Stella33 Workspace

Workplace dictionary 2: fit out, Cat A, Cat B and office technical specifications

BURGG — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 11:42:37 +0000

In summary

Cat A and Cat B are market conventions: professional industry literature explicitly states that no standard definition exists and that the scope must be specified in the contractual documents.
In Milan and Rome, a mid-standard fit out costs €1,250/sqm in 2026, with reinstatement estimated at €135/sqm (Cushman & Wakefield, Office Fit-Out Cost Guide 2026, Italy).
The EMEA average for a mid-quality corporate office is €1,960/sqm, up 5–7% year on year; mechanical and electrical systems, security, IT and audiovisual systems account for more than 40% of the total cost (JLL, May 2026).
The building management system has a reference standard (ISO 16484 series) and is subject to a European requirement: Directive (EU) 2024/1275 requires automation and control systems in non-residential buildings above 290 kW from 31 December 2024 and above 70 kW from 31 December 2029.
Meeting pods and phone booths have had a comparable measurement method since 2020 with ISO 23351-1, which classifies speech level reduction into classes from A+ to D. Of eleven booths tested in the laboratory, the measured values range from 15.0 to 30.3 dB, with five products in the lowest class and none in A+.

Why these six terms belong together

Anyone fitting out an office encounters these six terms in the same quote. The first three describe the layers of the work: fit out is the process, while Cat A and Cat B are the two levels into which the UK market divides it, with direct implications for who pays and what remains at the end of the contract. The other three describe the equipment: the system that manages building systems and energy consumption, and the two acoustic furnishings that have changed the ergonomics of open-plan offices.

Part 1 of this dictionary covers management and service models. Part 2 moves into fit-out works and technical equipment, with 2026 costs for Milan and Rome where available.

Office Fit out

Definition. The process of making a building’s interiors suitable for occupation after completion of the shell and core. The most widely used operational definition in the UK market describes it as the completion of the internal spaces after the developer has delivered the building envelope. No ISO or EN standard defines the term. The professional reference is the British Council for Offices’ BCO Guide to Fit-Out.

History. The BCO published an edition of the Guide to Fit-Out in 2011. On 30 January 2025, it launched the third edition, the first update in fourteen years, developed under the leadership of Neil Pennell (Landsec) and Peter Williams (Stanhope) with contributions from more than one hundred professionals, and with an explicit focus on hybrid working models and the net zero transition. For end-of-lease obligations, the reference is the RICS Dilapidations standard, seventh edition, published in September 2016 and effective from 1 December 2016, reissued as a professional standard in December 2023.

Usage. Fit out is contractually defined around three points: the scope of works, who finances them, and what happens at the end of the lease. The latter is addressed through dilapidations, which RICS defines as the process associated with alleging a breach of lease obligations concerning the condition or use of the property, typically formalized in a Schedule of Dilapidations. RICS distinguishes between an interim schedule, prepared during the lease, and a terminal schedule, prepared at expiry and setting out handback and reinstatement obligations.

Advantages. A well-specified fit out aligns the space with actual work processes, brings building systems and furnishings into a single budget, and produces the technical documentation needed for certifications and maintenance. The prerequisite is contractual clarity on the scope, since market terminology leaves room for interpretation.

Bibliography.

British Council for Offices, Guide to Fit-Out, 3rd edition, 2025. bco.org.uk/publications/about-our-guides/guide-to-fit-out
JLL, EMEA office fit-out costs guide 2026, May 14, 2026. jll.com/en-uk/guides/emea-fit-out-costs-guide
RICS, Dilapidations, RICS professional standard, England and Wales, 7ª ed., 2016, reissued 2023. rics.org

Category A fit out

Definition. Fit-out level that makes a space marketable, delivered by the landlord or developer. Typical elements include raised floors, basic suspended ceilings, lighting (usually linear), mechanical and electrical services distribution, heating and cooling, fire protection systems, basic surface finishes and window coverings.

