For landowners, investors and occupiers
Commercial buildings that stay useful after the first tenants leave.
Commercial buildings change tenants many times over their life. The decisions that let them stay useful through those changes, from floor depth and core position to parking and servicing, are made at the very start.
The building outlives its first tenants
An office or mixed-use building will probably house several generations of occupiers. The first fit-out will be stripped out, businesses will grow and shrink, and the way people use workspace will keep changing. A building that can absorb those changes holds its value; one designed tightly around a single occupier's first requirement often does not.
That does not mean designing for nobody. It means separating the parts of the building that are hard to change, such as the structure, the cores, floor-to-floor heights and service capacity, from the parts that are meant to change, and getting the first set right.
Location decides the building
A plot on a main road with high visibility suits a different building from one inside a business district or at the edge of an industrial area. Visibility favours active ground floors and signage; district locations favour efficient floors and good parking; edge-of-town sites often favour lower, wider buildings with more generous servicing.
Planning rules sharpen the picture: permitted uses, heights, setbacks and parking requirements are set for each plot, and they frequently decide the building's shape before any design preference comes into play. Each building then goes through separate approvals for registration of the project, building permits and occupancy.
Decisions that fix a building's future
Floor plate
Depth from core to facade, column spacing and floor-to-floor height decide how flexibly a floor can be divided and how much daylight reaches the people working on it. Areas quoted for a floor, a scheme or a lease may be gross, built-up or leasable, and they compare only on the same measurement basis.
Core
Lifts, stairs, toilets and risers placed so that floors can be let whole or in parts, with lift capacity for full occupation.
Parking
Numbers and layouts set by the planning rules and the occupiers expected, with an access design that does not block the street at peak hours.
Servicing and loading
A loading bay, refuse store and service route that keep deliveries away from the main entrance and out of the car park.
Building systems
Cooling, power and telecommunications with spare capacity and space for future upgrades, so a new occupier does not need a new building.
Ground floor
Clear entrances and space that can take shops or services where the street supports them.
One occupier or many
A building for a single occupier can be tuned to that business: its security, its reception, its floor sizes. A multi-tenant building has to work for several at once, with shared entrances, services that can be separated and floors that divide cleanly. Many buildings do both over their life, starting with one occupier and moving to several, or the reverse.
Planning for that from the start costs little, perhaps an extra riser or a different core position. Retrofitting it later costs a great deal more.
Shell and core, or fitted out
Commercial space can be handed over as shell and core, leaving the tenant to fit it out, or finished to a standard ready for occupation. Shell and core suits occupiers with particular requirements and budgets of their own; fitted space suits those who want to move in quickly. A building that may be let both ways needs services and ceilings designed to accommodate either.
When floors or units are sold rather than let, handover raises a further question: who manages the common parts once the developer steps back, and how the owners take part in decisions.
Related commercial pages
A commercial building is one part of a wider commercial picture.
Commercial real estate development
Where the business at street level decides the property: frontage, access and the formats occupiers need.
Showroom development
Road-facing buildings for vehicles, equipment and large goods, from the display floor to the service yard.
Build-to-suit development
When an occupier commits to a building designed around its requirement before construction begins.
Planning a commercial building?
Tell us about the site, the likely occupiers and whether one business or several will use it.
Discuss a commercial building