OUR INSIGHT #9
ER-Insights: June 2023
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Banksy exhibition lands in Stuttgart for the very first time
Our Königsbau Passagen complex in central Stuttgart is now home to the blockbuster exhibition “The Mystery of Banksy – A Genius Mind”. The 2,000 sq m exhibition documenting the works of Banksy, the sensational street art superstar, opened its doors to the public on 4th May. Located on the first floor of the prime retail and office complex, the exhibition, which has been seen by more than 1.4 million visitors since its premiere in 2021, is expected to attract 150k visitors. 
Corporate Update
We recently re-let the 8th floor of Thavies Inn House in Holborn, welcoming legal funding business, The Level Group, to the building. The space was taken up in less than three weeks following the previous lease expiry.
 
We have completed our refurbishment of Glasshouse Yard in Farringdon, bringing brand-new plug and play accommodation, ranging from 1,500 to 7,500 sq ft, to market.
 
Managing Director James Edwards spoke at the UKREiiF conference in Leeds together with key industry figures including Steve Rotheram (Metro Mayor, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority), David Reay (Development Director, Stanhope) and Nora Taylor (Places Client Development Director, Arcadis). During the “Prioritising STEM Centric Development” session, James highlighted the importance of STEM-driven real estate for the UK economy, exemplified by our MIRA Technology Park project.
 
We are delighted to welcome Kofi Anin to ERI, who joined this quarter from M&G Investments as an analyst in our investment team. He will be focusing on modelling and underwriting for our investment and asset management initiatives.
Five Questions For...
Tom Wallace, CEO and Founder of Re-Leased

This quarter we check in with Tom Wallace, CEO and founder of Re-Leased, an innovative property management software platform purpose-built for commercial real estate. Re-Leased is one of our current occupiers at Thavies Inn House, and has recently taken on an additional 1,000 sq ft in line with its stated growth ambitions.  

 1. Can owners of property portfolios ever have enough data to work with?
Yes, of course they can. However, if they've got mountains of unstructured data, it's just going to be overwhelming and effectively useless.

On the other hand, if you've got well-organised data and systems to analyse and track that, then it's hard to have too many really good data points coming in and feeding that. But the data has to be able to be served to the users in a way that they can understand it easily, see the insights and make decisions off it.  

At the same time, we also need to think about what’s the job that we're doing here. You don't need to overengineer and overanalyse something that might be relatively simple. A lot of things in property are relatively simple. I would really look at what job we need to do and how much data we need for that job, rather than overanalysing everything simply because the data is available.

2. How is artificial intelligence impacting property platforms such as Re-Leased?
The impact and the opportunity of it are massive. It's the biggest shift that we believe we've seen since the cloud computing revolution, and platforms like Re-Leased which sits in the centre of your accounting, property and business apps and collects the data across all of them, are uniquely positioned to capitalise on this change.

Firstly, AI can do a lot of automation across those apps. If you were manually entering invoices, or inputting letters and numbers, it can automate those tasks for you. AI can also tell you what to do next. If you come into the office and think “What do I need to do?”, it can automatically look at the key tasks, bring those to the user and, over time, learn those preferences and start to do those jobs as well. If you're spending a lot of time communicating with tenants on maintenance and chasing arrears, expect those manual and repetitive jobs to be taken away by AI in the coming years.

Another area is serving insights and answering questions. At the moment, if you want to know what's happening in your market or in your own property, you have to pull reports or look at our insights to understand that. Through AI, platforms like Re-Leased will be able to recognise natural language questions and run scenarios off that. So, if you would simply speak or type, “Tell me what would happen if interest rates were to increase by 2% over the next two years. How would that impact my portfolio?”, we'd like to be able to give you those answers directly.

3. There seems to be an increasing number of organisations pushing back against home working. Are you seeing that?
Absolutely. I think the experiment that was started by COVID is still underway, but more of the results and data are coming in and, for me, the answer is that remote working is great for some and terrible for others.

It depends on the work and the person and on the execution of the remote strategy. I don't think we've found a new normal yet, I think it will change but it's going to be highly dependent on the company and the work that you do and the people that you've got employed in your business as to whether it's a good strategy or a bad strategy.

4. What is one building that inspires you and why?
I still love the Gherkin in London because I think it looks great. Even though it's less than 20 years old, I believe a lot of the tech is outdated, particularly from the carbon net zero targets, which just shows how fast technology and building design have come in such a short space of time.

5. Where is your favourite place in London and why?
I would say any cosy pub with friends on a Friday night and family on a Sunday. I love the feeling that the pub is the neighbourhood’s communal living room. It's got a vibe and feeling that is very unique to London that I haven't found anywhere else.
About Town
Europe Event Highlights

Here are the ERI team's top picks of what's on in Europe in the world of art, design and enjoyment.

The Mystery of Banksy – A Genius Mind
4 May 2023 -
He’s world famous but still a mystery – Banksy, the Bristol-born anonymous graffiti artist and painter, known for challenging the boundaries of the art market, has been causing a sensation with his work for many years. Since the exhibition premiered in Munich, it has attracted more than 1.4 million visitors, making it one the most frequented and successful shows about the street art superstar worldwide. The exhibit will now be on display in Stuttgart for the very first time at Königsbau Passagen.

David Hockney: Bigger & Closer
22 Feb – 1 Oct 2023
Using large-scale projection on Lightroom’s vast walls and revolutionary sound system, David Hockney takes us on a personal journey through sixty years of his art in a cycle of six themed chapters, with a specially composed score by Nico Muhly and a commentary by the artist himself.

The RA Summer Exhibition 2023
13 Jun - 20 Aug 2023
The Summer Exhibition is an annual celebration of art and artists featuring work in every medium imaginable. This year's Summer Exhibition will be coordinated by a celebrated British painter David Remfry RA. The works by leading artists, Royal Academicians and household names as well as new and emerging talents will explore the theme "Only Connect".

London Design Biennale
1 - 25 Jun 2023
London Design Biennale is an interactive, musical and kinetic exhibition of design and design-led innovation from across the globe. This year, 40+ designers from around the world will gather at the Somerset House to respond to the theme of "The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations".