来源：《经济学人》
原文见刊日期：2023年2月11日
Lower Manhattan’s skyline has long symbolised the fortunes of corporate America. A skyscraper boom in the roaring 1920s heralded the rise of the modern office. As corporate giants emerged and Wall Street firms flourished, office-space requirements exploded in the 1970s, fuelling a wave of new tower blocks such as the World Trade Centre. Now, as hybrid work slashes demand for physical workplaces, a different type of boom—driven by luxury flats, not offices—is gathering steam.
曼哈顿下城的天际线长期以来一直象征着美国企业的财富。20世纪20年代的摩天大楼热潮预示着现代办公室的兴起。随着企业巨头的出现和华尔街公司的蓬勃发展，办公空间需求在20世纪70年代激增，催生了一波新的高楼大厦，如世界贸易中心。如今，随着混合办公方式大幅削减对实体办公场所的需求，一种由豪华公寓(而非办公室)推动的不同类型的繁荣正在兴起。
At 25 Water Street, in New York’s financial district, America’s biggest ever office-to-residential conversion is under way. The building, located near the New York Stock Exchange, will transform an office skyscraper, covering 102,193 square metres, into 1,300 apartments ranging from studios to four-bedroom homes. The revamped building will include a basketball court, a spa, and indoor and outdoor pools. It will also feature a rooftop terrace, an entertaining lounge and co-working spaces.
在纽约金融区水街25号，美国有史以来最大的办公住宅改造项目正在进行中。该建筑位于纽约证券交易所附近，将把一座占地102193平方米的办公摩天大楼改造成1300套公寓，从工作室到四居室的住宅都有。改造后的建筑将包括一个篮球场，一个水疗中心，以及室内和室外游泳池。它还将设有一个屋顶露台，一个娱乐休息室和共同工作空间。
The building is part of a broader trend—one prompted by a glut of newly empty office buildings. The amount of space required for white-collar workers was already in decline before the covid-19 pandemic, but the vast increase in working-from-home has left even more buildings vacant. In the third quarter of 2022, office vacancies in America soared past 17%, the highest in nearly three decades, according to CBRE, a property firm. Some 8.4% of offices in London sit unoccupied, well above the long-term average of around 5%.
这幢大楼是一种更广泛趋势的一部分，这种趋势是由大量新增的空置办公楼推动的。在新型冠状病毒大流行之前，白领所需的空间数量已经在下降，但在家办公的大量增加使更多的建筑空置。根据房地产公司世邦魏理仕(CBRE)的数据，2022年第三季度，美国的办公室空置率飙升至17%以上，是近30年来的最高水平。伦敦约有8.4%的办公室空置，远高于5%左右的长期平均水平。
CBRE estimates that nearly 20m square feet of office conversions will hit America’s property market this year; a small fraction of total supply, but nearly five times as much as in 2016, when the firm started to collect figures. In the intervening years, a third of all office conversions have been into homes. Although much of the recent development has taken place in America’s big east-coast cities, offices are becoming homes across the rich world.
世邦魏理仕(CBRE)估计，今年将有近2000万平方英尺的写字楼改造进入美国房地产市场；这只占总供应量的一小部分，但几乎是该公司2016年开始收集数据时的五倍。在这期间，三分之一的办公室被改造成了住宅。尽管最近的发展大多发生在美国的东海岸大城市，但在整个富裕世界，办公室正在变成住宅。