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  • Socrates Architects, Jersey, C.I.
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Category Archives: Retail industry

China town: meet the architecture giant with Asian designs on London

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July 15, 2014

/ Oliver Wainwright

Aedas’s mixed-use malls and elevated walkways might work in China, but will these mammoth towers blot Britain’s capital?

Their buildings dot the globe, but you probably couldn’t name one, nor would you ever guess they had come from the same practice. They have built a gargantuan conference centre in China that looks like a teetering stack of mirror-clad Jenga blocks, an enormous concert hall in Singapore in the shape of a crumpled beetle, and over 9.3m sq metres (100m sq ft) of shops, offices and hotels in variously sculpted towers across Asia and the Middle East. Now Aedas, one of the largest architecture practices in the world, plans to bring its flashy brand of mixed-use huge projects to London. And there is very little to stand in their way.

Our Chinese clients have their sights set on London, and they know what they want, says Keith Griffiths, the Welsh-born chairman of Aedas, who presides over the 1,400-strong practice from its Hong Kong headquarters. They are used to high rise, high density, truly mixed-use developments having everything on one site, so you can live, work and play without ever leaving the building. We think that’s the way London needs to densify.

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architecture, Art and design, Asia Pacific, Business, China, Cities, Commercial Property, Culture, Design, Planning policy, Real estate, Retail industry, Society

Shop vacancy rates fall in UK but regions vary wildly

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February 10, 2014

/ Sarah Butler

North-west bears brunt of empty shops with vacancy rate of 17.3% compared to 12.2% average with small towns performing best

Retailers in the north and south of Britain face dramatically different conditions despite a slight fall in the proportion of empty shops across the country last year, new data released shows.

Shop vacancy rates fell below 14% for the first time since July 2010 to 13.9% in December last year, according to the latest figures from the Local Data Company (LDC). That compares to 14.6% in February 2012, suggesting that an improving economy and widespread efforts to help town centres are paying off.

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Business, Commercial Property, Economic growth (GDP), Economic recovery, Economics, Real estate, Retail industry

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