Guoco Midtown’s Five Dimensions Of Office Flexibility:  Catering To Future Dynamic Needs Of Businesses

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Guoco Midtown, the upcoming integrated development of GuocoLand Limited (“GuocoLand”), has opened Singapore’s first fully operational office show gallery at its 30-storey office tower. The show gallery demonstrates the future of offices through Guoco Midtown’s five dimensions of flexibility in office leasing.

Guoco Midtown is a 3.2-hectare integrated mixed-use development in Singapore’s Downtown Core, with more than 700,000 sq ft of premium Grade A office space. It is expected to bring an additional 10,000 office workers, residents and visitors daily into the district when completed in phases from the fourth quarter of 2022.

The office tower will have an efficient, central core office floor plate of 30,000 sq ft with a generous 3.3m ceiling. The 1.8m wide floor-to-ceiling windows will allow workers to enjoy panoramic views of Marina Bay, Kallang Basin, and other skylines of the city.

Fig. 1 – Guoco Midtown’s new office show gallery demonstrates the future of offices, including how office spaces can be designed as an activity-based workplace suited for today’s agile workforce. Pictured here are some examples of collaborative workspaces.

Five Dimensions of Office Flexibility

Beyond best-of-class specifications, Guoco Midtown’s premium Grade A offices showcase five dimensions of flexibility –presenting an alternative hybrid workspace to meet the evolving needs of today’s enterprises. The five dimensions of office flexibility cater to differing needs of office tenants in future-proofing their business while maximising the opportunities from embracing a fluid, hybrid work environment. Guoco Midtown’s five dimensions of office flexibility are:

1. Flex in Core – Guoco Midtown’s highly efficient floorplates offer tenants great flexibility to design their office space as an activity-based workplace suited for today’s agile workforce. Tenants can expand work stations or restack the office as the floorplate adopts a flexible modular design that considers the requirements of critical aspects such as fire escape route openings into the building core, air-conditioning ducts and cabling.

2. Core to Flex – The “Core to Flex” concept enables growing enterprises with a core office in the office tower to lease additional dedicated, fitted out swing spaces on levels 8 and 9. Locating teams within the same building allows workers to easily connect, boosting a collaborative workplace culture while promoting efficient resource sharing, such as IT systems.

Fig. 2 – Flex Connect: Guoco Midtown’s Network Hub offers a suite of spaces for corporate tenants to tap on for collaborative work and recreational facilities, such as a rooftop pool and a private dining room.

3. Flex Connect – Guoco Midtown tenants can tap on the Network Hub annexe building, a first-of-its-kind, purpose-built business and social club that offers additional service-upon-demand office spaces and meeting facilities. Directly connected to the office tower, the Network Hub has a host of amenities across 80,000 sq ft of space. This includes office spaces, tenants’ lounges, soundproof office pods for virtual meetings, tech-enabled hybrid meeting and training rooms, larger conference facilities for up to 200 people that are ideal for holding town halls and product launches, and a rooftop private dining room. Office tenants have the opportunity to enjoy complimentary access to the lounge and collaboration spaces at the Network Hub, which will be managed and operated by GuocoLand.

4. Flex Lifestyles – As an integrated mixed-use development, Guoco Midtown’s immersive work-live-play concept presents a distinct lifestyle to office workers, residents and visitors through a wide range of recreational, retail and garden spaces. It is designed to support the physical and mental wellness of its occupants. The Guoco Midtown Gardens is a collection of 30 private and public gardens and landscaped areas totalling 3.8 hectares with more than 350 species of plants. In addition, there is a 40m lap pool, jogging track, an event plaza that can be used for workouts and pavilions for entertainment. With spectacular views, the Sky Garden at the crown of the approximately 192m-tall office tower is ideal for company functions. Completing the Guoco Midtown lifestyle are three retail clusters totalling 50,000 sq ft of retail and F&B offerings. Two luxury condominiums – the 219-unit Midtown Bay and 558-unit Midtown Modern also offer companies based in Guoco Midtown an ideal housing option for expatriate employees, while local talents may wish to own or lease a unit to enjoy the convenience of living close to their workplace.

Fig. 3 – Flex Lifestyles: A wide selection of F&B choices, including alfresco dining in lush garden settings, will provide tenants and the public with a welcome respite from work and plenty of spaces for networking.

5. Flex Cloud – Recognising that the vision to provide a flexible, scalable office space must be matched by having a flexible IT infrastructure, Guoco Midtown will provide office tenants with the option to access private cloud service on-demand. With the flexibility to tap onto the cloud service, tenants can reduce the need for large data centres or server rooms within their offices while enjoying the security and scalability of private cloud servers.

Ms Valerie Wong, Group General Manager (Asset Management) of GuocoLand, said: “The introduction of Guoco Midtown’s five-dimensional flexible office concept is timely as companies are grappling with hybrid workplaces and rapid changes in future space planning. When we conceptualised this, we saw the need to offer flexibility beyond office space extension and provide an unmatched level of flexibility to meet dynamic business needs. Taking user requirements from traditional office leasing and co-working arrangements, we have created a one-of-a-kind flexible office product that has been designed and built into the infrastructure of Guoco Midtown.”

Guoco Midtown is directly connected to the Bugis interchange MRT station, which is served by both the East-West Line and Downtown Line. It is also within walking distance to the North-South and Circle Lines. Guoco Midtown is also linked to the wider Beach Road-Bugis vicinity through an underground pedestrian network and a network of second-level linkways and bridges.

The multi-billion development is led by GuocoLand with a group of investors – Hong Kong-listed Guoco Group Limited, Hong Leong Holdings Limited and Hong Realty (Private) Limited.