The most important point about this category is its nature: industry literature states that no standard definition exists and that the contractual documentation must specify the exact scope. Treating Cat A as a standardized specification leads to comparisons between non-equivalent offers.

History. The BCO document that guides the specification of office buildings is the Guide to Specification, in the 2019 edition, with an update announced on 16 February 2023. That update increased the reference occupancy density from 8 to 10 sqm per person, set BREEAM Excellent and five-star NABERS UK as the minimum targets for new buildings, reduced small power from 100 to 60 W per person, and extended structural spans to 6.0 and 7.5 meters to facilitate the use of alternative materials such as timber. The Cat A+ appears in professional literature in 2023, described by Brodies LLP as a hybrid between Cat A and Cat B, often referred to as plug-and-play space, with kitchens, amenities, partitions, IT infrastructure, furniture and fully completed building systems.

Usage. In a negotiation, Cat A defines the starting condition delivered by the landlord. With Cat A+, the landlord also funds the final fit out, and as Brodies notes, the tenant does not incur upfront fit-out costs, while the financial terms change in terms of rent and incentives because the landlord must recover its investment.

Advantages. For occupiers, a well-documented Cat A space reduces uncertainty around the building systems baseline and makes it possible to estimate customization works accurately. Cat A+ eliminates the construction phase and shortens move-in times.

Bibliography.

British Council for Offices, Guide to Specification, ed. 2019 with the 2023 update. bco.org.uk/publications/about-our-guides/guide-to-specification
British Council for Offices, BCO announces new recommendations for greener and healthier offices, February 16, 2023. bco.org.uk
Hall, L. e Hunter, P., Plug and play (Cat A+) fit-out, Brodies LLP, October 23, 2023. brodies.com/insights/real-estate/plug-and-play-cat-a-fit-out/
Designing Buildings Wiki, Fit out of buildings (on the absence of a standard definition). designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Fit_out_of_buildings

Category B Fit-Out

Definition. Completion of the space according to the specific needs of the occupier. Typical elements include partitions for enclosed offices and meeting rooms, final finishes, branding, signage and wayfinding, furniture and FF&E, kitchens and refreshment areas, reception, dedicated lighting, power and data distribution, access control, ICT and audiovisual equipment.

Storia. La nomenclatura Cat A e Cat B si è consolidata nella pratica del mercato britannico degli uffici e viene descritta in modo convergente dalla letteratura professionale, con la precisazione che una fonte normativa non esiste. Nessun documento reperibile attribuisce la coniatura della coppia terminologica a un ente o a una data.

Usage. Cat B is financed by the occupier, while Cat A remains the landlord’s responsibility. With Cat A+, the landlord funds the fit out upfront and recovers the investment through rent and incentives. Three elements should be defined during negotiations: the exact scope of works, any landlord contribution, and the obligation to remove the fit out at the end of the lease, which the market quantifies as reinstatement.

Advantages. Cat B is the part that translates the organization of work into space: the ratio between workstations and meeting rooms, density, focus areas and brand expression. When managed well, it is also the lever that reduces the total floor area required, because it allows functions to be sized according to actual use.

Bibliography.

Durksen, J. e Rimmer, J., Office fit-out: what’s the difference between a Cat A and Cat B?, M Moser Associates, October 25, 2023. mmoser.com/ideas/office-fit-out-difference-cat-a-and-cat-b/
Cushman & Wakefield, Office Fit-Out Cost Guide, Italy, 2026. cushmanwakefield.com/en/italy/insights/office-fit-out-cost-guide
RICS, Dilapidations, 7ª ed., 2016, riemessa 2023. rics.org

Methodological note: typical Cat B construction timelines and the quantitative relationship between landlord contributions and rent-free months circulate in anecdotal form. The primary sources consulted do not provide verifiable benchmark values, so they should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Building management system (BMS)

Definition. A system that monitors and controls a building’s systems (heating and cooling, ventilation, lighting, energy, access and fire safety) from a single supervisory platform. The internationally standardized term is BACS, Building Automation and Control Systems, covered by the ISO 16484 series. Part 1, in the ISO 16484-1:2024 edition, specifies the guiding principles for system design, engineering, installation and completion, as well as for integrating other systems into it.

