, and the realisation that forced gentrification of an area isn’t always the way forward.

For developers and placemakers, this is yet another example of how the introduction of an alternative occupier can elevate the values of adjacent property. A similar project in Beijing called 798 Art District is also worth researching for those who would like to learn more.

Above: Artists took occupancy of these abandoned warehouses in Shanghai a little more than a decade ago. After a long battle against the threat of redevelopment, they remain as one of the city’s best neighbourhoods.

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Case Study

Seeding regeneration: Bilbao, Spain It is impossible to write a chapter on the influence of art and culture on placemaking and property values without mentioning Bilbao. As much as I am tempted to avoid this over-discussed city, one can’t get away from it. The statistical impact of the city’s Guggenheim museum on tourism numbers, fiscal returns, increase in property values and propulsion of the city’s art scene speaks for itself.

Bilbao

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When the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim museum was completed in 1997 it was one of the rare occasions when critics and the public agreed on architecture: it was hailed as a definite success. As recently as the 1970s, Bilbao was an industrial town with poor tourist numbers. The museum transformed it, gradually increasing tourism, demand for services and tax revenues. The initial investment of $183.8m was recovered within six years; the museum contributes over $200m to local GDP and helps maintain 4,500 jobs. Although discussing Spanish property prices is now a futile exercise, at the time growth in Bilbao values were on a par with Madrid and Barcelona in what was historically a belowaverage market. Revenue from sales of museum merchandise outstrips ticket sales. The legacy of this titanium-clad building 15 years on is even more extraordinary, and unfortunately not all as positive as the Bilbao project. It started a trend of using major cultural institutions as the driving force behind regeneration and the planning of new towns. So much so that it is far too often the default solution and has begun to replace more considered thinking. A myriad of new cultural institutions have been created around the world, particularly all across China, India and the Middle East. Even in the UK, galleries are being thrown up everywhere to kickstart stagnant towns, with prime examples being Margate’s Turner, Wakefield’s Hepworth and BALTIC in Gateshead.

Opposite page: The beautiful corniche waterfront at the heart of Abu Dhabi. Below, clockwise from bottom right: Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. A model of the proposed Louvre in Abu Dhabi. The same model from another angle. The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, from another angle.

One proposed plan that blows all others away is the vision for Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. The plan is to build branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim in addition to two other galleries designed by Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid. If you are in Abu Dhabi, visit the marketing suite at the Emirates Palace Hotel. It is an ambitious project that has seen many delays due to the current economic climate. I have no issue with these galleries opening new franchises in Abu Dhabi, but I do take issue with the planned locations within the city. Abu Dhabi is a ribbon of unconnected centres sporadically located along a 37-mile ring road. You have Yas Island with the Formula 1 track and Ferrari World, Al Reem, Saadiyat Island, Masdar ecocity, Al Raha, Khalifa City, Bahai, Wathba and a whopping new Capital District on 17 sq miles of land with a population of 370,000 people according to a government website.

I am told that land holdings are broken up amongst factions of the ruling family, who then develop as they wish, all competing and trying to outdo each other with more radical concepts. Meanwhile the original town centre fronting the more beautiful bay is compromised by these alien developments, which are also usually predicated on over-estimated pre-recession population forecasts. Abu Dhabi should study Singapore’s Marina Bay and how it centralised its cultural offering. I believe the unused land around the traditional centre of the city, when coupled with redevelopment opportunities from the first generation building boom, is sufficient to create a wonderful global destination – a centralised skyscraper backdrop, fronted by scenic beaches in pure Chicago style. Locating these four new galleries along this historic corniche and bay would be the perfect complement.

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Embedded Art ‘Bins to Buildings’

The cost of supporting the arts can be significant but it need not always be so. The very nature of development means there is already a construction budget – this is potentially a huge fund for the development of the arts. After all, money spent on construction can incorporate an artistic approach, fusing art with architecture – all the while helping to create a unique, more valuable place. Developers have a budget for façade design – so why not incorporate an artist’s mural into it, like the one at the British Council’s offices in Delhi (Chapter 5)? A budget will have been set aside for public bins, so why not give a performance specification and budget for those bins to an artist and get them to design something functional and bespoke that will engage passersby rather than just opting for the standard issue council bin?

