Making best use of existing premises

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268971

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NEW EUROPEAN BAUHAUS RISING STARS : concepts or ideas submitted by young talents (aged 30 or less)

Project title

Making best use of existing premises

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Description

The most sustainable building is the one that never has to be built, therefore our vision is to create a sustainable urban development where peoples need for premises should be met without adding any new sqm. We want to make co-use & sharing of space as an attractive form of renting as the conventional way, in order to increase the resource effective use of existing buildings & premises. We cannot continue to construct the destruction of our planet, we need to start sharing our space.

Where is your concept/idea being developed or intended to be implemented in the EU?

Please provide a summary of your concept/ idea

Vakansa is a webb based platform that aims to simplify the process of co-using "time vacancies" for existing tenants such as schools, civil society, NGO's & other types of associations within sports & education. But also co-work for companies. We aim to become full fledged specialists in co-use for any type of premise. We do this by offering a marketplace for "time vacancies" on our website Vakansa.se. We help with insurance, contracts, adminstration, key handling, rules & regulations & other issues in order to make co-use as friction free as possible. In the wake of the pandemic we are also opening our own local hubs in suburbs & residential areas. We do this in order to give working people & youngsters more ergonomic & work friendly environments close to home, instead of being crammed & disturbed at home. A place where neighbours can sit together, work together, co-create the hubs together. A hub where you can work during the day & exercise spare time activites during evenings & weekends. Making your otherwise "sleep cities" come to life & attractive for the residents. Through our co-use services the impact economically will lead to reducing renting costs for tenants. Ecologically it will reduce the need of adding new sqm as a whole. Socially, instead of living functionalistically, we want our cities to become multifunctional. Every building should be used in more ways than one & in sweden we have an old city planning concept called ABC (Arbete - Work, Bostad - residance, Centrum - Centre).

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of sustainability and how these would be met

Sharing what we have is much more sustainable than building new or demolishing in a circular way. We want to make it more available to circulate the existing sqm everywhere in order to reduce the need for building new sqm. Ecologically: Constructing new office buildings require about 1 ton of materials & existing buildings make up for 40% of the energy use in the world and 40% of the global resources. If we in Sweden could start co-using our 28 million sqm of office space, and therefore stop the need of building the 418'000 sqm that is built yearly, we could reduce the Co2e emissions with 125-230'000 ton Co2e/year. This is something that the circularty gap raport and exponential roadmap has pointed out as one of the most important areas that has to become more circular by using existing builds more efficently. Economically: We could reduce renting costs for every tenant by sharing them. Making sure that cities are inclusive and have decent rents so that new initiatives also can establish, which is certainly important now in the midst of the pandemic. This would also make sure to future-proof the property owners property value by making sure that more organisations pay the neccessay market rent. Instead of only one organisation paying it all. This could also lead to more office space could be rebuilt into residential buildings and make sure that the best use is found for a property. Socially: This means saying bye to the functionalistic city where everything was segregated and resource ineffecient, and opening up for more functions everywhere in our cities. Functions that allow people to find what they need in their neighbourhoods, instead of having to commute long distances. Making places more attractive and lively, where people hang out and do things, instead of being on the move from one place to another. By having people on the streets, all waking hours of the day, we create more trust, activity & wellbeing in our urban areas

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of aesthetics and quality of experience beyond functionality and how these would be met

Urban planning during the 2000 centuary has typically been very engineered in its development. Adapting people to their cities, rather then adapting the city to its people and future generations. Before the pandemic we where living in tune with the functionalistic city - The city where we sleep in one place, go to work in another place, shop in a third place & spend our spare time in a fourth place. This meant that offices where used 11% of the time & schools where used 16% of the time. We call this time-vacancies, but we also have space-vacancies - walls, roofs, lawns, parking lots and other green/brown/blue fields in our cities that could be developed in different ways.  At Vakansa we dont only work with the built environment as something physical, but as something that is seen as an organism that breaths, develops, tranforms and lives. We want to open up the space for more people, for more organisations and for more activites. We want to cross mix the social fabrique from being a socially segregated city, to a multifunctional city where the residents decide how they want to use their city and what the city should be filled with. What we need is the full force of our urban dwellers to create a multifunctional and regenerative city that gives all people a chance to help form the city. NGO's, culture, associations, civil society and the likes are groups that need to be invited into the every day life in our cities, creating aestethic and a human centered experiance in our built environment.  There are tons of terms focusing on this. Biophilia, the intrinsic yearning for nature. Gentrification and pushing away the creative classes in our cities. Two examples of active experiances that we see the lack of or too much of in cities. Something we at Vakansa want to work with a cross the board in order to make sure that we create multifunctional cities where we invite actors to co-create our cities, instead of being bystanders.