History. In 1883, Warren S. Johnson patented the electric tele-thermoscope, the first electric room thermostat; in 1885, he founded the Johnson Electric Service Company in Milwaukee with William Plankinton. In 1922, the pneumatic system was introduced, with claimed fuel savings of up to 35%. In 1972, the JC/80 became the first minicomputer for building systems control, with a claimed 30% reduction in energy consumption. In 1990, Metasys debuted, integrating climate control, energy, lighting, fire safety and security.

On the protocol side: in June 1987, the BACnet project committee met for the first time in Nashville; in 1995, the first publication of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135 (BACnet) was issued, with the current ANSI/ASHRAE 135-2024 edition published on 31 December 2024. On 19 November 2003, ISO 16484-5:2003 on the data communication protocol was published, now replaced by the 2022 edition. KNX was established as an association in 1999 through the convergence of EHS, BatiBUS and EIB/Instabus, and its application layer is standardized by ISO/IEC 14543-3-1:2006. LonWorks is standardized by ISO/IEC 14908-1:2012.

Usage and European requirement. Directive (EU) 2024/1275 on the energy performance of buildings requires BACS in non-residential buildings with an effective rated output above 290 kW from 31 December 2024, and above 70 kW from 31 December 2029, with a general transposition deadline of 29 May 2026. The required capabilities include continuous monitoring, logging, analysis and adjustment of energy consumption, efficiency benchmarking, fault detection, interoperability between systems from different manufacturers, and indoor environmental quality monitoring by 29 May 2026. The framework originates from Directive 2010/31/EU, as amended by Directive 2018/844/EU, and is linked to the voluntary European smart readiness rating scheme established by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/2155 of 14 October 2020.

Advantages. Measured rather than estimated consumption, faults detected before service disruption, comfort regulated by zone and time of day, and historical data that can be used for energy certifications and sustainability reporting. For occupiers in a building equipped with a BMS, the most immediate practical benefits are greater stability in thermal and acoustic comfort and greater transparency around energy costs.

Bibliography.

ISO, ISO 16484-1:2024 Building automation and control systems (BACS).Part 1: Project specification and implementation, 2024. iso.org/standard/84890.html
European Parliament and Council, Directive (EU) 2024/1275 on the energy performance of buildings (recast), 24 April 2024. eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2024/1275/oj
BACnet Committee, About the BACnet Standard. bacnet.org/about-bacnet-standard/
Johnson Controls, Our Founder e History. johnsoncontrols.com/about-us/history

Meeting pod

Definition. An enclosed booth located within an open environment, sized for short meetings of two to six people, with acoustic insulation, ventilation, lighting and power supply. The international reference standard for performance is ISO 23351-1:2020, published on 30 June 2020, which establishes the laboratory method for measuring the reduction in occupants’ speech level provided by furniture assemblies and enclosures, excluding individual components such as screens and panels. The measured quantity is speech level reduction, indicated as D(S,A) and expressed in decibels.

History. Framery was founded in Finland in 2010 following an episode documented by the company: the founders were working in an open-plan office, asked their boss to move elsewhere to make phone calls, and were told, “buy me a phone booth.” The first prototype was called Pömpeli, Finnish for box, and the first customer was that same boss. Framery O followed in 2013, with a claimed 30 dB reduction. In 2021, Framery One introduced the connected generation. In 2024, the company reported having produced more than 110,000 booths in total. The publication of ISO 23351-1 in 2020 marked the point at which the category’s acoustic performance claims became comparable.

Usage. Pods are sized according to the ratio between workstations and booth seats, and serve two distinct functions: calls and video calls that would otherwise disturb the open environment, and short meetings that do not justify using a meeting room. The technical selection criteria are the declared ISO class and corresponding decibel value, together with air exchange and ventilation noise levels.

