Interview: Architect Koichi Takada
“We want to make Sydney the greenest city in the world.”
“We want to make Sydney the greenest city in the world.”
Architect Koichi Takada has never taken the easy option.
Born in Tokyo, at 16 he held dreams of pursuing life as a fashion designer or an artist – aimed at realising a firm desire to live in Manhattan.
He eventually came to architecture – a combination of art and engineering – as a pathway to appease such wants and those of his parents.
It didn’t quite work out – his father offering an easy life and generous role in the family engineering business so long as he remained in Tokyo.
Takada instead chose New York.
Cut to now and the 48-year-old is a force within global architecture, having set up an eponymous Australian-based firm while securing various awards across projects that have transformed urban landscapes here as well as in Asia, America, the Middle East and beyond.
Kanebridge News: Most people would take the path of least resistance – why were you so set on going it alone and moving to New York?
KT: This was definitely a leap of faith. I had this gut feeling that I’m going to survive there, that somehow everything would work out including communications [a language barrier] and making friends – you know Japanese people are very homogenous and very singular, and I’d thrown myself into this melting pot. But it had been a dream of mine.
KN: Did first impressions of the city stack up?
KT: When I arrived my first impression was just disbelief – and the way you come out of the Lincoln Tunnel, I was just,‘wow’. But it was overwhelming, it was noisy and very competitive and cold and I didn’t get the pampering I had with my parents in Japan. I had sold everything to be there and I got sick of it.
RR: You eventually left New York to study in London, how did those times influence you and your work?
KN: After leaving New York, to continue my studies at the AA [Architectural Association School of Architecture] I met and learned from the likes of Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhas, and that’s where I really learnt to push the boundaries, and create the point of difference, the uniqueness within this monotonous repetition of all this regulation … And the cultural component is definitely an important part too. When I was in New York, my favourite part was going to Central Park. And the same in London – I craved breathing space. I discovered a feeling that I connected with when in Japan, because nature is respected and there’s an effort to try and blend in [with nature] and find harmony.
KN: Nature is a central part of much of your work.
KT: Yeah. With Infinity [Sydney’s Infinity Tower], when we were competing for the project we were given the volumes, but I thought it would actually overshadow the courtyard which was meant for public use. I thought to myself, ‘why would you create a courtyard that doesn’t receive any daylight?’ So, we opened a hole to let the light in. It’s very simple, but then all of a sudden you have a breeze, light and a way to interact with nature.
KN: Why did you settle in Sydney?
KT: When I moved to Sydney in 1997, I just instantly felt something wonderful about the city, and now I’ve been here more than 20 years. I call it my home. It’s city and nature trying to balance. It’s one of the best cities in the world.
KN: Do you feel your style of melding nature and urban living was a natural fit for Sydney?
KT: Yeah, I think our product is very Sydney, it’s definitely not New York. Definitely not London. Definitely not Tokyo. But also fits what we want to make Sydney – the greenest [plant-filled] city in the world.
KN: The ‘greening’ of cities by architects and urban planners is imperative as we move forward.
KT: For the next generation of architects, they’re very much part of this and have massive challenges to bring awareness to climate change – though it’s also very a globalised challenge for everyone.
KN: Well before Infinity Tower you were designing restaurants in Sydney’s suburbs – and then you went from, say, Sushi Train Maroubra, to Qatar’s Natural Museum. How much pressure came with such a high-profile role?
KT: Well, it was the best project in the world. And yeah, I did feel extra pressure. I think as an architect when you get a sense of freedom and liberation it turns into confidence, but in this instance, you are against all the greats, like Jean Nouvel, and I thought look who we are against, I’m no one.
KN: You’re quite the sartorial gent – fair to say fashion is a firm creative outlet away from architecture?
KT: Yes, definitely, and I remember seeing Alexander Wang, who I’ve come to admire. You know we went to a grand opening party for Qatar and what I noticed is that I, naively followed the dress code, and these guys just did their own thing. It’s much more interesting than architecture.
KN: Seeing such appealed to the rule-breaker within?
KT: I wish I had figured it out when I was 18 in New York, and I’m not saying break every rule, but growing up in Japan, everything is telling you to conform. But it’s ok to think outside the box, to push a little bit. But it’s not so much his [Wang’s] work, it’s his spirit I’m inspired by. I know what it’s like being Asian in Manhattan, let’s just call it racist, or political, or whatever, but to be in that position and with that creativity and to prevail – I suddenly looked up to him.
What a quarter-million dollars gets you in the western capital.
Alexandre de Betak and his wife are focusing on their most personal project yet.
Office-to-residential conversions are gaining traction, helping revitalize depressed business districts
Developer efforts to convert emptying office towers into residential buildings have largely gone nowhere. That may be finally changing.
The prospect of transforming unused office space into much-needed housing seemed a logical way to resolve both issues. But few conversions moved forward because the cost of acquiring even an aging office building remained too high for the economics to pencil out.