Please give information about the key objectives of your concept/idea in terms of inclusion and how these would be been met

We dont solely work with listing premises, we also help with facilitating them. We dont solely work with co-work, we work with co-use. We dont open hubs in the city centre, but in peoples neighbourhoods. We work with all tenants that today have spaces that they can co-use at the same time or different times of the day. We work with making all spaces shareable, not only the 1% that work with co-work. We show how its done by having our own hubs that are open all waking hours of the day, not only the working hours. Our customers are existing tenants wherever they are. Making their premises available on our platform when they are not being used. By co-using we can offer a cheap & flexible alternative to renting for single tenant use only. Our target groups are civil society, NGO's, companies, & in our local hubs, the residents in that certain suburb to co create the work- & civil society hubs. We reach these through the municipalities, real estate companies & through direct contact. We need to create almost BID (buisness improvement district) like collborations, but in a broader sense than just including property owners and their tenants, but the whole commmunity and the actors within. 

Please explain the innovative character of your concept/ idea

Vakansa is a webb based platform that aims to simplify the process of co-using "time vacancies" for existing tenants such as companies, schools, civil society, NGO's & other types of associations within sports & education. But also co-work for companies. We aim to become full fledged specialists in co-use for any type of premise. Time vacancies: are the specific times in that which tenants are not using their premises or facilities. That could be rented & co-used by others. The Vakansa platform aims at creating a market for these vacancies, mediate them & help actors to facilitate the co-usage of time vacancies We do this by offering a marketplace for "time vacancies" on our website Vakansa.se. We help with insurance, contracts, adminstration, key handling, rules & regulations & other issues in order to make co-use as friction free as possible.  In the wake of the pandemic we are also opening our own local hubs in suburbs & residential areas. We do this in order to give working people & youngsters more ergonomic & work friendly environments close to home, instead of being crammed & disturbed at home. A place where neighbours can sit together, work together, co-create the hubs together (very important) by having a bike repair, second hand corner or the like. A hub where you can work during the day & exercise spare time activites during evenings & weekends. Making your otherwise "commuter cities" come to life & attractive for the residents. We do this together with the property owners. Our competitors are mainly other marketsplaces that specify on office co-work in city centres. We work with any existing tenants that want to co-use their premises, wherever they are. We also focus on suburbs & residential areas when it comes to our the hubs we run ourselves with the aim of having them used 16 hours a day in order to make a place lively. We also focus on helping civil society to find cheap spaces to rent.

Please detail the plans you have for the further development, promotion and/or implementation of your concept/idea, with a particular attention to the initiatives to be taken before May 2022

We want to create a resource effective use of buildings & premises through co-use, but with the lock downs we have been working a lot with preparing ourself for a post-covid world with making our platform free of bugs, establishing two hubs in the suburbs of stockholm and putting together neccessary partnerships. But despite this, we have managed to create a cash flow and proof of concept with all our offers today. The plans for further development are concerning the platform where we are expanding the team of developers and sales during the summer and autumn. We see that the restrictions are being lifted and co-using will become very hot topic. We need to make sure that the platform works bullet proof and so that we can fine tune the different integrations we have with booking systems, contract systems, key handling systems etc. Something that we have started and are continuingly working with.  During the summer we will work with our first hub and have our release of it the latest at first of september. The second hub will be opened the first of february next year together with the Royal Insitute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm.  We also want to start expanding abroad, as our platform needs volume, and doing that will require some more people and further development. We hope to do this in the beginning of 2022.  

By ticking this box, you declare that all the information provided in this form is factually correct, that the proposed concept/idea has not been proposed for the New European Bauhaus Rising Stars Awards more than once in the same category.