2023’s 10 Most Inventive and Inspiring CRE Projects From Around the World

Adaptive reuse projects continued to capture the attention of LoopNet’s readers this past year, and inventive projects where tenants and owners could see potential in even the most unusual of spaces allowed them to find new ways to generate revenue with out-of-the-box transformations.

Such is the case of the Equipment Room in Austin, Texas — a speakeasy bar in the basement of the Hotel Magdalena, where strategic design helped owners create an entertainment destination out of a 1,660-square-foot former storage room filled with boxes.

On a much larger scale, the owners of Willis Tower, one of the world’s most recognizable skyscrapers, activated their lobby space — which was nothing more than an empty entryway — with 300,000 square feet of food and beverage retail to attract visitors and retain its office tenants.

LoopNet looked back at some of the best projects featured on our site over the past year, showcasing office, retail, hospitality and adaptive reuse projects from across the world. From a dilapidated auto garage in Detroit that a small business owner turned into his headquarters to a 100-year-old abandoned department store in London that is now a 90,000-square-foot mixed-use office, here are the top 10 commcercial design projects that can provide inspiration for any tenant or owner.

Chicago’s Willis Tower’s lobby, trafficked by its thousands of tenants per day, wasn’t being used thoughtfully and was idling as untapped space in the building. A renovation added 300,000 square feet of retail and dining space, a 30,000-square-foot outdoor terrace that’s accessible to the public and 150,000 square feet of new tenant-exclusive amenity spaces.

“The transformation has resulted in a human-focused, hospitality-driven, amenity-rich environment that people will choose to come to even if they have the ability to work from home,” said Kirsten Ekdahl Hull, vice president of portfolio management for building operator EQ Office.

It’s not often that a commercial real estate project is designed to protect nature, but that’s precisely the mission behind Beside Habitat — a series of 75 cabins developed on a portion of a 1,254-acre parcel located in Quebec’s Lanaudière region. In an effort to develop the site as little possible and give visitors the experience of being in a private cottage, the team only built on 16% of the land, prioritizing natural preservation over maximum profit potential.

In 2020, business owner John Patrick purchased the only building left on a deserted block in Detroit’s North End neighborhood — a former auto garage that had fallen into total disrepair. But he had a vision for his future office, and so after extensive repair work, DIY furniture projects, and restoring the existing elements that gave the building its charm, he transformed the dark, brick shell full of debris, graffiti, old tires, vegetation and an unlevel dirt floor into an energy-efficient, artistic space for his small firm.

Using the slope of a hill as well as innovative and ambitious construction methods, developers seamlessly tucked a massive 1.8-million-square-foot mixed-use development behind a historic office building in Washington, D.C. In this exclusive video series, LoopNet got a behind-the-scenes look at the $715 million project that transformed a 10-acre site into an “urban village.” Watch how they did it in our first CRE Close-Up.

In the South Congress neighborhood of Austin, Texas, known to be a mecca for musicians, is the Hotel Magdalena — a hip boutique hotel with colorful rooms and a boomerang-shaped pool. When the hotel was initially completed in 2020, one space was unaccounted for: a 1,660-square-foot storage room filled with boxes in the basement. Coming up with a creative way to capitalize on the underutilized space, the hotel owners transformed the storage room into a speakeasy bar.

The historic Arding & Hobbs building in London's Clapham Junction was in a sad state when development company W.RE purchased it in 2018 for 48 million pounds (USD$60 million). Its baroque-style architectural details and striking features, like the stained glass domes and prominent clocktower, were either covered up or falling apart. But the property checked many boxes for W.RE CEO Sascha Lewin, whose London company focuses primarily on adaptive reuse and repurposing schemes in the city. He knew he could reinstate the building, constructed in 1910 as one of South London’s first purpose-built department stores, to its former glory while converting it to a new use — in this case, Grade A office space.

Toronto’s Ossington Avenue has steadily grown into one of the hippest streets in the city over the past 15 years, with some of the best restaurants and nightlife in town, local design and fashion retailers, creative and tech offices and boutique hospitality offerings. One of its latest developments, 12 Ossington, features three floors of sleek new offices above one floor of street-level retail, and the building’s distinctive brick-and-glass design gestures to Ossington’s long history while also offering a glimpse of what the future has in store.

It took almost a decade to complete the latest Virgin Hotel in Scotland because of the complex adaptive reuse scheme to bring together three separate historic properties, each of which was listed under a distinct categorization. Designers had to combine the historic India Buildings, built in 1864, a former medieval church, and a third building that was in a state of total disrepair to create the now 222-room hotel.

On a patch of land in Norwalk, Connecticut, that HMTX Industries owned for a decade without developing, business owner Harlan Stone decided to construct his own world headquarters. The result is the first Living Building Challenge-certified building in Connecticut, and due to its extensive sustainability features, the 24,000-square-foot building is energy positive, meaning it produces more renewable energy from solar panels than it uses and operates with zero carbon emissions by being all electric.

While we may not experience a devastating impact from rising sea levels in our lifetimes, there is no doubt it’s happening incrementally. In Rotterdam’s Rijnhaven harbor, architecture firm Powerhouse is already thinking ahead and designed an office that can literally ride the wave of sea-level change by floating.

The 4,500-square-meter building, home to Powerhouse’s offices and the Global Center on Adaptation, hovers on concrete blocks in the port and employs robust eco-friendly features. With renewable energy, modular construction and environmentally conscious building materials, the BREEAM Outstanding-certified and energy-positive office is a showcase in sustainable building practices.