Сalcalist, Amitay Gazit, 04.06.2020

The balcony - the one we usually prefer to close to get a few more meters, and the one we said is not quite as practical in a hot country as Israel - has flourished again in the Corona. The best evidence of this is the real estate developers, who are now making eighths in the air to design balconies in every apartment.

"In projects in the planning stages, we will now take up areas from the apartment itself to produce a more spacious balcony," notes Uri Fleischman, vice president of marketing and sales of the Meshulam Levinstein Group. "We will increase the balconies by 3 to 5 sq.m. Produce a better and better product. A spacious balcony gives added value and I will highlight it in marketing. If in the past 12 square meters was enough for the balcony, today realize that a balcony is the only point of ventilation in the apartment. With the addition of 3 square meters you can put out a table, or create more space for the children's bimbo.

Yaffe Sedan, VP of Marketing and Sales at Yossi Avrahami, reports a similar move. We asked the planners to increase the balconies, even at the expense of the apartment space. "

Gil Gurevich, regional marketing and sales manager, says the company has already begun to increase balconies, in a process that will be implemented in dozens of projects in the near future. "Increasing sun balconies is our most common requirement of our customers. It can reach a 50% increase. We are currently increasing balconies at the expense of prime space in planned buildings that are located just before obtaining a building permit. This will be done in dozens of buildings."

Another solution for sunlight is a shared garden for the occupants of the building on the top floor of the shops. "In a construction evacuation project on Tribal Street in Bat Yam, where four towers will be built with about 700 apartments, a garden will be built on the roof of the commercial area. Each 2 buildings will have a shared garden of 600 square meters. This is an area that the original design has not utilized and we are now planning to invest a lot of money in it. In other projects where this will be possible, we will take some space from the garden apartments to create a shared garden for tenants, "says Gurevich.

On Yad 2, for Calcalist, the increase in demand for apartments and homes with open-air access and gardens was examined. In April there were 123,150 searches for apartments with balconies, compared with March when there were 91,527 searches. Six months ago, in October 2019, there were 78,481 searches for apartments with a balcony - a 64% increase.

At the same time, in April, 205,000 surfers were interested in a garden apartment, an increase of about 10% compared to a monthly average of about 187,000 in December 2019 through February 2020. January and February to 545,000 in April.

Get out of the house and work in an office in the lobby

YH Demery has also recently been reviewing planning changes to suit the spirit of the period. "As a result of the Corona crisis, we are looking at all residential projects on the design table, balconies being enlarged, and the creation of shared workspaces within the building, all at the expense of other areas of the building," says Amir Cohen, Vice President of Marketing. Same for shared work space. It will be a very bright area, with communication infrastructure, and the possibility of laying work positions. This change is possible in the lobby of towers, because they are always spacious. In the past, this area has been used for a gym, gym or sitting area. The closure and the need to work from home flooded the need for a work space. We are already implementing it in projects in Bat Yam, Givat Shmuel, Petah Tikva and Ashdod. "

Real estate company ad. Emphasis on open space

Meshulam Levinstein's group identified a similar need and are working to establish a shared work space in a residential construction project. "In the Cliff Tower project in Netanya, we took an area that was originally designated for a tenants club and decided to change it into a work space. That way it can work in a relaxed manner without the distractions created by the members of the house.

David Knapo, chairman of the Association of Architects and City Builders, believes that these planning changes are not a momentary whim or result of a temporary trend that will soon expire, but are the buds of deep changes in urban planning: "In the near future, we will see developers and planners planting cubes in buildings, which will form a shared space To the occupants' work. You will pay rent to the house committee, and maybe in the first place will buy an office unit within the building. Some tenants will buy and some will not, just as the contractor sells you parking. At the same time you can create offices that can also be hotel units. These ideas have been circulating for a while in the academic corridors of architects, and today reality forces us to realize them. "

Return of the "half room"

At Azorim, they decided to propose another solution to work from home: return the halfway room to the apartments. "In the distant past half a room was common. It was born out of a planning constraint and it was common to sell a 4.5 or 5.5 room apartment but in recent years we stopped with it because there was no demand," says Gurevich. "Today demand is reborn. This is a room of about 8 square meters that fits into a study. People will understand and know how to pay for it. "

According to him, the idea of ​​creating joint work spaces, especially in the Tel Aviv area, came to them even before the Corona crisis, but precisely because of the crisis they decided to shelter it. "We are afraid to build such spaces because, according to our analysis, people prefer to work in a home or office alongside people they know. We have also identified this in the real estate. We think people will be afraid to work in a shared closed space. But we're still debating the matter. "

And there will be urban changes as well. Canpo: "The suburb will become a satellite of the city. Not a sleeping city, but a secondary urban center. In the era of epidemics and technological developments, there is support for remote work. It will create an incredible lifestyle. With the kids before they go to school or do some fitness. Sit in front of the computer, take a lunch break at home, and you can complete your workday by 10 p.m. "

Central District Planner in the District Planning Committee, Guy Kaplan, also estimates that urban changes will blend in with trends that started before the Corona era: Also residential, but also jobs, and with the option of going down to the retail space. "

Flexible and multi-purpose towers

Only in recent days has Alony Hetz, which mainly builds and manages office towers, estimated that the plague and occupational health concerns can change the design of buildings - and not just because of the preference for sitting in private rooms over open space congregations. In the report for the first quarter of 2020, Amot noted that ventilation, control and monitoring systems in office buildings would now have to be adapted to the Corona era. Since many towers do not even have windows that can be opened and ventilated, this is not a simple challenge that the regulator may also need to be required with new rules and instructions.

The biggest challenge in the coming years, as experts and engineers estimate, will be to match construction and planning to the reality of uncertainty. First and foremost, understanding that there may not be so much demand for office growers in the future - because of the economic downturn, the move to more work from home, the technological options and more - and it is very worthwhile to plan them in advance with the possibility of a zoning change.

The project management company Waxman Govrin recently drafted a document detailing the planning needs for the establishment of a "flexible office building", ie one that can be easily converted into residential. "We tried to find the launch points between offices and residential. We said that if you are already planning offices today, you should consider parameters that will allow a relatively simple residential conversion," says Yigal Govrin. According to him, the Flexible Micro Project is planning, but will save costs that may crop up in the future. "If we have to live with this story of isolation and social distance for a long time, the name of the game is flexibility."

Architect Yoav Oman, owner and partner at Tito-Uman's office, is already talking about thoughts of building living rooms inside office buildings: "You can separate spaces in your office and transform them into rest areas or sleeping areas.