Breathing new life into business parks: What do we do with CAT B office stock?

A case study of Arlington Square, Bracknell.

The workplace of today

In a post-pandemic world, a workplace is more than simply a place of work. What were once traditional corporate keyhole receptions have become business lounges with complimentary coffee, yoga classes, and sleeping pods—hospitality-driven places for interaction and physical activity as part of a new working lifestyle.

Offering amenity facilities is fundamental to getting employees back into the workplace and creating a fulfilling work environment, typically including:

- Coffee offer/eatery

- Gym & Fitness facilities

- Personal lockers/storage

- Wellness/relaxation areas

- Quiet and collaborative spaces with varied work settings

- Areas for social gathering

- Outdoor spaces

- Childcare facilities

- Meditation/prayer rooms

Difficulties of offering amenities in a business park setting

Amenity offerings are unique to the site and context, with a business park typology facing different challenges to that of a city centre workplace.

Gaining popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, suburban business parks were created as isolated clusters solely for business use. Their secluded nature made them the first office typology to be directly accessible by car, allowing workers to drive straight to the office, do their work and drive home at the end of the day. Business parks were never to be a place to stay when the working day was over, separating work from home in a time when the two are interlinked more so than ever before. Their seclusion means it's more important for a business park than any other office location to provide amenity facilities. What can we do to take a business park's isolation and car-commuting nature to create their own USP?

What do business parks need?

The lack of amenities in a business park's locality puts the onus on workplaces to provide facilities in-house. Their locality means they face challenges different from city centre workplaces, manifesting differences in amenity demand.

If we turn to the education sector, we can see the use of the 'sticky campus'—destination places where people not only have a reason to travel to but also a reason to stay. We can apply this ideology to a business park, exploiting the isolated nature, cohesive building style, and abundance of green spaces to create a hub or campus, creating a more concentrated variety of amenities in a smaller area and enriching the workplace offering.

Case study: Arlington Square, Bracknell.

Arlington Square is a 22-acre (8.9 ha) business park located west of Bracknell Town Centre. It comprises four office buildings positioned around a central lake. Surrounded by non-residential land uses, the site is primarily and almost solely accessed by car. As of 2020, the four buildings on the estate were isolated from not only the town but also from one another, with one private coffee offer in the entire estate.

At Number 1 on the square, Chapman Taylor designed the internalisation of a central courtyard space, connecting the front and rear reception to re-establish how the building is accessed and experienced. The 2023 renovation completion has created a central hub, providing a ground floor triple height space where secluded seating areas, collaborative meeting pods and a coffee offer coexist, adding crucial amenity space without reducing NIA.

In late 2023, the same client purchased Number 3 on the square, where Chapman Taylor has again utilised an external courtyard to house new amenity facilities. Synonymous with car use, business parks discourage active commuters, meaning there is a real need for physical activity provision. With cycling not prevalent, we can exploit the abundance of green space to create outdoor court sporting facilities—diversifying from the typical end-of-trip facilities that accommodate cyclists and runners.

At 3 Arlington Square, the unused external courtyard was falling into disrepair and was an ideal opportunity to integrate a new amenity, differentiating from those usually seen in city centre offices. The external space is well proportioned to house a padel court and small self-contained gym building. This connects directly to a new internal reception business lounge with shower change facilities for a collaborative sport, serving as a breakout amenity for all abilities. The padel court here and the internal courtyard at number One are to be shared by the tenants of both buildings, fostering the campus concept on the park and connecting currently separated buildings and the people who use them.

Amenity is vital to the workplace, even more so when that workplace sits in isolation as it does with a business park typology. By looking at the entire park and broader context, through considered retrofit, we can introduce a breadth of accessible, free amenities for employees that are unattainable in city centre locations. If landlords are to work together to complement each other's offering over an entire park, efficiently designed and shared amenities will enrich the working environment for their tenants and contribute to creating a campus. The boundary of each amenity-rich workplace bleeds into the other, creating a soft blend between buildings and forming a cohesive campus with a balanced work-life dynamic.

Room to grow

This ideology can be pushed further and applied to logistic transport sites, with this workplace typology very similar to a business park. Being situated adjacent to key road links for goods distribution means that the majority of employees will have to drive to the site, where they then sit isolated from amenity facilities and have human interaction beyond their own workforce. If the landlords of these warehouses were to work in tandem with one another, a similar dynamic to that of Arlington Square could be created, making these workplaces desirable and even preferable over city centre offices.

Considering site and context, the defining features of business parks and logistic transport sites can be shifted - once popular for its accessibility by car, now for the accessibility and variety of amenities in a 'sticky campus' setting.

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 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 on the 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.

1. 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.