View From Within: High Class Average
Making a Decision
According to Valekha Rzaeva, head of the press service of Forum Properties, the initiator of a business center project is always the developer who develops the concept itself or entrusts this function to a professional consultant. If a business is small (10,000-15,000 sq.m), as a rule, its concept is defined by the developer, while for multipurpose complexes (from 50,000 sq.m) it is accepted to consult advisers, confirms Andrei Petrov, a partner at international consulting company Knight Frank.
The optimum variant is a situation where the key parameters of a project are coordinated with an adviser and are finished in an architectural bureau, Sergei Kolegov, general director of Prime City Properties says. "It is important that characteristics such as the number of spaces in underground parking, the depth of the floors, the size of a standard office block, the height of the ceilings, etc, have been specified by an adviser and meet modern standards and the characteristics of project-competition," he says.
According to Dmitry Podyapolsky, head of the workshop at No. 2 Mosproject-4, in the development of a business center project on Dvintsev street, prior to starting the design the customer formulated a number of requirements which wherever possible have been observed. "But the [final] design decision belongs to the architect," he says.
Kirill Subbotin, head of the department of office real estate at DS-Development confirms that architects, either members of staff of the company or those attracted to a specific project, are obligatory involved in work on the concept. "Businessmen" define the functional zoning of the project, the size and purpose of all its functional parts, and architects try to embody it in the blueprint.
For example, when designing the Alcon business center on Leningradsky prospekt the developer of the project - English company Alcon Development - invited international design bureau MMA + Fitzroy Robinson International. "DS-Development has its own team of professionals, but for some projects the company considers involving external architects and advisers," Subbotin emphasizes. "Money should not be saved on having a professional staff, in fact the cost of a mistake in the development of the concept is great and any change of the concept at the stage of construction can result in multi-million losses."
The investor can not interfere with the process although some adjustments are usually made, because it is guided not only by the current market situation. According to Leonid Lopatin, executive director of City PRO, the participation of the investor at the stage of developing the concept is defined by its own creativity and is not always welcomed by the architect.
"We have obtained the main technical and economic parameters which match the previous team of architects developing the Alcon business center project which was established by neither the customer, nor the market," Mikhail Mandrygin, general director of MMA + Fitzroy Robinson International says. "The project was for a huge building which would be more likely suitable for a university or ministry building, and for different companies to rent would be ineffective. I suggested to build four buildings instead of one, which in the future would be easier to hand over. Quite possibly, there will be a company which will want to rent on of the buildings in its entirety. At the same time we have made each floor (2,300 sq.m) open plan so that it can be divided between eight tenants, without corridors."
According to Podyapolsky, the main decisions on the layout of the complex on Dvintsev street were defined by the business-scheme, set by the customer. The basic requirement was to obtain as many empty working floors as possible, uniting all vertical communications in one block. Dividing the complex into three blocks, incorporated by a general stylobat with a serving infrastructure, were also primarily incorporated in the assignment.
Nevertheless the main criterion are the goals of the developer according to which it wishes to realize the project. "As a rule, for commercial real estate it is to obtain maximum income in the short- or long-term future," explains Oleg Smirnov, assistant to the managing director of Sawatzky Property Management. "The investor, as a rule, is interested simply in regulating the profitability and seldom makes decisions that not concern finance," Lopatin says. An absence or lack of your own funds is not a factor that limits the scope of construction: as a rule, extra funds are attracted to finance the construction," Viktoria Bekasova, senior adviser at Colliers International, says.
When Ambition Sleeps
The wishes of the developer or the investor are to realize a grandiose project that promises good profit. But you cannot always fulfill your ambitions. According to Bekasova, the initial Information required for designing a business center are first of all the restrictions imposed by the area, the configuration and quality of resources of the land plot, and also restrictions on the lowest and highest points of construction. From these restrictions the greatest possible area of the building can be defined, which may be made smaller by the city authorities, or by the developer if it is considered that the market or the predicted returns do not correspond to volume of the area. For example, RIGroup has purposefully limited the height of its business center in Vidno in the Moscow Region to 12 floors, as market research showed limited demand for class A office space in this town.
