How London City Tower achieves 100% rental of

How London City Tower achieves 100% rental of vacant floors through design

Address: London, UK
Area: 2230 square meters
Keywords: office furniture, office environment, real estate/serviced office, idle renovation, fully managed office, asset appreciation, humanistic temperature, functional modular furniture, maximum floor height, natural materials, furniture customization, differentiated lighting, high-end comfort

At the beginning of 2025, the four floors of the iconic City Tower in the City of London were still idle, but now they have achieved 100% full occupancy. Behind this dramatic transformation lies a business story about how office environment design, office furniture, and office building rentals complement each other. British real estate giant GPE has teamed up with Morgan Lovell's design team to demonstrate with 2230 square meters of renovated space that when the design strategy accurately hits the pain points of corporate office needs, the problem of vacancy rate will be easily solved.

The design breakthrough from the investment dilemma to the myth of full rent

Faced with the continuously rising vacancy rate of office buildings, traditional investment methods often fall into a vicious cycle of "price reduction - quality reduction - harder to rent out". GPE Real Estate, however, provided a different answer with this fully managed office space renovation case: after the project was put into operation, four floors were quickly rented out in multiple areas within just three months, and some popular apartment types even experienced queuing reservations. This' pre opening 'rental boom has completely overturned the investment logic of the financial city office market - no longer relying on hardware stacking, but using differentiated spatial experiences to impress tenants.

As the property owner, GPE's initial goal was clear: to transform vacant floors into fully managed office products that can generate stable cash flow and enhance asset value. This positioning determines that the design must serve the commercial essence of office rental, while also transcending the functional attributes of ordinary office spaces. The final space presented not only includes basic configurations such as open workstations and glass partition conference rooms, but also creatively designs diverse scenes such as dynamic tea negotiation areas, leisure welcome areas, and independent telephone booths, perfectly matching the composite needs of modern enterprises for "office+social+leisure".

Three major office environment design strategies to solve the rental problem

The spatial magic of "continuous separation" has become the most recognized design highlight by tenants in this renovation. The designer abandons the traditional closed layout of "grid rooms" in the office and uses innovative shelf partitions to divide functional areas. These modular partitions, reaching up to 2.4 meters in height, maintain spatial transparency while preserving just the right privacy boundaries for team collaboration. The person in charge of a technology startup company specifically mentioned during the lease signing: "This design allows our team of 50 people to communicate at any time without interfering with each other, improving efficiency by at least 30% compared to traditional enclosed offices

Sensory collaborative design creates an office atmosphere where employees are willing to stay by scientifically matching materials, colors, and lighting. The design team boldly mixed and matched materials: exposed building pipelines were paired with warm beige paint, weakening the industrial texture while maximizing the 3.8 meter floor height advantage; The fine wooden work in the rest area contrasts with the soft patterned carpet, and the differentiated lighting system precisely controls the lighting environment in each area - the leisure area uses 2700K warm light to create a coffee shop like relaxation, while the work area uses 5000K white light to enhance focus. This multi sensory collaborative design allows for a competitive rental price that is 15% higher than in the same location.

The softening treatment of industrial aesthetics demonstrates the designer's ultimate pursuit of details. In the tea room, the customized walnut workbench collides with the brass faucet to create a material collision; The artistic paint on the walls of the conference room is added with fine metal particles, presenting different textures with changes in light angles; Even the mosaic tiles in the elevator hall conceal abstract patterns of the City Tower's architectural outline. These carefully designed details give the originally cold office space a "home" temperature. A tenant of a law firm commented, "When clients visit, they are always surprised by the design taste here, which invisibly enhances our corporate image

How office furniture can become a catalyst for rental rates

If spatial layout is the foundation of leasing, then office furniture is the "last step" in deciding leasing decisions. The Morgan Lovell design team has customized a functional modular furniture system for City Tower, which perfectly meets the needs of enterprises of different sizes: a 6-person collaborative table can be expanded to 12 people by adding modules, independent storage cabinets can be freely combined according to the number of team members, and even conference chairs are designed with detachable armrests to accommodate users of different body types. This flexibility allows the space to meet the office needs of both start-up teams and mature enterprises, greatly expanding the range of potential tenants.

Wooden fine furniture has become a key carrier for conveying spatial quality. In the fourth floor leisure area, the designer created an 8-meter-long curved booth made of white oak, paired with a coffee table of the same material to form a visual focus; The suspended storage rack in the pantry is made of cherry wood veneer, which forms a warm and cold balance with the matte metal bracket; Even inside the telephone booth, walnut sound-absorbing panels are installed to ensure sound insulation and enhance the tactile experience. These customized furniture not only have practical functions, but also become "internet celebrity check-in points" for tenants to take photos and share during visits, indirectly bringing free social media exposure to the project.

It is worth noting that all furniture choices follow the principle of "commercial value first". For example, ergonomic chairs with open workstations, although the cost of purchasing a single chair is 30% higher than ordinary office chairs, reduce tenant turnover by improving employee comfort; The foldable training table in the conference room allows the space to transition from conference mode to roadshow mode within 15 minutes, greatly improving the efficiency of space utilization. These seemingly small furniture decisions ultimately translate into the core competitiveness of office rental.

Design value-added logic under full hosting mode

The success of City Tower is not accidental, but the inevitable result of the combination of this "ready to move in" fully managed model and high-quality design. This model integrates office environment design and office furniture into a unified operating system: enterprise tenants do not need to invest in upfront costs for decoration and furniture procurement, only need to pay a fixed monthly rent that includes all services, and can enjoy comprehensive services from front desk reception to network maintenance. The regional director of a multinational company calculated a sum of money: "Choosing here saves at least 40% of the initial investment compared to building our own office, and the contract can be flexibly adjusted, which is particularly suitable for enterprises like ours in the period of business expansion

The deep binding of design strategy and business model makes the asset appreciation effect particularly significant. Before the renovation, the assessed value of these four vacant floors was approximately £ 650 per square meter. After the renovation, the rent achieved a breakthrough of £ 850 per square meter. Calculated based on a 15 year lease period, the cumulative additional income can exceed £ 30 million. More importantly, this "design driven" asset appreciation is sustainable - while surrounding buildings are still competing for hardware configurations, City Tower has already established difficult to replicate competitive barriers through its unique spatial experience.

Now, standing on the 23rd floor of the City Tower overlooking the Financial City, those once vacant floors are now brightly lit. This case vividly proves that office environment design is not an optional decoration, and office furniture is not just a simple functional carrier. They are the core product strength of office building rental and the golden key to solving the problem of vacancy. When design truly understands business logic and aesthetic values are transformed into practical functions, vacant office spaces can be revitalized, injecting lasting vitality into urban landmarks.