Designing live/work: have you ticked the right boxes?

KNOW YOUR MARKET

The first and most obvious requirement is thinking about who you hope will want to live in your scheme and whether they’ll be in the market to buy, rent or part buy. Fledgling start-up or microbusinesses might be in no position to lay out huge sums right now, so building something they’d love but can’t afford is a no-no.

You’ll need to offer a basic structure and services they’ll find essential, like an affordable and reliable internet connection. But also make sure there’s capacity for residents to add on and embellish their facilities as and when their business takes off.

 

If you’re aiming at more established businesses, there’s more than a good chance the work side will come with a family they made earlier or they’ll have household aspirations that include a private garden, shed and ample room for guests. Allow too little living space and your market share could diminish accordingly.

PlANNERS AND LENDERS: A CERTAIN RATIO

Local planners can have very fixed ideas about the proportion of living space to work space they’re prepared to accept, almost certainly reflecting local targets for employment and manufacturing.

The long-held view that business and residential uses should operate in disparate zones is looking increasingly outmoded. But many boroughs remain reluctant to approve schemes that on paper may risk turning land previously used for commercial or industrial purposes into residential. The upshot is sometimes an insistence on a 50:50 live/work divide.

This raises two challenges. The first is that this split may be unsuitable for the building you have in mind, with buildings in need of refurbishment – especially if they’re listed or subject to a preservation order – posing particular problems.

Mortgage lenders too have very fixed ideas on floor space with almost all singularly reluctant to offer residential mortgages on properties where the work element exceeds 40% of total floor space. Their prime concern however is potential problems with on-sales if the borrower defaults on mortgage payments. So planners need to realise that the 50% rule is usually just not viable.

‘My view is that mortgage companies are slowly waking up to the fact that this is a strong and growing market,’ says sculptor Jeff Lowe, the pioneering developer behind Havelock Mews, a thriving south London live/work enterprise based in neighbouring converted warehouses.

‘More and more people are realising they don’t have to be stuck doing these long commutes – people will always want this sort of property.’ In fact by adding another storey to his latest live/work conversion, Lowe was able to also resolve the planner’s requirement that half the building he was converting be used for work purposes. Of course this is not always a viable option.

But matching lender’s conditions with those of your local planners can be problematic. Do your homework to find out what live/work ratios have worked elsewhere so you can, if necessary, build up a solid argument to support your case.

In Birmingham, for example, city planners suspended their preferred 50:50 live/work ratio for a Viti Developments scheme in a listed building in the city’s historic Jewellery Quarter. ‘When Viti bought the building it already had consent for live/work but they couldn’t see how to make a 50:50 split work without a lot of [structural] alterations,’ senior planner Diane Sampson said.

‘We’d have had to erect new internal walls which didn’t sit well with a listed building and it would have marginalised the sort of creative people who’d like the natural light in the building,’ added director Hannah Martyr.

An additional complication is that at 50% work use, a building is deemed mostly commercial, throwing capital gains tax, VAT, business rates (and ‘probably two sets of bins’ according to Martyr) into the mix for buyers. While some live/work schemes, and the businesses prepared to buy in to them, can support this, for a micro- or start-up business, it could be a strong deterrent.

SEPARATE WAYS

Proper separation of living and working areas is perhaps the most important element, with discrete entrances to both. The separation of space and access means it can be business as normal for staff or colleagues if you take a break or (anathema to the self-employed) you’re too sick to work.

‘People like some kind of separation between their work space and their living area, particularly if there’s more than one person working there,’ says Alan Camp of Alan Camp Architects. ‘We design them so they’re proper live/work units, not just space where a bedroom can be used as a work space.’

Camp launched his own practice from a live/work unit so has been able to draw on his own experience. ‘We separate them out so there’s a clear definition – that is your work area and that is your live area.’

This delineation should be self evident from the design, before anyone has moved in. ‘You should make clear through the design that it’s a proper workspace and not a converted bedroom,’ says Piers Taylor, a partner in the Mitchell Taylor Workshop, which has been involved in around 20 live/work developments over the last couple of years.

In a flat, having the work area on the lower floor and the residential upstairs means minimal disruption to home life. But in the USA, where live/work is rapidly becoming a mainstream option for planners and developers, a wider range of models has evolved to suit different household and business needs.

People with a family, for example, might opt for 'live/work nearby' where, as the label suggests, the work premises are in a separate building – at the bottom of the garden maybe, or a short walk away. But in the UK it is hard to see how this can be called live/work.

SPACE ODDITY

Good natural light, sufficient room to manipulate messy or delicate materials and more space to store bulky materials are absolute requirements for some creative endeavours. And many start-up or micro businesses may well be hoping in the medium to longer term to expand their operation without having to up sticks and move.

Allow too little or inappropriate space for the work element and the occupier might be tempted to use the entire unit for residential. ‘I’d say around 50% of developers are getting it wrong,’ says Jeff Lowe.

At Havelock Walk, he not only has a studio/workshop and office, he has a gallery providing exhibition space where he can display his own sculptures and that of his neighbours, all of whom are engaged in creative industries, from ceramics to photography.

‘If it’s an area that’s perhaps not particularly desirable, as a lot of live/work units tend to be, then as a developer you have to offer people what they won’t get elsewhere – the big spaces and the high ceilings. Why else would they put up with all the limitations of living in that area? High ceilings are crucial but a lot of developers – if the units are being built from new – won’t put them in because it adds to the cost. They think they won’t get that investment back, but of course they do.’

