The rise of the blended-use office

This past September, an 80-piece orchestra gathered to rehearse in an unusual space: the atrium of an office building in Amsterdam. Apparently, the acoustics were so good that four more orchestras have since elected to rehearse in the space.

The event was facilitated by real estate developer Edge and a new Dutch startup called UseSpace, which acts like a matchmaker between office buildings that have unused or underused space, and organizations that need it. It reflects a shift in the way developers are thinking about the office and the role it can play in society. It also suggests that office buildings can—and probably should—repurpose their dead space for something other than working.

The model could benefit many groups. Companies can engage with the local community (and stakeholders in that community) in a way that is much more tangible than ad dollars. Developers can contribute towards their ESG goals—especially the “S” part—by creating bigger social impact. Groups that need room to run workshops, coaching sessions, sporting events, or even bingo in evenings and on weekends can do just that without committing to long-term rentals. (And as a bonus, landlords can make some cash by transforming hard-to-monetize areas like basements and mechanical floors into revenue-generating facilities—like storage.)

Office buildings can finally shed their corporate armor, lower the drawbridge, and let the public in. Finally, these often impenetrable castles, with their cold marble entrances and hostile turn styles, can begin to double as community hubs where people also happen to be working.

I first visited Edge Stadium, where the orchestra rehearsal took place, in spring this year, to see what it would be like to have a meeting on a giant treadmill the size of a conference room. The building wasn’t quite open yet, and freshly delivered plants were stockpiled in one corner. Even empty, the atrium and its wooden facades were impressive, but it never would’ve occurred to me it would one day play host to an orchestra.  

The role of the office has been shifting, though. “We’ve learned a lot from the pandemic that’s changed the whole real estate market, and we were thinking how can we bring that vibrant energy back to buildings, how can we not be a silo in the city center,” says Florijn Vriend, head of well-being and social impact at Edge.

Edge’s collaboration with UseSpace came about serendipitously. Vriend’s team knew they wanted to improve the building’s social impact but didn’t quite know how to do it. Meanwhile, UseSpace cofounder, Mare Santema, and her team had met members of the local symphony orchestra De Philharmonie at a recent festival and they knew the musicians were looking for a new rehearsal space. The timber-clad atrium reminded Santema of a church hosting a choir, so she thought it could be a great fit for the musicians. And it was.

Now, Edge Stadium operates as an office during the day, and turns into a rehearsal space four evenings a week. (The first rehearsal in September was open to the public, but subsequent rehearsals have remained behind closed doors so musicians can focus.) Santema calls this new type of office building a blended-use one. Unlike mixed-use buildings, where various functions are combined under one roof, blended-use buildings allow for various uses to be stacked across different time slots.

The proposition makes sense, but implementing it comes with its own challenges. Santema says the reason why office landlords and developers don’t offer up their space to other organizations isn’t necessarily because they’re not willing to do so, but because channels of communication between both groups simply don’t exist. “Their worlds are too far removed from each other, so we saw we had to step in as a platform or network or matchmaker to find them and give them both a seat at table,” says Santema.

Since UseSpace launched in January 2023, the company has fostered 25 partnerships between various offices and organizations in Amsterdam. Some events have even occurred at UseSpace’s own office, which was designed by local studio d/dock to be fully operational for almost any type of uses, including a fully equipped kitchen and sleeping pods. “We can transform everything into anything and we almost never say no unless it’s too commercial,” says Santema. (Rates vary based on the kind of organization involved—NGOs pay anywhere from 0 to 400 euros; commercial clients might pay more, plus a “matchmaking fee.”)

Over the past few months, the UseSpace office has hosted sports lessons, well-being sessions, multiple art exhibitions, movie nights, a holiday market, and pop-up restaurants on weekends. Once, Santema spent all day working from home, then went to the office in the evening to have dinner at one of the pop-up restaurants they were hosting that day.

This kind of communal mentality is rippling across the globe. In the UK, the real estate developer Fore has revived the concept of the “urban village hall,” which was historically a building where the community comes together for a variety of functions like Parish meetings, polls and various gatherings. At Fore buildings, these take the shape of dedicated spaces, about 1-2% of net lettable area, that are given away to the community for free. Glasgow’s first net zero workspace, Cadworks, hosted a number of events during COP26 two years ago. And at TBC.London, currently under construction near the capital’s Tower Bridge, the “urban village hall” will be used for events related to education, art and mental health.

Meanwhile, in Culver City, ChowNow’s new headquarters were designed to serve more than its employees, as well. The food-ordering company’s 21,000-square-foot office was designed by Rapt Studio, and the main attraction is a giant test kitchen with a 27-foot-long kitchen island. During the day, employees can use the kitchen to make lunch and share a meal. At night, ChowNow invites restaurant partners to host cooking classes and pop-up restaurants. And because the office is located on the ground floor, and the layout allows for a group of strangers to get to the kitchen without going anywhere near people’s desks (and snatching a fancy stapler) there is no particular security risk at play.

For over a year now, ChowNow has been running a program called After Hours, hosting various events on weekdays evenings and weekends. These include media workshops with non-profits like Regarding Her, which works on empowering women restaurateurs; live podcast recordings with Snacky Tunes; pizza classes with LA’s famed Pizzana; and a potluck where local chefs brought their favorite dishes and cooked for each other.

The program is less about generating revenue (it’s actually free!) and more about fostering relationships with the company’s “lifeblood” as Rapt Studio’s CEO and chief creative officer David Galullo put it. “When the space helps to invite those groups in to build a stronger alliance between partners and clients, it’s beneficial to their bottom-line through indirect channels,” he says. “We’re seeing more people willing to make those meaningful engagements at a much more smaller, much more targeted level and realizing the power of bringing people together in any space is something that should be tapped.”

Back at Edge Stadium in Amsterdam, Vriend’s team has only hosted a few rehearsals but the company’s partnership with UseSpace has proven so successful that the developers are already thinking about how they might design future buildings to facilitate blended-use from the start—perhaps even extending beyond the ground-floor. “Libraries are often crowded around exams, could we offer our office space and desks to students to study on the weekend?” she says. “That just requires a lot more management because you probably have a tenant that needs to allow access, but maybe next generation of buildings will start to think about designing for that.”