Now that office vacancy has reached record levels, sellers are willing to take what they can. That has caused values to plunge for nothing-special buildings in second-rate locations, making the numbers on many of those properties now viable for conversions.
Seventy-three U.S. conversion projects have been completed this year, slightly up from 63 in 2023, according to real-estate services firm CBRE Group. But another 309 projects are planned or under way with about three-quarters of them office to residential. In all, about 38,000 units are in the works, CBRE said.
“The pipeline keeps replenishing itself,” said Julie Whelan , CBRE’s senior vice president of research.
In the first six months of this year, half of the $1.12 billion in Manhattan office-building purchases were by developers planning conversion projects, according to Ariel Property Advisors.
While New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are leading the way, conversions also are popping up in Cincinnati, Phoenix, Houston and Dallas. A venture of General Motors and Bedrock announced Monday a sweeping redevelopment of Detroit’s famed Renaissance Center that includes converting one of its office buildings into apartments and a hotel.
In Cleveland, 12% of its total office inventory is either undergoing conversions or is planned for conversion. Many projects there are clustered around the city’s 10-acre Public Square. The former transit hub went through a $50 million upgrade about 10 years ago, adding fountains, an amphitheater and green paths.
“You end up with so much space that you paid so little for, that you can create amenities that you would never build if you were doing new construction,” said Daniel Neidich, chief executive of Dune Real Estate Partners, a private-equity firm that has teamed up with developer TF Cornerstone to invest $1 billion on about 20 conversion projects throughout the U.S. in the next three years.
Conversions won’t solve the office crisis, or make much of a dent in the U.S. housing shortage . And many obsolete office buildings don’t work as conversion projects because their floors are too big or due to other design issues. The 71 million square feet of conversions that are planned or under way only account for 1.7% of U.S. office inventory, CBRE said.
But city planners believe that conversions will play an important part in revitalising depressed business districts, which have been hollowed out by weak return-to-office rates in many places.
And developers are starting to find ways around longstanding obstacles in larger buildings. A venture led by GFP Real Estate is installing two light wells in a Manhattan office-conversion project at 25 Water St. to ensure that all the apartments will get sufficient light and air.
Cities such as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Calgary, Alberta, have started to roll out new subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives to boost conversions.
The projects are breathing new life into iconic properties that no longer work as office buildings. The Flatiron Building in New York will be redeveloped into condominiums. In Cincinnati, the owner of the Union Central Life Insurance Building is converting it into more than 280 units of housing with a rooftop pool, health club and commercial space.
In the first couple of years of the pandemic, office building owners were able to hold on to their properties because of government assistance and because tenants continued to pay rent under long-term leases.
As leases matured and demand remained anaemic, landlords began to capitulate and dump buildings at enormous discounts to peak values. In Washington, D.C., for example, Post Brothers last year paid about $66 million for 2100 M Street, which had sold for as much as $150 million in 2007.
Washington, D.C., has been particularly hard hit by the office downturn because the federal government has been especially permissive in allowing employees to work from home .
“We’re able to make it work as a conversion because it was no longer priced as though it could be repositioned as office,” said Matt Pestronk , Post’s president and co-founder.
Increasingly, more deals are taking place behind the scenes as converters reach deals with creditors to buy debt on troubled office buildings and then push out the owners. GFP Real Estate reduced costs of its $240 million conversion of 25 Water Street by buying the debt at a discount and cutting deals with tenants to exit the building before their leases matured.
One of the first projects planned by the venture of Dune and TF Cornerstone likely will be the Wanamaker Building in Philadelphia. TF Cornerstone just purchased the debt on the office space in the building and is in the process of taking title.
“The banks are foreclosing and doing short sales,” said Neidich, Dune’s CEO. “There’s a ton of it going on.”
In Washington, D.C., a conversion of the old Peace Corps headquarters building near Dupont Circle is 70% leased just four months after opening, said developer Gary Cohen . Rents are higher than expected.
“If that’s the way to get people downtown, that’s what we have to do,” Cohen said.
Not all developers agree that the economics of conversions work, even at today’s low prices. Miki Naftali , who has converted more than five New York properties over the years, said he has been very actively looking at conversion candidates but hasn’t yet found a deal that works financially.
One of the issues facing converters is that even if an office building is dying, it often has a few existing tenants who would need to be relocated. Some buildings would need atriums to ensure that all the apartments have sufficient light and air.
“When you start to add everything up, if your costs get close to new construction, that’s when you get to the point that it doesn’t make financial sense,” Naftali said.
Some landlords are including clauses in leases that give them the right to evict tenants to make room for a major conversion. Others are keeping a small ownership stake when they sell buildings so that they can learn the conversion process for future buildings.
“The world is looking at these assets in a different way,” said developer William Rudin , whose company decided to learn the conversion process by keeping a stake in 55 Broad Street, a downtown New York office building it sold last year to a converter.