Breathing new life into business parks

In this Insight paper by Interior Designer, Kirsty Barr, she discusses how to keep business parks relevant and fit for purpose for the future.

In the post-pandemic world, workplaces have transformed from traditional office spaces into hospitality-driven environments where amenities push the emphasis on employee wellness, encouraging social interaction and building a sense of community. These features are essential for attracting employees back into the office, and span anything from coffee lounges and gyms to childcare facilities and outdoor spaces.

Due to the expectations of modern day workplaces, business parks face significant challenges. Widely developed in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, these clusters of office space are typically located outside of city centres.

Their isolation from local facilities and heavy reliance on car use mean they face unique challenges compared to city centre workplaces, making in-house amenities fundamental for attracting and retaining tenants. It is crucial that we find creative ways to make these complexes more sustainable and relevant for the future workforce.

We can apply the educational sector’s concept of a "sticky campus" to transform business parks into hives of activity, using a sustainable blend of complementary amenities that encourage employees to stay and engage.

Case study: Arlington Square, Bracknell

Recent works at Arlington Square in Bracknell can be used as an exemplar case study that illustrates this approach.

At Number One Arlington Square, Chapman Taylor designed the internalisation of the central courtyard providing a triple height space where secluded seating areas, collaborative meeting pods and a coffee offer coexist, adding crucial amenity space without reducing NIA. The office suites have been periodically refurbished to offer a plug and play workplace with a variety of work settings to attract tenants from a range of different industries.

At number Three Arlington Square, recently completed works designed by Chapman Taylor capitalise on the business park’s setting – exploiting the abundance of green space to create outdoor court sporting facilities, diversifying from the typical city centre end-of-trip facilities that only accommodate cyclists and runners.

A new business lounge reception space opens onto a refurbished courtyard featuring a padel court and a self-contained gym pod. This, and the facilities at Number One are shared by the tenants of both buildings, fostering the campus concept and connecting not only the buildings but also the people who use them.

This campus concept shifts the focus from amenity-driven by quantity to improving the quality and range of amenities provided. For example, instead of accommodating the same small studio and coffee bar into isolated buildings, those same buildings could share an expansive lounge, full-size padel court, childcare centre and rooftop garden. This is much more space efficient than duplicating facilities and, therefore, an inherently more sustainable approach.

Workspaces can be treated as isolated assets or as one shared campus:

1. Isolated assets: 4 independent buildings, each with 2-3 identical facilities.
2. Collaborative approach: 4 connected buildings, each with different amenity offerings, totalling 8 unique, high-quality facilities.

With collaborative efforts among individual landlords, business parks and similar sites can share a wider variety of amenity facilities, creating attractive, amenity-rich workspaces that facilitate a balanced work-life dynamic – breathing new life into troublesome office stock, even making them more appealing than their city counterparts.