Turning Eyesores into Icons: Retrofits, Repositions, and Redesigns for the Commercial Workplace’s New Era

To build or not to build? What to build and how much? These are looming questions in the post-pandemic office market. Development teams, predicting tenant demands, are undergoing radical redesigns as they grapple with whether to convert office space to residential, and how to create more environmentally responsible buildings with improved air quality, acoustics, outdoor areas, and effective collaboration zones for different types of work. This session will explore projects currently in design that are negotiating these topics in real time, including a mixed-use creative office building in the heart of Hollywood being redesigned to incorporate more residential space and a former manufacturing facility that will convert more than 500,000 square feet into state-of-the-art creative office space. This session will also look abroad at successful adaptive reuse case studies that address many of these issues, notably Here East London, an industrial media complex–turned–tech innovation hub for startups, early-stage companies, and dedicated innovation programs—a mini-city that unites culture, commerce, entrepreneurship, and education under one roof.