Advantages. Reduced noise pollution in the open-plan office, immediate availability of a private space without booking, installation without construction work, and the ability to reposition the booth. From a real estate perspective, pods provide privacy within an open layout without altering partitions, thereby avoiding reinstatement obligations.

Bibliography.

ISO, ISO 23351-1:2020 Acoustics. Measurement of speech level reduction of furniture ensembles and enclosures.Part 1: Laboratory method, 2020. iso.org/standard/75299.html
Hongisto, V. e Keränen, J., Acoustic performance of eleven commercial phone booths according to ISO 23351-1, Research Reports from Turku University of Applied Sciences 51, 2020.
Framery, 15 Years of Inventing Quiet: How Framery Created the Office Pod, June 4, 2025. framery.com

Framery’s claim to have produced the world’s first commercial booth is a statement made by the company about itself and should be attributed accordingly.

Phone booth

Definition. An acoustic booth for one person, sometimes two, located in an open office for phone calls and video calls, with ventilation, lighting and power supply. Performance is measured and classified under ISO 23351-1:2020, as with meeting pods. No standard defines the term itself, and ISO refers to furniture ensembles and enclosures.

History. The product’s origin is a literal reference to the phone booth, as recounted in Framery’s 2010 story. On 15 August 2018, TechCrunch documented the launch of ROOM, founded in New York by Morten Meisner-Jensen and Brian Chen: ROOM One was priced at $3,495 with free shipping, compared with $6,000–$12,000 for competitors at the time, made from recycled plastic bottles and designed to be assembled in under thirty minutes. At the time, the company was less than a year old, had a revenue run rate of $10 million and around 200 customers. The same article cites Harvard research showing that open-plan offices had reduced face-to-face interaction by 73%, shifting communication to email. With ISO 23351-1 in 2020, the category gained a comparable measurement method.

Usage. The typical setup for an open-plan floor provides one booth for every ten to twenty workstations, calibrated according to the intensity of video calls. The key selection criterion is the measured speech level reduction declared under ISO 23351-1: across eleven commercial booths tested in the laboratory, values range from 15.0 to 30.3 dB, with five products in class D, two in C, three in B, one in A and none in A+. The same study found a statistical correlation between booth floor thickness and acoustic performance, while total mass and external volume were not correlated.

Advantages. Immediate privacy without booking, reduced disturbance for nearby workers, reversible installation, and a unit cost comparable to that of a furnished workstation. In serviced office contracts, booths are provided as part of the shared space, so they do not fall within the occupier’s CAPEX.

Bibliography.

ISO, ISO 23351-1:2020, 2020. iso.org/standard/75299.html
Hongisto, V. e Keränen, J., Acoustic performance of eleven commercial phone booths according to ISO 23351-1, Turku University of Applied Sciences, 2020.
TechCrunch, To fight the scourge of open offices, ROOM sells rooms, August 15, 2018. techcrunch.com/2018/08/15/room-phone-booths/

How much does it cost to fit out an office in Italy in 2026

Item	Value	Source,year,scope
Low-standard fit out	850 €/sqm	Cushman & Wakefield, 2026, Milan and Rome
Mid-standard fit out	1.250 €/sqm	Cushman & Wakefield, 2026, Milan and Rome
High-standard fit out	1.600 €/sqm	Cushman & Wakefield, 2026, Milan and Rome
Reinstatement	85 / 135 / 210 €/sqm	Cushman & Wakefield, 2026, Milan and Rome
Cost increase compared with 2025	+3.8% average, mainly driven by labor costs	Cushman & Wakefield, 2026, Italy
EMEA average, mid-quality corporate office	€1,960/sqm, +5–7% year on year	JLL, 14 May 2026, EMEA
Share of M&E, systems, security, IT and AV	more than 40% of total expenditure	JLL, 2026, EMEA
FF&E	share approximately 14% of project costs	JLL, 2026, EMEA

FAQ

Who pays for an office fit out?

