How COVID will affect Architecture - Tenancy

 

RESIDENTIAL

We are loosing our foreign employees. This means we might have too many residential vacancies. This affect rental returns that pays the loan of the purchased of properties. We see on the other hand more people working from home in a positive way for certain trades. The home based work however, demands more space within the house, we may even see people selling off their leasehold properties in exchange for rental of bigger residential space especially for families with more inhabitants.

SMALL UNITS BECOME TOLERATED COMMERCIAL USE WHERE CARE IS GIVEN THAT THE COMMERCIAL USE DOES NOT EMIT OLFACTORY AND HARMFUL FUMES. WASTE DISPOSED AT COMPATIBLE TO RESIDENTIAL USE. END USER SHOULD KEEP PREMISES THAT DO NOT INTERFERE WITH DOMESTIC USES. RENTED LARGE UNITS ARE WORK FROM HOME SPACES.

Urban blocks with less units will also become a premium place to stay as your exposure to your neighbors COVID infection are less.

RETAIL

Already hit hard from the online retail ecosystem, retail spaces in malls have not been readily taken up of late. The focus in malls are now food and beverage which working people still go for quick meal. With the lock-down that happened, the pubic has rediscovered cooking for themselves and see massive savings doing so. This in turn promotes working from home and less travel cost to commercial office spaces. It is inevitable that retail spaces require to be multi-discipline use. (eg. Retail +Food, or maybe Hairdresser + Bookshop or even Apparel + Photo-shoot + deportment or simply Vending Machine Cluster + office). This mutation of discipline may subject the commercial space to have more power supply because in order to make the cross discipline interesting, you add things like fridge ovens and more air-conditioning or equipment that does special things like water feature or heater all requiring heavier usage of power. The same goes for office use.

 

cafe + retail cross discipline

 

records + cafe cross discipline

Fundamentally, why purchase physically when you can buy online cheaper? Perhaps your if retail entitiy involves essential service component. Those with the best grey areas are hairdressing, F&B, Hardware store and Laundry services.

 

OFFICE SPACE

If the office work involves privacy of data, staff may have to do work in the office. This involves work for design competition, legal documents, classified information and personal data. The standards if privacy has changed as technology changed over time. There used to be a time where you are not welcomed to take photographs inside a retail store. Today it is publicity. The privacy desired was to maintain the copyright of desired products but in came the prevalent use of social media, phone cam and mass production in China available on line in a variation scales of production.

Co-Share offices were originally attractive to international community whereby they could travel to many destinations to borrow a space to do work, collaborate or meet with more formality. This was before meeting online was a normal thing. Now without the frequent flyers moving about Co-Share offices are looking for start ups and "in-between users" who who dont fit the work from home type or office worker. Again it involves mobility. What will become of office space. Will they be reduced to just formal meeting rooms ? Why rent them when the entity do not use them. Perhaps it make sense for office to be owned instead of rent as the future will ask for different requirements.

Again the office space takes on cross discipline and mutated use introducing ovens , fridge, heaters and other elements to make the space special. 

Office space may also take on a more European arrangement where all employees have the right to a certain distance to sunlight and may even have an establishment require for each employee sitting in their own room.  More office with individual rooms, each human is allocated 8-10 sqm. For open plan style office it is 12-15 sqm per person.

Where more than ten people work in a room they have a statutory right to a break room.

before the popularity of co-share office, Europeans offices spaces commonly featured individualized room for all employees.

 Just perhaps office rent will be 2 components; vehicular loan + parking.

Office van, singular user and highly mobile and border-less.

 

INDUSTRIAL

Industrial production space has not been doing well in Singapore. A quick trip to Tuas shows you there is a lot of storage being done and very little making is involved. There is a good chance that China will reduce its production of things over the coming years as they get more effluent leaving with a depreciating birthrate, other countries to produce goods for them as they are a major consumer already for anything. If local production becomes a trend in Singapore, it make sense that industrial building allow residential spaces on the upper levels to that there is saving in travel as well as keeping the environment livable because there are residence above. Production space and their products will then be sensitive to the type of olfactory it produces, toxic fumes, mechanical noise and safety of circulation. Amenities need to be nearer to production spaces as well. Perhaps a cottage industry type of mixed use building will be a demand. In other words village with cottage industries. In other words we might revert back to artisanal housing of the old world.