Andrei Khalturin, general director of RIGroup, adds that if a land plot is small the natural aspiration of the developer according to main goal of maximizing the output of useful areas is to increase the number of floors the building has. At the same time the investor should consider existing town-planning restrictions where the building is located. They are also often fundamental to the height of a building. One more important restriction for construction of high-altitude buildings, in the opinion of Elena Zanina, assistant to the general director of Miele - Commercial Real Estate are isolation standards. "A building cannot block the suns rays to other constructions located nearby," she emphasizes.
Michael Gets, vice president for strategic development at Blackwood, thinks that it is Important to maintain a single architectural style or, on the contrary, make the architectural decisions unique depending on the location and the environments of the premises. An important factor is the area the building is located in, agrees Zanina. For example, when constructing a complex in a historical part of the city state bodies make the developer adhere to the norms of preserving the fa?ade of the building, and often their requirements are very strict.
"The architect is responsible for optimizing the organization of space and the attractiveness of its appearance," says Rzaev. "The developer and the consultant develop a business model and the architect embodies this in an artistic-functional image." According to Bekasova, the majority of architects, being people creative, aspire to make the project interesting and memorable; but the best professionals do not forget that the project should be high quality not only from an aesthetic point of view, but also from a commercial point of view. Frequently if a building has an unusual design extra space is lost, considers Zanina. "A brilliant office building does not always signify its sellability, therefore the external architectural shape of a business center should be dictated by commercial appeal and functionality," says Khalturin. Probably this is the reason why when developers have a dilemma in choosing between constructing a beautiful building or a functional one, the developer is inclined to choose the second variant.
Kolegov thinks that developers are more conservative when it comes to architectural decisions. It is well known that tenants associate the combination of glass and metal designs with modern technologies. Developers do not want to diverge from a proven style and enter into unjustified risk. "Therefore innovative, original architectural decisions are seldom used and are peculiar to outstanding projects such as the towers in Moscow-City, he says.
"In designing business centers there is a real problem In the contradiction between the unification of requirements of the premises and the necessity of creating an original building," says Podyapolsky. "In class A offices some customers unwillingly put funds in the presentation but for class B offices economy is the defining factor and no funds are invested in this. It is possible to predict that as the market gets saturated more interest will be placed on buildings that can be recognized by "its face" even if it deviates from recommended geometric plans."
The success of a premises depends on how much the customers ambitions are based on the needs of the market, if research was carried out on the demand for the quality and quantity of space in the given location, emphasizes Zanina.
All is Solved
Colliers International thinks that knowledge of regulations and laws and other normative documents which guide architects in their work, unfortunately, does not always guarantee the creation of a product which will have great demand on the real estate market in the long-term future, in fact it is necessary for this purpose not only the nobility current inquiries of tenants, but also to predict development of the market, which is a problem for consultants in the field of commercial real estate, not architects. "In many cases before adjusting a concept careful marketing analysis Is carried out including analysis of the land plot, the competitive environment and the demands of tenants for premises in the given area which will form the basis for defining the group of potential consumers and the formation of a correct, most demanded lay-out of a floor in the building, etc." says Bekasova.
In 2006 the International Research Forum (IRF) proposed a classification which takes into account the lay-out and design features of a building. The requirements included in the classification, are of both an obligatory, and recommendatory character. It may seem that developers who accepted the conditions of the IRF will bring some kind of a standard project to the market. Mandrygin does not agree with such a position. According to him, standard business centers are those business centers that meet the requirements of one class, for example, in class A it the height of the ceilings, open lay-out where the distance from window to window is 18 m, etc. "But this does not apply to either the architecture, or to the lay-out, there is no ideal decision for any one premises or land plot, it is necessary to find it individually," he emphasizes. "Strict norms in designing office complexes do not exist," agrees Podyapolsky. "There are schemes which have arisen as result of the theoretical recommendations of consulting and developing companies, based on the analysis of the market, the economy of the construction and the practice of sales."