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From the façade to the smallest bin, artistic intervention has a role to play for the better – it’s why at the Battersea development we refer to the programme as ‘Bins to Buildings’. Art can be incorporated across glass, lighting, public realm, way-finding and street furniture. All of these elements where a construction budget already exists can be manipulated to produce unique sculptural attractions without any additional expenditure. City Lounge in St Gallen, Switzerland, was designed by Carlos Martinez in collaboration with Pipilotti Rist. It transforms otherwise typical courtyard spaces between buildings into an outdoor urban living room. The red carpet that flows throughout the space morphs into a series of seating areas for people to gather and converse. Innovative use of a public realm budget instantly transforms the area into a visually challenging and physically engaging space that elevates it as a destination. Thomas Heatherwick is a fantastic proponent of fusing art and architecture. His proposals for an energy centre in Teesside, England show how sculpture as a whole can be used to transform a building, particularly one that might otherwise blight a skyline. His footbridge at Paddington

Basin also demonstrates how a piece of infrastructure can double as a piece of sculpture. I was lucky enough to visit his commission for the British Expo in Shanghai; it was the only pavilion that truly fused an architectural solution with the concept of the expo: ‘Better City Better Life’. Every scheme needs to decide where to draw the line; at what point does embedded art become something more, and when is artistic collaboration no longer part of the original budget but rather an additional cost in lieu of a value premium or marketing strategy?

Clockwise from opposite page: Thomas Heatherwick-designed bridge in Paddington, London. Beijing Olympic stadium was a collaboration between artist Ai Weiwei and architects Herzog & de Meuron. A bench in São Paulo. A train ventilation shaft in London.

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Sculpture There was a time when the default solution to a council’s requirement for introducing the arts into a development simply meant commissioning a centrepiece for the foyer. But we are gradually progressing towards art forms which encourage active participation; sculpture now is just one possibility among many. Still, it has a role to play – here are a few of my favourites … Anthony Gormley’s Angel of the North is an obvious contender. This 200-tonne, 65 ft high sculpture with a 177 ft wing span stands proudly over the A1 motorway in England, welcoming people to the North East. It was to be a symbol of hope for the people of the area, struggling in the transition between the industrial and information ages. This piece of sculpture, along with projects like BALTIC at Gateshead, has had a positive regenerating influence on the area. I also liked Gormley’s London installations: The Fourth Plinth and Event Horizon.

Clockwise from bottom: People impersonate Christ the Redeemer in Rio. One of the Cow Parade’s colourful fibreglass bovines. The statue of Christ inspiring the posing in the earlier photo. Le mano (‘the hand’), an iconic scultpure in Punta del Este, Uruguay – a perennial favourite of children. Gormley’s Angel of the North. One of Anish Kapoor’s everengaging public sculptures, this time at the Royal Academy of Art, London.

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Cloud Gate in Chicago, designed by Anish Kapoor, is another recent piece that has become a visual representation of a wider regeneration project. It has proved to be the most recognisable and instant attraction of Millennium Park. Kapoor’s sculptures have the ability to engage with the viewer and draw them in, as anyone will agree who has seen Cloud Gate or happened to catch his 2010 installation in Hyde Park. I must mention the Cow Parade, a moving global art installation of life-sized fibreglass cows. Each cow is designed and painted by an artist, celebrity, school or organisation. The cows infiltrate an entire city, popping up where least expected. They are subsequently sold at auction to raise money for children’s charities. It is a wonderful and constantly changing event that I have had the pleasure of seeing in Chicago,

Brussels, and London as well as in Dublin, where my countrymen regrettably let themselves down through needless vandalism. Honourable mentions must go to several other works. The gravity-defying balance of the Red Cube Sculpture in New York City draws you in. Half sculpture, half architecture, the many follies in Parc de la Villette outside Paris fascinated me as a child. The Spire in Dublin focuses your eye down an otherwise overly busy vista. Finally, one that only bears mentioning because it made me laugh: China’s younger and redder version of Wall Street’s Charging Bull, located on Shanghai’s Bund.

Above: The Spire in Dublin is a contemporary replacement for an earlier piece – Nelson’s Pillar – destroyed during the Troubles.

