In the Italian real estate community, many people know PRAXI for its expertise in advisory services, due diligence, and valuations, but it may be less well known that PRAXI has always had extensive experience in human resources—not only in recruitment, but also, and above all, in organizational development and employee training.
These two professional “perspectives” naturally led to a reflection that begins with an obvious—yet often overlooked—fact: long before they are investment assets, real estate properties are the essential infrastructure that people and organizations need to carry out the vast majority of their activities—in a word, to live.
In recent years, the nature of work has changed profoundly. Today, work is hybrid, distributed, and asynchronous. The ways we work have also changed, requiring spaces to support concentration, collaboration, learning, creativity, social interaction, and integration at different times. It’s not enough to simply “design a space”; we need to design work experiences.
PRAXI’s vision is to help companies create spaces that meet these organizational and human needs, serving as a strategic lever for performance and employee experience. This is where our proposal and consulting approach come into play: People-Centric Real Estate. This represents a shift in perspective; it means starting with a different question: no longer “What kind of space should I build?” but “What experiences, behaviors, and relationships do I want to enable in this space?” People-centric isn’t just about putting people at the center. It’s about designing the relationship between space and human behavior.
Some might argue that this is stating the obvious, because for several years now, there hasn’t been a single real estate project that hasn’t emphasized the centrality of the individual, in all its various forms. We believe, however—perhaps with a touch of presumption—that PRAXI’s extensive experience in supporting the growth andevolution of people and organizations is a distinctive feature of our consulting approach, which aims for a holistic vision capable of aligning the architectural and design aspects of a building with the values, culture, and operational needs of the organization that uses it.
To avoid getting too abstract, here are a few examples.
Let’s take a newly built office in a prime location: it will almost certainly be LEED- or BREEAM-certified, and probably WELL-certified as well. This means the building will have high energy efficiency, low or nearly zero carbon emissions, and excellent indoor comfort in terms of lighting, air quality, soundproofing, etc.
However, these elements alone are not enough to convey to users a message that is truly aligned with the organization’s values and identity, nor to ensure that its various activities are carried out efficiently:
- Space becomes a visible and concrete strategy. If an organization claims to promote cross-functional collaboration, creativity, and lateral thinking, but its office spaces are rigidly divided by function—with limited internal mobility and no informal meeting places for people in different roles—the physical environment ends up communicating values that conflict with those it professes.
- Space becomes relational infrastructure. If organizations that allow for partial remote work lack environments designed and equipped with the appropriate tools to support hybrid teams, they risk creating operational inefficiencies and a widespread sense of dissatisfaction among their employees.
- Space becomes a tool for cultural integration. When two organizations merge, and the goal is to build a shared corporate culture while simultaneously valuing their original distinct characteristics, the layout and allocation of workspaces can be a powerful enabler—or, conversely, a critical factor capable of hindering the success of the integration.
We could explore this topic in greater depth, but the central point is clear: At PRAXI, we aim to promote the well-being of building occupants not only because it is an ethically commendable goal, but also because it is an essential element for the well-being of organizations and for maximizing the value—including from an economic and financial perspective—of real estate assets.