Michael Gets thinks that the main criterion in choosing an office premises for future tenants will be the most possible effective use of each square meter. Therefore in developing the plan of a building it is necessary to consider the specific number of workplaces it will have. For example, the size of a typical workplace is 1600 х 1600 mm, and the whole number of places have to fit comfortably between columns for a building to operate well, i.e. the space between columns should be 1600 mm.
Developing a high quality office building project, in most cases architects consider the suggestions of consultants, but in reality their conditions are completely ignored. According to George Fadeeva, head of architecture at DS-Development, says there are compromising variants which do not result in the lowering of the class of the building.
Subbotin thinks that even if you have an effective lay-out it is inevitable that there will be dark areas. And the main task is how to use it correctly. For example, For example you can put conference rooms and halls, mini-kitchens, bathrooms, etc, In them
Generally when organizing the office space of a building the specificity of the tenant is important. Some might need small offices along a facade, others might need a not deep floor with a maximum glass front, and someone else might need a large, correctly formed floor without partitions and with maximum column step for an open plan office. "Because of the variety of demands of tenants we aspire to make office space as flexible as possible so that it has the possibility to built for a maximum number of clients ",-
"As a rule, during the floor design process they divide them into office blocks," Khalturin agrees. "It is not a secret that they do this for the completeness of the engineering part of a project for a painless state examination process. But, as developers, we understand that we should give potential tenants flexibility in floor-planning and furnishing of the space. Therefore, especially in class A and B buildings, premises in shell and core condition are rented quicker. The lay-out is chosen by the designer without taking into account specific tenants and more often can't be a guiding line," he emphasizes. "The tenant has the opportunity to and should consider possible variants of the lay-out of a premises before It rents an area, and the typical variants offered have a general character," he agrees.
According to Bekasova, close work with tenants allows consultants to look at a building project from the point of view of its possible lay-out by blocks of different size, separate offices or open plan lay-out - this promotes the creation of a flexible product which will interest various tenants. In many cases before adjusting the concept careful market analysis including the analysis of the land plot, the competitive environment and the demands of tenants about the premises in the given area is carried out in order to form a basis for defining a group of potential consumers and the most demanded lay-out.
In Pavel Yanshevsky's opinion (partner at S.A.Ricci), an example of a successfully designed business center is Stalnaya Roza (part of the Stalnaya Roza territory). The project has a square within the internal closed territory and is a successful design. Tenants do not lose exposure to light, the depths of the floors are small, and the internal territory is a unique opportunity to have windows onto a lawn, instead of onto parking. Zanina highlights another project - the Krylatskiye Hills business center. In her opinion, its main advantage is the design features of the building: due to the big floor areas and their big depth, there are minimum losses.
Among successful office buildings Khalturin notes business centers which have been built by Forum Properties. In particular, the second phase of the Aurora Business Park office center on Sadovnicheskaya Nabarezhnaya and the Hermitage Plaza business center on Krasnoproletarskaya street. "These buildings have differing excellent appearances, a carefully developed construction concept and advanced engineering technologies," he says.
On the other hand, projects, even the large sensational ones, for example in the territory of Moscow-City or in the central part of city, in the opinion of experts, at times give examples of not so successful things. For example, if in an office, the width of an aperture from the door to a window is about 15 m, the corridor can only be lengthways inside the area. Radially divided columns in round buildings are always less convenient for tenants, as well as rounded off windows, and are a reason for greater losses of space. Poor-quality spatial lay-out leaving many premises without sunlight, lots of dead-ends and back passages, as well as space not very suitable for use, are serious disadvantages for which the tenant pays a rather high price. In such cases even an excellent location does not compensate mediocre architecture, experts say.
In Petrov's opinion, when quality office space is rented at a rather expensive price, additional charges are absolutely disadvantageous for potential tenants and business centers with an unsuccessful lay-out can be on the market for a long time - empty or with frequently changing tenants.
However, according to Rzaev, ideal premises, as well as everything ideal in the environment, are rare. At times the high status of a premises will be let down by a lack parking places or the quality of construction and the materials used. "But more often there is a discrepancy between the declared high level of a premises and the poor quality of its architectural execution - this disbalance, is perhaps, the most serious for any project," he emphasizes.