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Graffiti I suppose graffiti art has been around for at least 30 millennia, when we consider some of the first rock art, but what we understand as modern graffiti and street art has evolved only over the past 40 to 50 years. Graffiti has long been associated with political or social unrest, as seen in the 1968 student riots in Paris, the anti-Nixon sentiment of the 1970s and on the New York subways in the 1980s. Graffiti has often been a response to social injustices afflicting marginalised communities in rundown areas. And while many people think of this as a form of vandalism, for a lot of people at local level it has been both a form of expression and a means to visually improve rundown areas. As time has moved on graffiti has been increasingly adopted under more formulated and legalised structures, as both a form of communication and urban regeneration. Recently artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairey have brought graffiti art into the mainstream, so that it can now be found in art galleries as often as on the streets. I spent some time in Buenos Aires studying the city’s road to recovery after Argentina’s economic meltdown in 2001. Unlike its neighbour Brazil, Argentina never had a history of graffiti –

but a lost generation of youth adopted graffiti as their voice during the noughties. Rather than quash this, communities and authorities supported graffiti and street art, as long as the consent of a building’s owner was secured. In a time of austerity, many creative companies and restaurants were only too happy to have their premises painted and this freedom to work legally, rather than under the cover of darkness, improved the quality of street art. What has developed over the past decade in districts such as Palermo and St Telmo is a bright and interactive streetscape, where even the city’s most exclusive restaurants have embraced the movement.

The cities of Lisbon and Bristol have also encouraged street art movements as a form of urban regeneration. The Waterloo Tunnel projects in London have proven equally popular.

Clockwise from above: In Buenos Aires graffiti usually covers rundown buildings, in need of rejuvenation, but also the walls of companies and cafés – all canvases for this legally practised street art. Another shot of some colourful graffiti. My graffiti tour guide poses in front of renowned restaurant, Tegui.

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Urban Intervention

You don’t need a multi-million pound budget or a major cultural institution to drive regeneration of your local area. A fantastic book called Urban Interventions: Personal Projects in Public Places captures many wonderful examples of where people have made small creative interventions in their local environment. These have often had an engaging and uplifting impact. An urban intervention can be anything from Paris’s urban beaches to Christo and JeanneClaude’s building-wrapping projects. One place I visited recently that should have made it into that book was the Escadaria Selarón in Rio de Janeiro. It started as one man’s campaign to improve the character of his street and turned into a 15-year obsession that inadvertently morphed into one of the highest-rated tourist attractions in that wonderful city. By doing so it is elevating the entire neighbourhood. The project started out when Chilean-born artist Jorge Selarón became fed up with the dilapidated state of the public steps beside his front door. He took it upon himself to start renovating the steps

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by covering them in yellow, blue and green tiles. What started out as a side project to his art, and an amusement to passers-by, soon became an obsession. Over the next 15 years he covered the entire steps and enclosing walls with tiles. This was no small feat. Containing 250 steps and running 500 feet uphill, when you first catch a glimpse of the steps, you are blown away. The initial impact is followed by the uplifting experience of making your way up the steps, looking at each individual tile, gathered from all over the world. You can spend hours looking at tiles from everywhere from Ireland to Easter Island, decorated with faces from JFK to the Beatles. It is one of the most striking pieces of work I have ever had the pleasure of seeing; Jorge singlehandedly boosted the vitality of his community. He said his ever-evolving project would not end until the day he died, an event which came far too early when he was found dead on his steps one morning in early 2013.

Clockwise from opposite page: The amazing Escadaria Selarón turned one man’s obsession into one of the city’s leading tourist and cultural attractions. A woven tree trunk. Another angle of the famous tiled steps. Urban intervention can even be a playground formed from a tree.

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Case Study

Urban intervention: The High Line, New York It is difficult to talk about placemaking, authenticity or landscaping these days without somebody throwing New York’s High Line at you. It has already become this decade’s Bilbao Guggenheim. Alas, trying to avoid the topic is a futile exercise. And why should its success and popularity render it something that is increasingly less cool to talk about?