CAPACITY FOR EXPANSION

A stable community is a real plus for live/work so you’ll want to avoid a situation where residents are forced to move out if their partner moves in with them, or they have a child. Equally, they might want to take on staff so it’s essential they can adapt the space on offer to suit their new circumstances.

‘You might be marketing a unit that’s absolutely great – until you’ve got kids,’ says Julian Hakes of architects Hakes Associates, who live and run their practice from the Jam Factory in south-east London. ‘Flexibility is absolutely essential – you need to allow people to bespoke their spaces. There’s not just one single model of a business.’

BUSINESS PRACTICALITIES

Is the work area equipped with the basics your clients will need to run their business? And if they are going to want extras, will you provide this or can they get them installed without tearing up the floors and gouging holes in the walls? Your priority should be sufficient wiring, and that means more than just a couple of plug points for the telly and DVD player. With wireless technology still liable to wobble, you will also want to build in hardwiring for ethernet links. Read more on getting wired here.

A second consideration should be extra floor loading to support heavy commercial equipment or materials. And you’ll want entrances large enough to offer easy access for deliveries of bulky or heavy equipment and supplies.

Soundproofing will also need to be substantial. The whole point of live/work developments is mixed use, so you will not want your occupants driven mad by the noise of their neighbour’s business (or family).

GREEN IS GOOD

Live/work has been an element in pioneering eco-schemes like Peabody Trust’s BedZed, which in some respects has learnt the hard way what works and what needs further tweaking. With the government now demanding strict targets for energy efficiency in all new homes, live/work is in a strong position to set a  standard that also takes in the practicalities of running a business.

The green angle is also a very strong selling point for marketing to live/workers. That most take environmental concerns seriously is evident in their decision to stop travelling to and from a far-flung office.

There’s the added bonus of being able to promise genuinely lower fuel consumption and running costs by ensuring your scheme is built to withstand extremes of heat or cold. All live/work schemes should be designed to minimise noise transference and well insulated to ensure a comfortable ambient temperature without the need for extra heating or ventilation. Where these and other energy sources are needed, using renewable technology will have the added bonus of protecting against utility power shortages and cuts.

Ample natural light in the work area is a must. A lot of potential buyers and renters will work in the visual arts or design and artificial light will affect their ability to work with colours, shapes, light and shade, as well as adding to their energy bills.

The surrounding environment is just as important. Businesses tend to generate a lot of waste, much of it recyclable, and they won’t want it building up in a corner inside their premises. So you’ll need a rodent-proof space for storing rubbish and recyclable waste that is also accessible to heavy vehicles.

As for organic waste, can this be composted locally? Many schemes now include compost bins as a matter of course, with some also offering garden allotments where residents can use their compost as nature intended.

And finally car usage... in many urban areas, there may already be a host of alternatives to travelling by car. But with the cost of public transport increasing, sometimes matched by an equivalent loss of comfort, safety and convenience, what are the alternatives? If your scheme is off the beaten track residents may have no choice but to sometimes travel by road.

  

It makes sense then to anticipate your residents’ travel needs – offer plenty of space for parking bicycles (securely) and consider setting up a car pool or buying into a local car sharing scheme.

A VIEW TO A SALE

It may sound trivial, but what will the views be like? Working on your own can be a lonely endeavour so being able to see other people (or even a few birds or trees!) can ease that sense of isolation. Much more depressing is staring at a brick wall or a corner under the stairs.

If you can see who is approaching the premises there is also the added benefit of enhancing security. And who among us welcomes cutting an important phone call short to answer the doorbell only to find a pair of strangers on your doorstep keen that to start you subscribing to Watchtower.

‘Often our units will overlook large communal gardens – we’re not talking terraced houses with back yards here,’ says Piers Taylor. ‘But I have to say we do tend to save the best views for the residential part of the building. That’s based on the feeling that when you’re working, you’re working, so the south facing views for example would be the residential ones – the ones you use for recreation.’

REMEMBER IT’S A COMMUNITY

That’s a community in two senses, business and social, and the more shared space designed into your scheme – be it meeting rooms, communal IT facilities or a café or recreation area – the more chance it will succeed on both levels.

Shared business facilities will help neighbours to network, perhaps finding new clients or a service that will boost their own enterprise. An absence of opportunities for human interaction is arguably live/work’s weakest point so engineering social contact between live/workers is very important.

Many of the more successful live/work developments have taken this aspect one step further by designing in premises for a business hub (read more here), offering actual or virtual office services along with commercial equipment that small or start-up businesses find useful but can ill afford. The cost of buying and maintaining this could be subsidised by the developer, added to service charges and/or offset by hiring equipment and/or meeting space to others locally.

And at the end of the working day, these communal facilities should allow neighbours to relax, socialise and help each other out. ‘There’s such a strong sense of community in the live/work world,’ says Julian Hakes. ‘The thing that really frustrates me is people buying live/work units and not using them as that. Community spirit is at the heart of live/work, and people flouting it are destroying the very thing that makes it work.

‘We’re really feeding into the local community with our company, and without something like this it would have been very difficult for us to have built a business. We had a client over from Dubai recently’, he says, ‘where this kind of thing is pretty much unheard of. He couldn’t believe what a fantastic, creative environment it was for kids to grow up in.’