Clyde Gateway — the company leading the regeneration of Glasgow — has launched what it claims is the first interactive 3D iPad app to help market one of its new office buildings.
Developed in partnership with the commercial real estate company Colliers, the free application gives prospective tenants the opportunity to tour The Albus, a three-storey office development currently under construction at Bridgeton Cross, from anywhere in the world.
The pioneering app uses images from architectural plans and gives users full control of five 360-degree interactive cameras to allow them to alter the office layout, including floor and wall finishes. It is also possible to create virtual walk-throughs, giving a company the chance to view its future premises the way a customer or visitor would see them.
The 20,000sq ft Albus is located on the city’s Brook Street and adjacent to the Eastgate, another Clyde Gateway office development, which is now fully let and occupied by Community Safety Glasgow. “We want to build on that success and attract more companies to the east end into offices which are contemporary and incredibly efficient to operate,” explained Fionna Kell, the regeneration company’s inward investment and property marketing manager. “This new app demonstrates exactly what is on offer and is a far better way of getting things across than merely relying on words and still-images in a promotional brochure.”
Work started on The Albus — named after the Latin word for white to reflect the colour of its concrete exterior — last November and is expected to be completed this July. Clyde Gateway has committed £4.5m to the project which has seven separate units within the building and the potential to create up to 150 jobs.
Matt Bellshaw is associate director at Colliers: “The app provides a fresh and innovative approach to marketing a property that is still under development,” he said. “For the first time in Britain, and certainly in Scotland, it takes customer visualisation to an advanced 3D level and gives tenants a tool that we hope will inspire them to create their own work environments.” The Apple iPad app is free to download from the App Store.
With more businesses making use of the internet and migrating their bricks and mortar marketing activities online, commercial developers and landlords now have the chance to balance truly international sales campaigns against previously inhibitive costs.
Virtual tours offering near-3D images are set to change the way properties are marketed and potential tenants attracted. Many analysts are predicting that tablet and iPad apps — previously restricted to displaying standard photographs with little or no interaction — will become the norm by the turn of the decade. “In many ways the commercial sector has been slow to catch on,” said property marketing specialist Peter Harrib.
“On-line clothing retailers have had sites and apps that allow you to try on virtual clothes for some time. You can even use an application to put a virtual three piece suite in your own living room using augmented reality,” he added. “So why has it taken an industry which thinks nothing of spending millions on marketing a billion-pound office complex so long to realise the potential?”
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