Workplace dictionary 1: who manages the office and under which service model

BURGG — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:22:28 +0000

In summary

Office terminology mixes three different levels: roles (office management, facility management), measured experiences (tenant experience), and commercial models (flex office, Office as a Service, plug & play office). Confusing them leads to comparisons between offers that are not actually comparable.
Only one of these six terms has an internationally standardized definition: facility management, codified by ISO 41011:2024 and the ISO 41001:2018 management system.
Flex office and Office as a Service describe the same direction through two different lenses: the former concerns the contract and scalability, while the latter concerns the scope of services included in the fee.
In Europe, the share of corporate portfolios allocated to flexible space increased from 12% in 2024 to 21% in 2025 (CBRE, October 2025, pan-European scope).
The term “plug & play” describes a state of immediate usability; in English-language industry terminology, the closest concept is the spec suite, fitted out by the landlord before a tenant is secured.

How to read this dictionary

This series brings together the terms that recur in office proposals, tenders and negotiations, organized by semantic field. Part 1 covers the six terms that answer two operational questions: who manages the space and under what contractual model it is delivered.

Office management

Definition. Day-to-day oversight of how an office operates: reception, supplies, supplier relationships, scheduling of shared spaces, document security, operating budget, and coordination of the people who work there. No standards body has codified the role. The relevant professional association, IAAP (International Association of Administrative Professionals), describes administrative professionals as people responsible for completing administrative tasks and coordinating information and people in an office environment.

History. The foundational text of the discipline is Scientific Office Management by William Henry Leffingwell, published in 1917: it applied to office work the principles of scientific management then being used in factories. The professional association’s history begins in 1942 with the founding of the National Secretaries Association, which in 1951 introduced the first Certified Professional Secretary examination, administered to 281 candidates. The association became Professional Secretaries International in 1981, IAAP in 1998, and in 2001 launched the CAP (Certified Administrative Professional) credential. The shift in terminology from secretarial work to office management accompanied that trajectory, although there is no single document that dates it precisely.

Usage. In Italian organizations, the office manager often covers a hybrid scope: procurement, light facility management, internal events, onboarding, and relations with the workspace provider. In serviced office contracts, this is the person who liaises with the house management team and measures the quality perceived by colleagues.

Advantages. Structured office management reduces the time technical and commercial teams spend on non-core activities, tracks recurring costs in a way that can be compared year over year, and maintains a single point of contact with workspace suppliers. In companies with fewer than fifty employees, it is the function that makes the true cost of an office visible.

Bibliography.

Leffingwell, W. H., Scientific Office Management, A. W. Shaw Company, Chicago/New York, 1917. Full text: archive.org/details/scientificoffice00leff
IAAP, IAAP History, International Association of Administrative Professionals. iaap-hq.org/page/iaap_history

Facility management

Definition. ISO 41011:2024, clause 3.1.1, defines facility management as the organizational function that integrates people, place and process within the built environment, with the aim of improving people’s quality of life and the productivity of the organization’s core business. The same wording already appeared in ISO 41011:2017. The certifiable management system is ISO 41001:2018.

History. In 1978, Herman Miller Research Corporation hosted the Facility Influence on Productivity conference, which brought together the founders of the industry association. In May 1980, the National Facility Management Association was established in Houston, with 47 participants attending its first meeting in October. The name IFMA was adopted in 1982, with the chartering of the Toronto chapter and incorporation in Ann Arbor. IFMA issued its first official definition of FM in 1986. In Europe, the network originated from an exploratory meeting in the Netherlands in 1987 and was formally registered in 1993 as the European Facility Management Network. For many years, the European standard EN 15221-1:2006 provided the reference definition across the continent, before being replaced by EN ISO 41011:2018.

Usage. The scope ranges from hard services (building systems, planned and corrective maintenance, energy) to soft services (cleaning, reception and house management, security, landscaping, catering, waste management). These services may be provided under fixed-fee, consumption-based or outcome-based contracts, with service-level indicators. In the Italian office market, they are outsourced as individual services, bundled packages or under a global service contract.

