Wander through Milan on a weekday morning and you’ll notice something distinct about how the city works. Just like in London, there are countless offices spaces across the city, but it’s how Italians use them that stands out.
Office life here often spills out onto piazzas and blends seamlessly with café culture. Corporate discussions hum quietly in coworking lounges that feel more like living rooms than boardrooms. Professionals can be spotted grabbing an espresso at a neighbourhood café before taking informal meetings in courtyard gardens or stylish design studios. Milan’s working culture remains relaxed yet connected.
At this year’s BCO (British Council of Offices) conference in Milan, General Demolition soaked in the city’s rhythm and couldn’t help but notice that its approach to office life mirrors a growing trend in the UK: designing offices both for productivity and people.
“In planning for the conference, and in a world of change, I wanted to take the conference to a location where the BCO had not been before, but also somewhere I felt we had something to learn and experience,” said Helen Hare, BCO Senior Vice-President.
“I wanted a location that was vibrant and supported the next most significant asset that drives real estate, and that is us and our people.”
Rethinking the workplace
Milan’s offices are being built around the idea that a workplace should reflect and support the lifestyle of its community. It’s no longer enough for a building to simply house desks and Wi-Fi. Living and working in this city go hand in hand.
Take the WPP Milan Campus, for example. Located in the San Cristoforo district, this space, which was formally the Richard Ginori ceramics factory, had been repurposed into a multifunctional workplace. Designed by BDG architecture + design and local partner 967arch, the campus now serves 35 WPP agencies and around 2,000 employees. Amenities include flexible workspaces, social and event areas, restaurants, a minimarket, ATM, and pharmacy, all in one community hub, facilitating co-creation and encouraging creativity across teams.
Recent additions to this project include WPP Studios, a 300 m² content creation space launched in 2023, and WPP Terrace, a 460 m² event venue for up to 250 guests. Importantly, this regeneration was completed with sustainability in mind: reusing the original structure cut embodied carbon by over 30%, meanwhile energy, water, and waste savings are projected at 12,000 MWh, 13 million litres, and 15 tonnes annually. It strikes a real balance between working and living and supports professionals in Milan in ways that go beyond the traditional office.
“Milan is the financial and economic hub and powerhouse of Italy. It is also the centre of design and fashion,” said Hare at the BCO conference. “It has placed itself on the global map as a destination of choice, and it is a city undergoing major transformation with some of the most prestigious urban regeneration projects in Europe.”
While London’s skyline has long been shaped by towering office blocks in districts like Bank and Canary Wharf, the traditional image of the workplace is evolving. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses have been rethinking what an office should be. Today’s workforce increasingly values spaces that are less about transactions and more about experience, environments that encourage hot-desking, creativity, and a sense of community, rather than rows of computer monitors and closed-door meetings.
General Demolition has witnessed first-hand how developers are adapting. Gyms, rooftop gardens, cafés, wellness zones, and even bars are becoming standard in new and refurbished office schemes. According to Savills’ “What Workers Want” survey, 92% of office workers consider the comfort of their work area important.1 In addition, flexible and sustainable designs are becoming essential, not optional.
At the conference, Professor Carlo Alberto Carnevale Maffè highlighted that the coffee corner is the most important spot of an Italian office, a small but powerful example of how Italian workspaces are designed to be human-centred environments. He also had a clear message for British office developers: “The opposition between work and life, we don’t buy it,” he said, encouraging attendees to learn from Milan’s embrace of work as a central part of life.
The rise of retrofit
Retrofitting is key to this transformation, and General Demolition is right at the heart of it. As more developers choose to reuse and repurpose existing structures rather than build anew, all of our demolition and enabling works remain environmentally driven and technically precise. To meet proposed regulations, the UK’s commercial property retrofit rate needs to quadruple. Currently, 70% of commercial property space could be at risk of non-compliance by 2030 (Knight Frank).2 This urgency is fuelling a wave of innovation in how older buildings are adapted to meet modern standards, both in terms of sustainability and functionality.
Despite being nearly 600 miles apart, Milan and London are converging on a shared vision for the future, embracing office design that supports both living and working.
We’re proud to be contributing to this shift through our recent considerate remodelling works at 43–45 Portman Square, 5 Chancery Lane, Brettenham House, Dorset House, Lancashire Court, and 21 Glasshouse Street, to name just a few.
And this shift means confidence is beginning to return to the market. In the industry, projects that have been delayed are now finding fresh momentum. For the team at General Demolition, we are committed to enabling the future of the workplace and play a key role in transforming spaces into sustainable, community-focused hubs that better reflect the way people live and work today.
References
- https://www.savills.co.uk/research_articles/229130/288355-0?
- https://www.knightfrank.com/research/article/2023-05-03-uk-commercial-property-retrofit-rate-needs-to-quadruple-to-meet-proposed-regulation
