groupthink

“A roof terrace is worth the commute” — said no one ever.

The race to amenity in commercial workplaces is arguably the wrong answer to the right question: what does the consumer actually want?

Too often, the rooftop terrace — or the yoga studio — feels less about user experience and more about signalling: a way to tell other developers that the space belongs to the same league. A badge of the 'Grade-A' club.

Yet we’ve convinced ourselves that this is what the market wants — because we talk mostly amongst ourselves as developers, agents, architects, and engineers.

This is groupthink writ large, because “what the market wants” often feels like coded language for what everyone else is already doing.

It’s also a race to the bottom. Too many amenities risk devaluation because they are no longer the hook — just the standard. Less wow, more meh.

Maybe it’s because property development was historically a B2B game. But now, as the leasing market gets more competitive, it’s being forced into a B2C mindset — exposing a gap between what’s being built and what people actually value.

If we want to keep our finger on the real consumer pulse — and design for what makes people febrile with excitement rather than for our competitors — we have to break out of the echo chambers we’ve built around ourselves.