New York

The High Line was an elevated railway line that opened in 1934. Its purpose was to transport meat, milk and other produce to and from the area’s factories without disturbing the traffic and pedestrian movements at street level (something that had previously led to accidents). The trucking industry and relocation of factories rendered the line redundant in the 1980s, and after that it was an obvious target for demolition, particularly for those who had acquired land around and under the railway. Community groups generally get a bad reputation for unnecessary and economically unviable proposals but on occasion they get it right where private industry doesn’t. The High Line was one such occasion. Spearheaded by ‘Friends of the High Line’, the campaign effectively secured the long-term safeguarding of the elevated railway and its conversion to a 1.45 mile public park, designed by James Corner Field Operations and opening in 2009. In its short life and in a city with more to offer than most, the High Line has shot to the 17th most popular New York attraction out of 618 according to TripAdvisor, attracting 3.7m people in 2011. So what is the appeal? In my opinion it is first and foremost attention to detail. After that it is an unfolding experience of dynamic views and serenity fused with urban grit. The design detailing and choice of planting underpins the High Line’s success. The smooth form of the benches, the handrails, the preserved sleepers, planting which is colourful in the summer and sculptural in the winter. The amateur eye won’t be able to decipher why it is such a beautiful place to hangout but the quality of the detailing is the most fundamental element. To all those cities who are in the middle of planning to mimic the High Line, this is an obvious area to overlook. Secondly, the railway doesn’t simply follow the route of the road, it meanders though the city blocks and scythes through the middle of

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the buildings that it used to serve. This is key to its attraction because it offers a different perspective of the city not only by being elevated but by moving away from the traditionally available arteries of the rectilinear road grid. Finally, the views aren’t manicured. They are gritty and human – from water towers to backs of billboards, and glimpses of the traditionally less attractive side of the river. However, in a world of bland consumerism, this is something real. The reinvention of this disused railway line into an elevated and tranquil linear park has already had a positive impact on the area’s property values, which have bucked the trend of a real estate market in turmoil. Sometimes you get lucky – and who knows if a developer-led solution would ever have been as popular as this community solution? But it is another example of the value added by creating real places.

Clockwise from top: All along the meandering High Line the designers have provided a series of diverse spaces to rest, read and contemplate. A map of the High Line fixed to the iron girders that elevate the disused railway line above the street level Fantastic choice of materials and planting makes the High Line an engaging place to visit throughout the year. Elevated above the busy streets below, it is both restful and offers unique views.

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Photograph: Pop-up fashion shoot at the disused Battersea Power Station.

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08. Meanwhile Use Case Study: Battersea Power Station, London

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Meanwhile Office Uses

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Activating Un-let Units

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Temporary Pop-up Events

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‘Meanwhile use’ is in effect the temporary use of a building or a site for a property use that is not its intended permanent use.

‘Meanwhile use’ is a term that has come to the fore over the past five years. Meanwhile use is in effect the temporary use of a building or a site for a property use that is not its intended permanent use. The recession of 2008 onwards gave rise to this practice, with developers and investors seeking to populate un-let retail units in shopping malls or to lease sites where redevelopment has been postponed. This has also led to people taking guerrilla possession of their built environment and organising events that are local, surprising and engaging. This might be something along the lines of an art installation or a pop-up shop or cinema. From a developer’s perspective, not only can temporary events raise very important revenue, particularly on complex development sites where there might be a protracted planning process or multiple phases of development. It can also be key to building the brand of a place, if events are carefully chosen and aligned with the long-term vision of the project.

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In this chapter I will discuss my relevant experience at Battersea Power Station, where active event management brought in sevenfigure annual revenue, as well as drawing several hundred thousand visitors to the site every year – important for creating a place’s identity. I will also pick out a few examples from around the world. Many developers consider meanwhile use solely as a means of generating income. While that is a core role, it is not the only one. The principle reasons for developing a meanwhile use strategy in my opinion are to: • generate revenue • fill voids or un-let units • build a place brand • make a site active • incubation • engagement.

Top to bottom, opposite page: A pre-development pop-up at Gabriel’s Wharf in London makes use of the site in advance of construction by building temporary galleries, bars, cafés and retail units. The UK Pavilion at the Shanghai Expo 2010. The 2010 expo was one of the largest temporary events ever staged, with 192 participating countries setting up pavilions on the Expo Park for the event, which was focused on ‘Better City, Better Life’.

There are many areas where these fields cross over and a single meanwhile use activity can achieve any number of these targets; a development’s strategy has to be tailored around its specific objectives. But I would encourage those who read this chapter to truly consider the benefits beyond generating revenue. They are currently far too often overlooked despite being powerful and cost-effective placemaking tools. Effective and different ‘meanwhile uses’ could include a short-term rent-free agreement with a local artist’s studio to house a gallery in an un-let retail unit until such time as it can be let. It might be the creation of active parkland on a site where development has stalled, resulting in positive community engagement rather than blighting the urban landscape. It could be the establishment of business incubators for start-up industries on a future phase of an undeveloped masterplan, something that will help establish a sense of thriving community.