Advantages. ISO standardization makes specifications and offers comparable, something that rarely happens elsewhere in workplace terminology. Facility management governed through performance indicators shifts spending from repair to prevention, extends the useful life of building systems, and creates the historical data needed for energy certifications and sustainability reporting.

Bibliography.

ISO, ISO 41011:2024 Facility management. Vocabulary , 2ª ed., 2024. iso.org/standard/82405.html
ISO, ISO 41001:2018 Facility management. Management systems , 2018. iso.org/standard/68021.html
IFMA, History. ifma.org/about/about-ifma/history/

Tenant experience

Definition. Overall quality of the experience of those who occupy a property, measured from the perspective of the people using it: access, services, comfort, communication, community, and time lost on ancillary activities. No standards body has codified the term, and the most common definitions come from technology providers. The strongest institutional reference is the British Council for Offices’ 2017 research, Office Service Standards and Customer Experience, which proposes a Building Performance Scorecard to assess performance from the perspective of owners, property managers and occupiers, and calls on the real estate sector to rethink service delivery starting from customer requirements.

History. History. In 2010, Tim Oldman founded Leesman to measure the impact of the workplace on employees: the Leesman Index is a score from 0 to 100 based on an anonymous questionnaire of around eighty questions. In 2013, WiredScore was founded in New York to certify the digital connectivity of buildings. On 17 October 2017, the BCO presented the research cited above in London, commissioned by its Occupier Group together with British Land, Broadgate Estates, CBRE and Legal & General, and that work led to the creation of the BCO Customer Experience Award. On 20 April 2021, WiredScore launched SmartScore, a smart building certification that debuted with 44 property owners covering 70 buildings across seven countries.

Usage. In practice, tenant experience is measured through three categories of data: periodic occupier surveys, space utilization data, and service indicators (response times to requests, meeting room availability, connectivity uptime). In multi-tenant business centers, operational oversight is handled by the house management team, which brings together reception, services and community life.

Advantages. For the occupying company, measuring the experience makes something negotiable that would otherwise remain a matter of personal perception. For the property owner, measured experience correlates with tenant retention and reduces the cost of re-letting the space.

Bibliography.

British Council for Offices, Office Service Standards and Customer Experience, 2017. bco.org.uk
WiredScore, 44 landlords commit 70 buildings to SmartScore, April 22, 2021. wiredscore.com/blog/2021/04/22/new-certification-for-smart-buildings/
Leesman, official website, employee experience benchmark. leesmanindex.com

Flex office

Definition. An office available under shorter-term contracts, with adjustable space and services included in the fee. It includes coworking, serviced private offices, business centers and hybrid spaces. The institutional reference is the BCO’s 2019 research The Rise of Flexible Workspace in the Corporate Sector, which analyzes five business models applicable to large organizations in the United Kingdom.

History. In 1978, Alf Moufarrige launched Servcorp in Sydney by dividing up space in the MLC Centre, with the stated aim of reducing overhead costs through shared office resources; in 1980, the same company introduced the virtual office concept. In 1979, the first business centre in the United Kingdom opened in Northampton. In 1989, Mark Dixon founded Regus in Brussels, which listed in London in 2000 at a valuation of £1.6 billion, filed for Chapter 11 protection for its US operations in 2003 after the dot-com bubble, acquired HQ Global Workplaces in 2004 and Spaces in 2015. In December 2016, the holding company IWG was established, headquartered in Zug. Some industry sources trace the first executive suites in the United States back to the 1960s, citing OmniOffices in 1962 and Paul Fegen’s furnished law suites in 1966: these dates are reported by AllWork.Space but are not confirmed by independent historical documentation.

Usage. Companies use flex space for three recurring reasons: entering a new market without capital commitments, absorbing growth or contraction between two planning cycles, and covering the need for collaborative spaces that the main lease does not provide. In Italy, office take-up remains concentrated on smaller units: in the first quarter of 2025, more than 60% of transactions in Rome involved spaces of less than 1,000 sqm (JLL, April 2025).

