Are Open Plans Out-dated?

Discussion Leaders Profiles:

Julian Bott
Managing Director, Asia Pacific
Cundall

Julian is the Asia Pacific Managing Director for Cundall, a global sustainable engineering consultancy. He has worked extensively throughout Asia and Australia on office design, mixed use, and master planning projects. Julian now focuses his efforts on the exciting field of Net Zero buildings and precincts. Through this work he has faced the challenge of agile working within his own teams and on behalf of external clients as Covid19 necessitated the move towards remote working. Cundall are now seeing the beginnings of a new shift in office design as organisations look to consolidate space and create workplaces that will engage staff and clients.

Shaun Brodie
Senior Director, Head of Occupier Research, Greater China
Head of Research, East China
Cushman & Wakefield

Shaun Brodie is the Head of Occupier Research, Greater China and the Head of Research, East China at Cushman & Wakefield.

With 20 years of experience in China, Shaun has a deep understanding of the country and its property market. In his role as Head of Occupier Research for the Greater China region, Shaun works closely with Cushman & Wakefield’s Occupier Services Group in China and its Global Occupier Services Group to produce timely whitepapers for the company’s occupier clients. Recent topics covered include, Blockchain and its impact on commercial property, lease accounting changes and urban renewal, looking specifically at how best practice urban renewal in China can help cities in the region in their quest to become ‘excellent global cities’.

In his role as Head of Research, East China, Shaun is in charge of data collection, data analysis and the publication of quarterly reports on the property sector in Shanghai and the major second-tier cities within the Yangtze River Delta region and beyond.

As Chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce’s Construction Working Group in China and as Vice Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce’s Real Estate and Construction Committee in Shanghai, Shaun is a regular guest speaker at property-related seminars and conferences. He also contributes articles to trade publications, journals and newspapers pertaining to his areas of expertise.

Shaun has a MSc in Surveying from the University of Reading, he has a Master of Corporate Real Estate certificate from CoreNet Global and he is both a Chartered Builder and a Chartered Surveyor.

Coen van Oostrom
CEO & Founder
EDGE Technologies

Since founding the firm in 1997 in Rotterdam, Coen has led the growth of EDGE to its current scope with more than a million square meters of development in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Berlin, London, Boston and New York, with partnerships with some of the most forward-thinking players in technology and architecture and a client list that includes market leaders such as Deloitte, Danone, PwC, UPC, Rabobank, KPMG, Vattenfall and Unilever.

Galvanized by a meeting with Al Gore and his climate change documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, Coen became convinced of the green promise of untapped technologies, making it the company’s mission to deliver new standards of tech-driven responsible urban office development. This mission gained worldwide attention in 2016 when the firm’s Amsterdam-based development The Edge was assessed as the world’s most sustainable office building. With EDGE, Coen aims to radicalize sustainability through powerful innovations in areas such as energy efficiency and circularity. Recent developments, such as EDGE Olympic in Amsterdam and Unilever New Jersey have already earned highest possible (pre-) certifications in BREEAM, DGNB and WELL. Coen seeks to effect further change in infrastructure and urban development. He draws inspiration from global leaders by participating in networks such as the World Economic Forum, and as a change- driving speaker at global conferences such as NOAH, The Next Web, Financial Times Live and New York Smart Cities.

To quote President Clinton after he received a special honorable mention in New York: ‘he is the Steve Jobs of sustainability’ and ‘I urge you to talk to this man, he is the first person I ever knew who physically showed me a building that proofed that this could be a big path to a shared future’.

Over the last 2 years, Coen did interviews for Frankfurter Allgemeine, Die Welt, BBC, El Pais, @FastCompany, WIRED, Bloomberg Business, The Guardian, Bisnow, Estate Gazette and many other publications.

Mostly the interviews were focused on topics as Urban Development, Smart Cities, Energy Efficiency, Sustainable Building Development, Disruptive Real Estate, Smart Workplaces and Green Investments.

Andrew Nicholson
Executive Director, Head of Asia Asset Management (ex-Japan)
PAG Real Estate

Andy has been based in Asia for 11 years and currently serves as Head of Asset Management for Asia (ex-Japan) for PAG Real Estate, an Alternative Asset Manager focused on pan-regional investments. In this role he oversees the delivery of projects across a range of sectors, including strategic repositioning and activation, design, project management, leasing and ongoing asset operations.

Prior to joining PAG, Andy was Executive Managing Director, Head of Asset Services, Asia Pacific at CBRE where he oversaw CBRE’s property and asset management business line across the region, serving on CBRE’s Asia Pacific Strategic Group and Global Asset Services ExCo. He also previously held roles with Swire Properties in the UK and latterly Hong Kong, in a range of development and asset management capacities.

Andy holds a BA from Bristol University, an MSc in Real Estate from Kingston University, is a Licensed RO with the HK SFC and an MRICS Chartered Surveyor. He also serves on the China Program Working Group Panel for Greenbuild China 2019.