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Case Study

Meanwhile use: Battersea Power Station, London While the sight of the Power Station is world-famous, its actual site has rarely been accessible to the public. As that changes, meanwhile use has a vital role to play.

London

Battersea Power Station is a hugely complex site. Historically, although visible on the London skyline, the public were never allowed onto the site. It was important to engage with people early on, given a protracted planning process and multiple phases to realise the overall vision. A strong meanwhile use strategy was therefore critical for a) getting people onto the site and familiar with it as a destination, b) generating revenue pre-construction and c) adding a critical mass of activity to each phase as the project was being built out.

Pre-planning The Power Station was subject to the largest single planning permission ever granted in London and it took several years to secure. During this period we aimed to hold as many events as possible on site, partly in order to generate income but more importantly to build a place brand. That meant getting people familiar with coming to Battersea by holding events that highlighted the area as a destination. This would secure valuable press column inches and make people realise that things were finally happening at Battersea. As well as providing open sites that could host events, we also created a purpose-built venue within

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the Power Station that could host parties and concerts. During the period of design and planning we hosted the Red Bull X-Fighters, Freeze Snow Boarding, Rihanna, Ronaldo and Batman.

continue the pre-planning events and activity. We are proposing markets, Christmas festivals and we are even in discussion for an annual performance season by Cirque du Soleil.

Phasing

Post-construction

In Chapter 3, when looking at masterplanning, I discussed the importance of creating a first phase of development that captures the overall vision of a project. As well as providing a diverse mix of uses within the phase one building, we also protected parts of the site so that we could

After completion, particularly in a mixed-use development, it is important to continue to actively manage events and changing uses to give people reasons to repeatedly visit a site. This is closely linked to the curatorship points made in Chapter 6 on retail.

Clockwise from opposite page: A packed calendar of events at Battersea Power Station draws more than 200,000 people to the site annually. This is critical to building a place brand. Here we see projections taking place on the front of the listed Power Station … … snowboard and music festivals … … a state-of-the-art pop-up events venue … … and 30,000 attending Red Bull’s ‘X-Fighters’.

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Meanwhile Residential Uses

Recent years have seen a growth in the use of converted shipping containers as homes, perhaps most famously in a student housing complex in Amsterdam. While there have been some surprisingly stunning examples, these are actually more often permanent housing solutions and don’t qualify as meanwhile uses. Temporary accommodation – what you might call ‘meanwhile residential uses’ – covers everything from luxury pastime to a necessity of life. This is an increasing trend, and has involved everything from middle class ‘glamping’ to disaster relief housing in the wake of serious natural disasters. For the private developer, setting up a meanwhile hotel on your site for a number of years could bring excitement and attention to a newly proposed development. We were thinking about this for Battersea and how amazing it would be to have a pop-up hotel that allows people to sleep in the un-refurbished listed structure.

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Left to right: “A Room for London” is a onebedroom pop-up hotel on London’s South Bank. Cargo containers serving as apartments to solve a housing problem.

The recession has left a trail of unfinished buildings across the globe. Disadvantaged communities have in places been quick to reap the benefits of the demise of multinational corporations. ‘Torre de David’ in Venezuela is a partly completed office tower that the government took control of after the banking crisis in 1994. The building was subsequently occupied by squatters who availed themselves of the unfinished shell to create their own organic vertical city.

Homeless shelters and disaster relief housing Used shipping containers are relatively cheap at c. £2,000, robust and easily transportable. Containers are an obvious solution for emergency disaster relief housing as they can be mobilised within 24 hours and deployed to a region hit by a flood, forest fire or hurricane. Containers have been widely used in the wake of the devastating earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Similarly containers could be redeployed as homeless shelters in our ever-crowded cities, located on undeveloped public land as it becomes available.

Keetwonen student housing Keetwonen is a multi-level student housing project in Amsterdam that was constructed in 2005. The use of shipping containers is in effect a more rudimentary version of prefabricated modular construction, something becoming increasingly prevalent in hotel and student development. The Keetwonen scheme is becoming a little tired and more progressive schemes are emerging. The low cost, ease of mobility and rapid construction means we haven’t seen the end of converted shipping containers in the housing mix.

Reserve stocks can be continuously on standby and deployed when required. Cargo ships can carry between 5,000 and 10,000 containers – a lot of temporary housing units.