Advantages. A single predictable fee, no upfront fit-out investment, reconfigurable space, pay-per-use meeting rooms, and activation times measured in days. The economic benefit becomes clear when calculating the total cost of occupancy, which combines rent, services, utilities and internal management hours.

Bibliography.

CBRE, European Flex Market Update 2025, October 20, 2025, pan-European scope. cbre.com/insights/reports/business-insights-european-flex-market-update-2025
Cushman & Wakefield, Global Flexible Office Trends 2025, 2025, global scope. cushmanwakefield.com/en/insights/global-flexible-office-trends
British Council for Offices, The Rise of Flexible Workspace in the Corporate Sector, October 16, 2019, scope UK. bco.org.uk
JLL, In Q1 2025, the office leasing market recorded nearly 130,000 sqm of take-up across Milan and Rome, 11 April 2025. jll.com

Office as a Service (OaaS)

Definition. A model in which the workspace is delivered as an ongoing service, with a defined scope of included services (space, furniture, connectivity, energy, cleaning, reception, maintenance, meeting rooms, community) and a single recurring fee. The term is used commercially without a standardized definition. The most authoritative document supporting this approach is the BCO’s 2017 research cited above, which calls on the sector to treat the office as a service rather than as a commodity.

History. The “space as a service” framing became established in industry literature around 2017 and 2018. On 6 April 2018, Antony Slumbers published Space As A Service, but bigger than that, in which he described it as a philosophy of space, summarized by the phrase “Service not Product, long not short term”. In the same article, Slumbers stated that he had not coined the term, referring to a discussion about priority with Duke Long. The morphological link with Software as a Service is plausible but remains undocumented.

Usage. When comparing offers, OaaS describes the scope: which cost items are included in the fee and which remain the company’s responsibility. It is the right lens for building a Total Cost of Occupancy table, adding together rent, utilities, facility management, cleaning, IT, amortized furniture, meeting rooms and the internal working hours absorbed by management.

Advantages. Predictable spending, a single invoice, no fit-out CAPEX, responsibility for service levels resting with the provider, and the ability to shift into the operating budget what would be a multi-year investment under the traditional model.

Bibliography.

British Council for Offices, Office Service Standards and Customer Experience, 2017. bco.org.uk
Slumbers, A., Space As A Service, but bigger than that, April 6, 2018. antonyslumbers.com/theblog/2018/4/6/space-as-a-service-but-bigger-than-that

Plug & play office

Definition. Space delivered ready to use: fitted out, furnished, wired, with building systems, restrooms and a break area fully operational, and occupiable without any further work. No standards body has defined the term. The closest technical term in commercial real estate is spec suite, which Colliers describes as space fitted out by the landlord on a speculative basis, before a tenant has been identified, and delivered move-in-ready.

History. Spec suites have been an established offering for decades in English-speaking markets and have returned to prominence following post-pandemic shifts in demand, with documented concentrations in the US markets of Charlotte, Miami and Nashville (Colliers, 2024). In the United Kingdom, the contractual variant is Cat A+, discussed in professional literature since 2023 as a hybrid between Cat A and Cat B and explicitly described as plug-and-play space (Brodies LLP, 23 October 2023).

Usage. In US markets, the typical spec suite is under 10,000 sq ft, approximately 930 sqm, with demand concentrated between 1,500 and 6,000 sq ft, approximately 140–560 sqm, and lease terms of three to five years for smaller tenants (Colliers, 16 October 2024). In the Italian market, the equivalent format can be found in business centers and serviced offices.

Advantages. Activation time reduced to days, no construction work to manage, no risk of cost overruns during fit-out, and no obligation to restore the space at the end of the lease. The trade-off lies in the financial terms: the landlord, having funded the fit-out upfront, recovers that investment through rent and incentives, as the literature on Cat A+ notes.

