Office downsizing after remote work shift has led to boom of projects converting vacant offices into apartments
The European Commission agreed a deal in April to sell 23 office buildings in Brussels to the Belgian state, which plans to redevelop them. Photograph: Aldo Pavan/Getty ImagesIt is well accepted that the maze of offices in Brussels hosting the various institutions of the European Union is a pretty soulless part of the city.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to introduce housing into the neighbourhood, so there will be life after hours,” said Kristiaan Borret, bouwmeester of Brussels.Historically this role was to act as the architect of the city or region, on behalf of the local or state authority. Now the independent position advises and promotes good urban development and city planning.
Many of these empty office blocks were located outside of the city centre, making them ideal for housing. “In general we can see thanks to the office crisis and the office shrinkage that a lot of office buildings become available for housing in the green periphery,” Borret says. The phenomenon of office-to-housing conversion was generally confined to bigger, stand-alone buildings, rather than vacant space on the floors above a shop. It was more complicated to convert the top two, three or four storeys in a building where the ground floor was still going to be used for retail, partly as it was rare all the floors would become vacant at the same time.
There’s a misconception that the city has huge numbers of vacant buildings that could be turned into housing, he says. “We analysed the situation of the vacancy rate in Brussels in 2023. We have roughly 13 million square metres of office in Brussels, among which roughly one million square metres is empty.”
Office buildings constructed during the 1950s and 1960s in the belt outside Brussels city centre are today less attractive for workers. “Those owners often have no other choice but to convert,” Lemaire says.
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