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Meanwhile Retail Uses

Boxpark, London Boxpark is a retail pop-up project currently up and running in Shoreditch, London. Of all the myriad meanwhile schemes that populate today’s urban environments, in my opinion this is the best. Boxpark is a combination of 60 shipping containers housing established brands like Nike and some quirky destination brands like Marimekko, giving it the scale of a micro-retail mall rather than a stand-alone pop-up store. This mix is both interesting and engaging and one that the investors in an established shopping centre may not always be brave enough to put together. But where this scheme succeeds above other meanwhile use projects is that it has the critical mass of size and stores to attract people from a wide geographical area. The reason they could establish a large critical mass – something not often afforded to temporary projects – is because the site owner committed to a running period of five years. This allowed those behind the project to invest significantly in it. The commitment to five years also offered security to the operators; they knew they would have a sufficient operating period to make the set-up costs worthwhile.

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But perhaps the true beauty here was aligning the meanwhile use with the overall vision for the project. The site owners could have let the site as a storage facility in the period before construction began, but the long-term vision for the site was to create a shopping centre. So the Boxpark venture not only generates site revenue during planning but it a) served to test a non-traditional retail location prior to construction, b) allowed the public to become familiar with the area as a retail location prior to opening, c) tested brands which, if successful, may take permanent units in the future scheme and d) created a place brand for an otherwise mundane development opportunity.

Gabriel’s Wharf, London Gabriel’s Wharf occupies a derelict factory site on London’s vibrant South Bank. The brief was to establish a self-funding short-term use that would animate the site prior to redevelopment. The solution is a mix of craft workshops that allow craftspeople to sell directly to the passing public along a busy waterfront promenade. The craft stores are inter-mixed with a vibrant range of temporary restaurants that help to draw in passing trade and local workers during and after office hours.

Both pages: Boxpark is a pop-up retail mall in London, which generates temporary income, builds a place brand and seeds the area as a future retail destination. Bottom left opposite page: Pop-up retail has been used widely in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the wake of the devastating 2011 earthquake.

Chelsea Farmers Market, London Located just off the fashionable King’s Road, Chelsea Farmers Market is a mix of independent shops and eateries all housed in low-cost timber chalets. The maze of lanes and open-air dining terraces makes it hugely popular, particularly amongst the area’s young and wealthy, who you will see queuing up for Sunday brunch.

The market brings together organic food and handcrafted goods, making it the kind of place that you go to spend an entire day, not knowing what you are going to come away with but assured of a unique experience.

DeKalb Market, Brooklyn DeKalb Market in Brooklyn, New York, is a community-led destination bringing together incubators, an urban farm, events and performance venues along with eateries and retail, all housed in disused shipping containers.

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Meanwhile Office Uses

Container offices can be provided where there is a shortage of office space or where there is unused or derelict land. They play an important role in meeting the demands of smaller companies who might not be able to afford more conventional space and whose space requirements are smaller than established companies. The provision of start-up spaces is key to underpinning wider economic growth, particularly in times of recession. As at Boxpark, developers could look to provide studio office accommodation in either containers or prefabricated buildings during the planning process. This will help to seed not just an office location but also a wider active community, particularly if developing a mixed-use scheme. In a multi-phase project, office accommodation could be retained and relocated around the development site. Who knows, by the time you have secured planning you could have facilitated the growth of a number of companies and established the first tenants for your office development. Equally, if you are a developer with a number of sites then these facilities can be relocated onto different sites at different stages of your portfolio’s development.

Container City London Container City London is a project by Urban Space Management, located at Trinity Buoy Wharf in London’s Docklands. The project provides a series of offices and live/work accommodation in brightly coloured containers.

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Although the early phases are getting a little tired, they proved popular when first developed in 2001 and have inspired similar projects, including one providing quick low-cost classroom space for a London school.

Platoon, Berlin and Seoul Platoon is less an office studio and more a creative hub. The organisation describes itself as running diverse cultural and communication projects in cooperation with an international community for anybody interested or involved in design, fashion and music. The Seoul project consists of 28 containers arranged around studio space as well as a large open atrium that forms the hub of communication and activity.

