Customizing a Mixed-Use Building in Real Time: The Finance Centre Tower

A rendering of the Finance Centre Tower. Image © Gensler

The Finance Centre Tower is Daiichi Properties’ latest addition to the Fort Bonifacio Global City Skyline. Fort Bonifacio Global City is the emerging central business district in the Philippines capital of Manila. It is representative of the accelerated economic growth of the Philippines, which is currently the second strongest in the Asia after China’s. This growth has stemmed from the country’s burgeoning service sector, which is generating an increased number of jobs and growing the demand for commercial and office real estate. Because places like Fort Bonifacio need more commercial office buildings, the property market in Bonifacio Global City has been significantly bolstered in recent years.

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Super High-Rise or Super High-Quality?

Jing An tower in Shanghai. Image © Gensler

China has undergone massive changes over the last 25 years, and nowhere is this more evident than in building development, more specifically the proliferation of high rise buildings. Chinese cities are conceiving and building high rises at an unprecedented rate. As a result, secondary and even tertiary cities are adjusting their skylines adjusted on a yearly basis.

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Suburbia Transformed: Tysons, Virginia

Image © Gensler

This post originally appeared on the blog jordangoldstein.net.

Several months ago, I spoke on a Bisnow panel that discussed the future of Tysons, Virginia, a suburban town that is rapidly becoming more urban. Tysons is clearly a town in the midst of a dramatic transformation. With Metro opening up in the spring and a host of high-rise development projects underway, Tysons is about to be suburbia transformed. It’s an experiment in what happens when the urban fringe extends and meets the suburban edge. The blurred lines create tremendous opportunity for the growth of an innovative and dynamic live/work/play environment.

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What is Hack-able?

A hack-able building in London. Image © Gensler

What will the commercial office building of the future look like? In answering that question we can focus on cutting edge cladding systems or an updated core layout, but we should not overlook the possibility that the office building of the future may not be a new building at all. Mobility, advances in technology, and an ever more global workforce have dramatically changed the way that workers inhabit workspace. Some estimates place office space levels in 2015 at 30% of what they were in 1970. This means that we won’t need more office buildings in the future, but we will need to “hack” the ones that already exist if these spaces are to better meet the needs of future workers.

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Life is Urban Again

Image © Gensler

Cities are cool. I find myself increasingly fascinated with how attractive city living is for so many new urban dwellers and how cities try to keep pace with re-urbanization and to the push to become more “livable.” With re-urbanization in full swing, the growth of a globally connected workforce, and the proliferation of mobility tools that allow living and working to happen anywhere and any time, we have some choices to make.

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