Challenge LDN: affordable workspace

Hackney Wick and Fish Island (HWFI) - Creative Enterprise Zone boundary.

Local, creative, small and micro businesses and community organisations that don’t have access to suitable space.

• New workspace (especially affordable space) in private development is often completed to shell and core, requiring substantial tenant investment to fit-out (for an average sized unit of 200-300 sqm, the fit-out budget could be up to hundreds of thousands of pounds), resulting in empty units and lack of business diversity moving in.
• Nearly 90 per cent of businesses in the Olympic Park area are micro-businesses (zero to four employees) while commercial space delivered by private developers are often big units, unattractive to small businesses, resulting in a supply and demand mismatch.
• Local workspace demand is for smaller units, flexible lease terms and workspace delivery models that support collaboration, diverse and innovative ecosystems, and in turn, business and community resilience.
• Local businesses and community groups being unable to use the empty spaces is detrimental to local economic development and social cohesion. The inaccessibility and unaffordability of these spaces also increases displacement risk for existing organisations. Local authorities and affordable workspace providers receive at least a dozen inquiries a week from businesses and community groups looking for space to relocate in the local area. This demand has continued throughout the pandemic.
• Inactive frontages - for example empty ground floor units with a lack of connection between the street and the building - are extremely harmful to community cohesion and residents’ satisfaction, and is an indicator of the neighbourhood centre’s poor ‘health’. In August 2020, approximately 12,884 square meters of commercial property was vacant in the Hackney Wick and Fish Island area, most of this space being located at ground floor level.

A prototype that:

• Incorporates considerations around the most prohibitive part of fit-out costs (digital infrastructure, sound-proofing, insulation, power, utilities, flooring, storage, material, finishes) and blueprints for key furniture pieces.
• Provides access to affordable, modular or reusable fit-out materials.
• Can be used on a range of buildings, layouts and specifications.
• Can evolve into a financially sustainable model (for both users and providers).

Short-term (project lifespan)

• Number of developers engaged in the pilot leading to further fit-out investment to ensure space is occupied.

Medium-term (within 12 months from completion)

• Floorspace area fitted-out using the innovators’ solution.
• Number of small and micro businesses, and community organisations able to relocate in the area.
• Improvement of developers’ ability to deliver suitable work and community space as part of their developer obligation (no metric).

Long-term

• Improved sense of belonging and ownership from the community and resident satisfaction.
• Preserving commercial uses and well-balanced neighbourhoods, by avoiding inactive frontages or commercial units being turned into residential.
• Creating jobs and activities on the high streets, creating more economic resilience in the community and increasing social cohesion by creating spaces where there is a diversity of activities and different sections of the community are involved.
• Being able to retain the cluster of creative businesses, whilst redevelopment is happening and existing workspace will be demolished, preventing the displacement and loss of businesses operating in the area.
• Increasing the opportunity for businesses in HWFI to deliver social value (training, skills, volunteering, youth programmes, intergenerational cohesion).
• Ensuring that creative industries, pop-up and meanwhile uses can support the economic recovery post-COVID-19, which can be transferred to many other local centres and high streets in London and nationally.

Many developers have to deliver commercial spaces as part of a mixed use scheme/planning obligation but their lack of knowledge of end user requirements often leads to expensive fit out costs and higher rents. These costs are often problematic for smaller occupiers particularly due to the flexible and short-term nature of their term commitments.

This proposal is to provide an easily adaptable fit out model that offers a cost-effective solution for newly built/shell & core spaces or empty premises, aiming to reduce property costs for the end user. It builds on the team’s existing fit out model, promoting reusable structures and environmentally friendly materials, simplified design and easy installation process.

We are excited by the opportunity that this fund provides to showcase our experience in developing genuinely affordable workspaces in creative communities such as Hackney Wick. We look forward to demonstrating how our model can both create and optimise unused spaces transforming them into exciting hubs.

LYN Atelier’s solution is to create a semi-automated office fit-out process, simplifying choices and using second hand furniture to keep the costs down, giving access to great workspaces to a new section of the economy.

The solution works because it builds on already developed construction products ensuring speed of deployment and the reliability of trusted systems and will empower the user to implement the fit out themselves providing a cost effective end to end solution in one package.

We are delighted to be one of the finalists for the Mayor’s Resilience Fund for the Affordable Workplace Challenge. The fund allows us to bring together our experience in innovative design, technology and recycling to make a part of the property market available to a new community of users. We are so excited that we can be part of creating a stronger social and economic recovery for London.

Inspired by temporary pavilions, Pavilion aims to create a rentable library of re-useable materials, able to be booked through an online platform and supported by installation, storage and maintenance. The kit of parts would be used to define, service and customise spaces depending on the use and length of time needed.

As a local small business, we know first-hand how difficult it can be to find, fit out and equip a workspace when cashflow is so critical. We are really excited about developing our ideas on how this element of the affordable workspace challenge can be resolved, and by partnering with our friends at Octink, we hope to combine their knowledge and experience in temporary events and structures with our own local knowledge and previous work on activating vacant spaces through the GLA Good Growth Fund.

Paul Reynolds, Tapestry

Finding space to work in the city is hard. The Sustainable Designer wants to offer affordable, dependable, adaptable and individual workspace for people trying to change something.

Their solution is a self-contained modular portable studio, intended to be integrated temporarily within the existing bare fabric of a leased space. Modules are insulated, contain essential services (water, electricity and heat where required) and can operate either independently or as a cluster.

When I first started as a freelancer, I shared a space with three other people and we all took turns in using the ‘good’ table. London definitely has a space problem. But now, amazingly, we have the opportunity to change this through the Mayor’s Resilience Fund. The chance to provide affordable workspace for people trying to create something new in our community and that is exciting!

Nadine, Creative Director