Unfinished building shells of the economic crisis While not the optimum solution, unfinished buildings resulting from the 2008 economic crisis – such as the towering edifice that was to be the new HQ for Anglo-Irish Bank in Dublin – might seek inspiration here. Perhaps these buildings would be better converted into basic studio hubs for creative companies who are willing to occupy edgier space, rather than have them sit empty and unfinished as reminders of a dark period in recent history. Disillusionment with big business and the need to kickstart economies at a domestic level mean many of these unfinished HQs could become the perfect catalyst for new growth.

Above: Container City and other East London meanwhile office accommodation.

Activating Un-let Units

The economic downturn since 2008 has seen landlords struggle with higher vacancy rates across their retail portfolios. Meanwhile the general public has seen local communities plagued by boarded-up shops, both on their high streets and in their shopping centres. This trend has been compounded by a growth in online retail sales, with many retail chains choosing to focus on primary retail thoroughfares and to close stores in more secondary locations. Only time will tell how the inevitable continued growth of online sales will impact on physical stores, but it is a trend that we are likely to see continuing. As a result of this, many landlords and town centre authorities have turned to alternative uses to help bring life back into diminished retail areas. Many shop owners have turned to meanwhile uses as solutions to empty shops. The benefit of meanwhile occupation is that temporary lease terms can be easily brought to an end if the opportunity to lease to a long-term retailer arises, while establishing a vibrant use in the interim that maintains a healthy retail environment. Some local authorities have taken to offering grants to artists to take occupation of deserted shops, hoping that the opening of galleries will maintain community life. A rolling calendar of changing exhibitions gives people reasons to repeatedly revisit an area and helps to prop up retail sales in adjacent shops.

resources and take a collective approach to combat empty shops. These decrease the critical mass of a retail offer and make an area appear rundown, both of which reduce attractiveness and the overall consumer base.

The Empty Shops Network is a British venture that offers advice and administrative support to artists seeking to introduce pop-up solutions in redundant spaces across the country. Given the future uncertainty around demand for sustainable retail space, the establishment of similar entities is increasingly important.

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In Chapter 6, we discussed the advantages that shopping centres have in terms of single management strategies over high streets, where ownership is fragmented. Large-scale shopping centres such as the Bullring in Birmingham have been quick to adopt meanwhile use strategies in the face of increasing vacancy rates. It is important that high street traders pool their

In poor economic times, many of our high streets and shopping centres suffer from unlet retail units and higher void periods. It is important to keep as many of the unlet units occupied with interesting temporary uses that can be quickly set up and taken down as new letting opportunities arive.

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Temporary Pop-Up Events

Pop-up events lasting anything from a couple of hours to a few months are also a great way of bringing in income and raising a site or building’s profile. They might take the form of a stand-alone café, an event or an artistic intervention. Below are some eye-catching ventures across a number of different sectors.

Secret Cinema I will never forget my first visit to Secret Cinema. Having been told to congregate in our pyjamas outside a London Tube station in the middle of the evening rush hour, we were ushered into a disused mental institution where we spent several hours immersed in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Secret Cinema is a fusion of participatory theatre and cinema held in disused properties around the city and attended by thousands. People sign up online, are given limited details and have no idea what they will be participating in. It is an amazing way to engage people and expose them to a place.

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Seebuhne, Lake Constance I debated whether this stage on the lake that forms the centrepiece of the Bregenz Festival in Austria should be in the chapter on culture or meanwhile use. I have put it here because the visually captivating nature of the set design is so large and exposed that it becomes its own urban form and yet it is its temporary nature that repeatedly draws people back to see it for fear of missing each year’s iteration.

Old Vic Tunnels, London A series of old railway arches became so popular that they were an actively managed event destination under the direction of the Old Vic Theatre. Over the years the tunnels have hosted a series of innovative events from full-blown theatre performances to art exhibitions, pop-up restaurants, concerts and the Banksy-led Cans Festival in celebration of graffiti.

Opposite page: A local pop-up art exhibition at More London Riverside. Clockwise from top left: Pop-up events can be used to generate footfall and market attention and can consist of everything from larger regional spectacles such as the Notting Hill Carnival … … to small events such as a Salsa festival. Holi Day, the festival of colour, India. Denmark relocating the original Little Mermaid to China helped promote national awareness.

