Human-Centric Real Estate & Generative AI - Part 1
Here are three questions relating to the role and impact generative ai will have in the development and operation of human-centric real estate.
How is generative AI poised to transform human-centric real estate and shape the future of workspaces?
How will the relationship between generative AI and personalised workplace experiences evolve in the coming years?
What implications does the widespread adoption of generative AI have for traditional notions of office space and design?
In part 1 of this series of posts we’ll answer question 1.
How is generative AI poised to transform human-centric real estate and shape the future of workspaces?
First, we need to define what is meant by the term ‘human-centric real estate’. My definition would be that:
‘Human-centric real estate is a design and operational philosophy for buildings and spaces that prioritises the needs, health, and well-being of the people who use them. In this approach, the design, construction, and management of a building are all centred around creating an environment that is conducive to the comfort, productivity, and overall satisfaction of its occupants.’
In turn this description can be unbundled into representing six key pillars that build on the general description. These are:
1. Wellness and Health: Buildings that are designed to promote the physical and mental health of occupants. This can involve air quality management, natural light, green spaces, and facilities that encourage physical activity.
2. Ergonomics and Comfort: Ensuring that the physical environment (like temperature, lighting, and acoustics) is optimised for comfort and reduces strain or discomfort.
3. Technology Integration: Using Smart technologies to enhance the user experience. This can include automated climate control, adaptive lighting systems, and other innovations that respond to the occupants' needs and preferences.
4. Community and Connectivity: Designing Spaces to foster a sense of community and connectivity among occupants. This can involve communal areas, shared resources, and design elements that encourage interaction.
5. Flexibility and Adaptability: Human-centric spaces need to be flexible and adaptable to meet the changing needs of their occupants over time. Sam Altman has a sign above his desk that reads ‘no one knows what happens next’. If he doesn’t know, what hope have we. Flexibility and adaptability have never been as important as they are now.
6. Sustainability: Ensuring that the building is energy-efficient and environmentally friendly, is a non negotiable. Sustainable buildings are great enablers of the other five pillars, and they cannot exist without it.
Now, before we go on, it’s worth thinking about why we need to care about ‘human-centric real estate’. After all, for many decades, offices (and this is the core asset class under consideration here) were very much ‘investor centric real estate’ - we weren’t developing buildings for people but assets for owners. Occupiers needed to work somewhere so had to use offices, but the key purpose of these buildings was to produce secure and stable long term cash flows for investors. Every effort was made to secure ‘Tenants’ but once leases were signed real estate companies were famously uninterested in interacting with the humans who actually worked in these buildings.
This has now changed. The trend was building pre covid but the experience of the pandemic turbo charged the understanding that getting work done was no longer dependant on attending the office five days a week, for 40 or more hours. Technology has ‘slowly then suddenly’ ripped away the NEED for offices. Nowadays the game is all about making occupiers actually WANT to occupy their offices. And judging by the two or so years since society opened up following the pandemic, there isn’t that much WANT going on. In the US office attendance has flatlined for over two years at roughly 2.5 days a week. In Europe it is slightly more, and even in Asia it’s not back to 5 days a week.
The bottom line is we have vast quantities of office space largely unloved and unliked by customers. And on top of that, much of it is unsustainable environmentally with little or no clear financial pathways to becoming so. In short, we are drowning in space either currently obsolete or on the way there.
Which of course is where human-centric real estate comes in. We have a desperate need to create buildings and spaces that are ‘conducive to the comfort, productivity, and overall satisfaction of occupants.’
Many are still debating this point but it really is a fools errand. Not only is the evidence all around us, both anecdotally but also in the form of academic research, but with every day that passes the technologies that are the root cause of this dislocation between work and place are getting better, and as they do the imperative to focus on human-centricity grows and grows.
But, as we will see, the newest technologies are also here to help us turn a bug into a feature. We know people respond positively to human-centric spaces, and generative ai in particular can help us develop them.
Predictive AI also has a strong part to play but for now let us concentrate on how generative ai can help us with each of the six pillars mentioned above.
This is how:
Pillar 1. Wellness and Health
With Custom Generative AI models could design wellness programs or environment layouts tailored to individual health needs or preferences.
And Off-the-Shelf Generative AI, such as ChatGPT or individual GPTs could provide health and wellness tips, suggest ergonomic practices, or offer mental health support through conversational interfaces.
Pillar 2. Ergonomics and Comfort
With Custom Generative AI models might develop ergonomic furniture or workspace designs customised to individual user’s physical needs.
And with Off-the-Shelf Generative AI tools like ChatGPT could offer advice on ergonomic setups and comfort improvement based on user queries.
Pillar 3. Technology Integration
With Custom Generative AI they could be used to create personalised user interfaces for building management systems, adapting to individual preferences and usage patterns.
And Off-the-Shelf Generative AI can assist in troubleshooting technology issues, offering user support, and providing recommendations for tech upgrades.
Pillar 4. Community and Connectivity
With Custom Generative AI models might design communal spaces or community-building activities tailored to the occupants’ profiles.
And Off-the-Shelf Generative AI can offer advice on community engagement strategies and facilitate connectivity through digital platforms.
Pillar 5. Flexibility and Adaptability
With Custom Generative AI models could generate design modifications for spaces, that adapt to evolving use cases or occupant needs.
And Off-the-Shelf Generative AI can provide suggestions on how to make spaces more adaptable or multifunctional based on current trends and user input.
And Pillar 6. Sustainability
With Custom Generative AI we could help develop sustainable building materials or innovative green solutions tailored to specific environmental conditions. Think green roofs, living walls, solar panel layouts and geothermal systems.
And Off-the-Shelf Generative AI can educate occupants on sustainable practices and suggest eco-friendly changes as well as organise community sustainability initiatives, like recycling or shared renewable energy projects.
As you will have noticed the key focus in the use of generative ai is to ‘prioritise the needs, health, and well-being of the people’ who use our offices. It’s all about creating spaces that catalyse human skills, on an individual by individual basis.
Strategically it is not about the adoption of a silver bullet technology (the classic approach of too many ‘Smart Building’ advocates) but rather an ‘operational manifesto’ that is much more personal and intensive. Human-centric real estate is not a fixed and final product. It is much better thought of as a combination of physical, digital and human inputs carefully curated to maximise the health, happiness and productivity of its users.
That is the future of workspaces.
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In Part 2 we will answer the question ‘How will the relationship between generative AI and personalised workplace experiences evolve in the coming years?’