Originally published on June 8, 2023 by Brielle Scott for NAIOP.
At NAIOP’s I.CON East: The Industrial Conference today, attendees explored the logistics building of the future, as designed and imagined by Matt Brady, LEED AP, architect and executive vice president, and the team at Ware Malcomb.
“The challenge we’re trying to solve with the logistics building is primarily the speed to customers,” Brady said. Getting closer to the consumer requires in many cases that companies locate in more dense urban sites. And typically, the size of those sites is limited – “you can’t just go and take down 20 acres in an urban environment, and it’s extremely expensive.”
“We have challenged ourselves to think creatively if we’re going to meet the needs of occupiers as those needs evolve, and that’s what this whole exercise is about: designing the logistics building of the future.”
Ware Malcomb reached out to partners in the business to help provide insights and flesh out the idea. Namely, DH Property Holdings, “which already designs innovative industrial buildings;” JLL, which offered some perspectives on the tenant side; Parkmatic, a specialty parking company; Suffolk Construction, which helped price the project; and Aquiline Drones, which provided intel on the future of drone delivery and handline.
The building design could work, hypothetically, in any dense urban environment, Brady said. He emphasized that Ware Malcomb also approached the design with the technology available today – they didn’t want to depend on some “new big invention” that would solve all their problems.