Art and performance Art and performance also dominate the pop-up world, led by companies such as Artichoke and Punchdrunk. Nobody who saw it could forget the former’s Sultan’s Elephant, staged in London in 2006. From a development perspective, these events can draw huge crowds and raise a place’s profile. The one piece of advice Artichoke director Helen Marriage gave me was that developers should just provide the platform and let the creative company conceptualise. Too often developers

try to guide the direction of a project and this only limits the potential wow factor of the final installation or performance. Pop-ups often become so successful that they become permanent fixtures, as happened with Tom Dixon’s restaurant and shop at Portobello Dock in London. Pop-ups are becoming so popular that they are even influencing the design and retail layouts of permanent stores such as Dover Street Market in London.

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Photograph: Museu de Arte de São Paulo, which accommodates an open air market below the main gallery space.

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09. Conclusion Choosing Our Future

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Choosing our future From Dubai to Shanghai to London, our housing, offices and shops are becoming identical.

As well as the buildings of the world becoming ever more alike, increasingly the clothes we wear are the same, franchised food chains are feeding us the same food and plastic surgery is even making some of us look alike. We are all moving in the direction of a default life; a sort of Zarawearing model, living in a glass tower, eating Whole Foods, drinking in Starbucks and watching our local version of the X-Factor. When did life become so generic? In 2012 the artist Grayson Perry undertook a study of British social class tastes in a programme called All in the Best Possible Taste. He hypothesised that much of the emerging middle class fall into two groups: those whose tastes are knowledge or culture-driven and those whose tastes are money-driven. The latter struggle with their identity and place in society and are consequently drawn to consumer choices determined by brands acceptable to their peers, which serve to demonstrate upward mobility and success. Many of today’s buildings serve the same purpose: glazed, shiny, air-conditioned apartment towers ratify our position as part of a successful society. But the result is often soulless places.

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I am not condemning this form of architecture (for which there is an obvious demand), but rather encouraging more considered thinking in an attempt to fuse money-driven design with an engaging and culturally led public realm. After all, there are signs of people pushing against the tide of uniformity. Disillusionment with the corporate takeover of the world, accelerated by the 2008 economic crisis, has been a key driver of this. Locally crafted clothes and foods sold from pop-up stores, events that respond to their surroundings and artistic interventions that challenge mundane urban environments are becoming increasingly commonplace. These grass-roots ventures bring substance to neighbourhoods and help establish a sense of genuine place. Developments need to encourage as well as be a platform for these activities, from the design stage onwards.

Right: A photo of Grayson Perry’s huge tapestry depicting his interpretation of middle class tastes.

Realistically, what are the chances of this happening? At first glance, perhaps not great. Real estate is a slow-moving, arduous and financially burdensome industry. While there are many enthusiastic people looking to make smallscale urban interventions, they often lack the financial resources and knowhow of mainstream developers. On the flipside, developers are too often like dinosaurs stuck in long-established ways. Meanwhile fixed land supply and an everincreasing global population mean there is perpetual demand for property, even if it fluctuates on a cyclical basis. Competition is limited and, just as in any industry where an effective monopoly exists, innovation or daring is rare. As a result we may all end up living, working and shopping in identikit environments whether we want to or not. Thankfully, though, there is no escaping the fact that open-minded, collaborative developers and designers will be the ones that create the truly liveable places of tomorrow. And these will also be the most valuable.

In a world of magnolia development, where one solution fits all, projects that offer a sense of depth and authenticity will prevail. People want to live in real communities where they know their neighbours and where people come together to share like-minded experiences. Achieving this in new developments is a difficult task, but it is not impossible. Developers simply have to be the catalyst for the formation of the community. This can be achieved by capturing the elements of what I refer to as the urban village, while ensuring where possible that there is a resident population large enough to form a healthy and mixed community, a working population large enough to make the place active during the day, and a diverse range of facilities to service the population while also making it a destination for others. To their experience and commercial astuteness, developers and designers need to add an eye for the alternative and the artistic. Until then, progressive placemaking projects will remain largely without scale, and big commercial projects will remain largely without soul.

Already in places like Chicago’s Millennium Park and Shanghai’s Taipingqiao development, there is proof of the premium that effective placemaking can bring to a development’s value – as well as that of surrounding property.

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Clockwise from immediate left: Grass-roots culture at a pop-up cinema evening in Sydney. Singapore Art Museum, representing big budget culture. The edgy and unpolished Meatpacking District in New York is proving increasingly popular and mainstream. Residential towers in Tianjin, China; the polar opposite of NYC’s Meatpacking District.

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