A new Estate of mind
The Bartlett’s soon-to-be-launched Real Estate Institute will look afresh at how we define and value the built environment.
How do you set about valuing the built environment heritage? What is the value uplift of excellent design? What are the stream of values we get from urban place-making? What do we need to do to achieve step-changes in the performance of our buildings so as tackle issues such as climate change, improvements in our economic productivity and rapid technological change? These are some of the questions that The Bartlett Real Estate Institute will seek to answer when it launches in the autumn of 2017.
The Real Estate Institute, which will be based in Here East, east London, will comprise a diverse range of experts from The Bartlett, all of whom are embedded in, fascinated with, or intrinsically linked to, the built environment. The Institute will look to extend and redefine what is meant by ‘real estate’, moving beyond the narrow notion of real estate as being buildings that are just investment opportunities and tradable assets, to a wider understanding of the societal, environmental and economic value of real estate.
“We aren’t limiting ourselves to the view of real estate as being the types of building that would normally get labelled as ‘commercial’, ‘industrial’, ‘retail’, or even ‘mixed use’,” says Professor Andrew Edkins, Director of the Real Estate Institute. “To us, the buildings and other elements of infrastructure that give us the spaces and places that we all use and rely on are real estate. What we are doing with the Institute is looking afresh at the value we obtain and derive from this built environment or real estate.”
That’s important because in almost every avenue of life – and therefore every area of our built environment – huge changes are taking place. “The costs – both financial and environmental – of heating and cooling our buildings, for example, are becoming far more important,” says Professor Edkins.
There are many exciting emerging technologies and techniques that can produce new real estate. However, the existing built stock presents a major challenge in terms of the performance that can be achieved from it. Professor Edkins says that, for many existing buildings, there is no easy fix. “In the UK and other countries where we’ve been building for centuries, our historical buildings present an example of the growing challenge we face. In some cases we can alter the use of a building without destroying its architectural design value, but in others we simply have to preserve it as a relic from a bygone era and recognise that the cost of doing so is justified by the ‘value’ we get from it. These are the kinds of issues we’ll be wrestling with at the Real Estate Institute.”
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