LIVING IN OFFICES

The goal to realise 25 thousand apartments in vacant office buildings is not reached. Since 1990, only 2500 to 3000 apartments have been realised in former office buildings, in spite all the efforts. Especially the investors have fear. To hive off office buildings, means taking losses. But according to specialists the hope for an improving office market is useless. On a special Dutch congress about ‘living in offices’ a professor states that ‘6,3 million square meters office space is vacant. For 1/6 of the vacant office space will never ever be used anymore as an office.

At the moment a record number of large buildings in The Netherlands, like Churches, schools, factories, but especially offices, are unoccupied. At the same time the shortage of housing is increasing, because of a stagnating production of houses. Since many years the Dutch authorities try to stimulate the transformation of empty office buildings into apartments. It saves material and demolition costs and protests of neighbour is prevented mo9st of the time, since people like to keep existing infrastructure. Most importantly the new use of offices save a lot of space, because the Dutch do not have much room left for new locations for the construction of housing.

A project manager specialist in converting offices to apartments states that there really is a lot less need for offices these days. The labour force shrinking, people work in much smaller offices and large companies outsource work to low-wage countries. A large part of the office building surplus will never be used again as office.

In the mean time new office complexes are still produced, since it seems there is still a demand for modern office buildings on the better locations. Lately it was forecasted that in the upcoming years the total amount of empty office space will increase to 7.5 million square meters.

The beautiful older office buildings inside cities are the easiest buildings to convert into apartments. In the early days offices were mostly converted into places for students, but lately also luxurious apartments are realised in old office buildings. Specialised companies help different parties to find ways to reuse office space. Sometimes office buildings even get a new layer of penthouses, to make the project profitable.

Sadly enough most of the office buildings are situated along highways or in miserable trading estates. Here more work will have to be done to attract people. The mixture of housing and different types of companies and shops is seen as workable tactic. more features

April 17, 2007