 

work live artisanal space (Sauerbruch Hutton Architect)

 

Artisanal Living Singapore from the 60's

 

INSTITUTIONAL

 Home-based learning took a stronger existence following the SARS pandemic. Some practice was done years after than and the eventual COVID lock-down allowed the possibility of home-based learning to see its full potential. The use of video conferencing used at a massive level found its feasibility alongside the business community, making video conferencing a mass market. COVID virus pandemic however, may have kick started massive racism against CHINA that sends the most foreign students abroad. These students are becoming profiled negatively in western countries and will seek education is better attitude climates like in Singapore and Malaysia.We know for sure western education is still very much supports communication, math , science and the art always trying to find scientific logic which, in perception provides betterment in society. We could anticipate a larger shift of foreign students moving to Singapore once the travel passage is relaxed. Institutional use and associative hostel might make a surge.

Perhaps certain educational space could be more village like which is mixed use, a bit like a university in the city type of environment.

One of the most famous Kindergarten in Italy the produces the top thinkers is Reggio Emilia.

The town is also famous also for food production and the arts.

A student illustration of their mental map of the town depicting how involved they are with the town as a student. The children make frequent trips to local squares and markets. The town becomes an extended classroom. Perhaps their exposure building their awareness

SHORT TERM TENANCY

Rental is becoming more short term. In the UK, there are short term rental concepts called Guardianship where the tenant rents the place at a cheaper rate somewhat like a care taker and have to move out within a short notice. There is no stipulated duration to the tenancy relationship.

Ephemeral style of rental like fleamarket space will become even more popular.This means the flavor of the location is even more important. For example, the community in Ang Mo Kio may not receive antique shops as well as Katong Area mainly because of the mix of tenancy and existing residents and community of workers . It is therefore most important to amplify the human geographic character of any place today.

Terms of Tenancy is set to change !

Market Gaia Guni where displaced Sungei Road Vendors ply their trade here, The long term solution today seems  to be multiple short term plans.

LANDLORD PROFILE

The economic situation has cause many tenants to close shop mainly due to he inability to pay rent. If we observed the existing shops around us, you would notice either the surviving shops are the owners themselves or have other parental cashlflow from other businesses or maybe the tenants were able to negotiate a lower rent.

In the long term view, the tenants should identify they type of landlord they are dealing with:

 

a. landlord from recent acquisition paying 30% down payment and having bank loan financing

b. landlord owning fully paid up property

c. landlord owing almost fully paid up poperty

If you choose a landlord who is servicing the loan, the tenant put themselves in many uncertainties:

 

i. ever increasing rent

ii. change of ownership thereby change of terms of tenancy

iii. difficulties of neighbor tenants to sustain thereby making your location not so worth to establish.

 

It makes sense to find a landlord who has fully paid up property because they are likely long term owners and would not change their arrangement too much. The draw back is long term owners means the facilities and building may have more defects and quirks. However, dont new buildings have them as well?

DOUBLE USE TENANCY

We are beginning to see schools opening up their sporting facilities to the public in Singapore.

screen shot of ACTIVE-SG showing available sports facilities in schools available for public to use

Here we see a wise idea of the usage of space that is left empty a lot now finding small booking of individual. It may not be profitable but may be beneficial to the public.

There are other spaces in school that can be double such as class room and the canteen for other activities in the weekend.

Other building types can also have double use such as places of worship which have classrooms. Some places of worship have large yards which could double as street markets for a specific humanitarian purpose.

Double use can be effective because it address:

a. existing facility management

b. short term tenancy

c. public access thereby possible breakeven revenue to function.

 

THERE MUST BE MUCH MORE ABOUT TENANCY THAT WE CAN EXPLORE THAT CAN ADDRESS THE OVER INFLATED RENT THAT TENANTS ARE SUFFERING FROM NOW THAT TENANCY SPACES ARE FACING UNDER OCCUPANCY.

Read about a follow up article on where to find this urban condition in Geylang here !