Bibliography.

Skorupski, M., The Popularity of Spec Suites, Colliers Knowledge Leader, October 16, 2024. knowledge-leader.colliers.com/marianne-skorupski/the-popularity-of-spec-suites/
Hall, L. e Hunter, P., Plug and play (Cat A+) fit-out, Brodies LLP, October 23, 2023. brodies.com/insights/real-estate/plug-and-play-cat-a-fit-out/

A useful clarification in negotiations: spec suite and plug & play are not synonyms. The former describes the landlord’s investment decision, while the latter describes the space’s state of readiness for use.

How the six terms fit together

The first three terms describe who is responsible for the space: office management sits within the occupying organization, facility management oversees the building’s systems and services, and tenant experience is the outcome perceived by the people who work there. The other three describe how the space is brought to market: flex office defines the contract, Office as a Service defines the scope of services, and plug & play defines the condition in which the space is delivered.

An offer can be flex but not plug & play, for example a basic floor with a short-term contract. It can be plug & play but not flex, for example a spec suite with a five-year lease. Checking the three dimensions separately helps avoid paying twice for the same promise.

FAQ

Are facility management and office management the same thing?

Corporate workation: how to organize a truly productive week working away from the office

BURGG — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:43:49 +0000

With the holidays approaching and calendars beginning to clear, the question returns of where it is possible to work while staying away from the office. The answers tend to fall under three labels, often used interchangeably: workation, whether individual or team-based, work retreat, and the fourth place.

A workation is a period spent working from a location chosen for the quality of the stay, while retaining the full operational capability of an office. In Italy, the term has circulated mainly in its individual form, where it responds to a personal desire. The corporate version is different in nature: the group travels together, the company pays, and in the end someone asks what was actually produced. This format is called a work retreat and is designed around an outcome defined from the outset.

The type of place required also changes. A one-day offsite needs a spacious meeting room. A week of work requires a fourth place: an inhabited territory where living, working and belonging come back together for an extended period. This is the category defined by Limitless Workspace, and it finds a concrete expression in the AHOMA houses in Monferrato.

In summary

Individual workation responds to a personal desire. Team workation responds to an organizational need and is designed around an outcome defined from the outset.
Four situations justify it: writing a strategy, realigning the team after a change, running an innovation sprint, and integrating a distributed team.
The location should be assessed through eight questions before looking at the photographs. The rhythm of the day matters just as much as the place itself.

Corporate workation: why it works

A study published in Nature Human Behaviour involving more than 61,000 Microsoft employees found that fully remote work makes collaboration networks more static and more siloed; the MIT Senseable City Lab has also documented the loss of weak ties. A team workation concentrates into a few days the proximity that a distributed organization does not generate during the rest of the year. With one caveat: a poorly designed week costs money without delivering value.

The four situations that justify it

Developing a strategy. Some activities suffer when interrupted. A shared work period of several consecutive days can help bring them to completion.
Realigning after a change. A merger, a new organizational structure, or a newly appointed senior leader.
An innovation sprint. An open problem, a diverse group, no interruptions.
Integrating a distributed team. Those who know each other only through video calls have an incomplete picture of who does what.

The fourth place: how to choose where to go

The fourth place stems from the third place, the category Ray Oldenburg used in 1989 to describe informal spaces between home and the office. Distributed work has eroded those boundaries and made an additional category necessary, explored in Limitless Workspace’s analysis of the fourth place. This results in a framework of eight questions to use before looking at photographs of a venue.

Spirit. Does it help clarify visions and priorities?
Mind. Silence, separate spaces, a door that can be closed.
Body. Can light, sleep, movement and food sustain several intense days?
Relationships. Spaces for voluntary conversations, beyond the meeting room.
Territory. Does it create a real connection with local people and activities?
Design. Do the materials and spaces work well for an entire week?
Work readiness. Reliable connectivity, ergonomics, acoustics.
Autonomy over time. Can people manage their own pace?

The seventh criterion rules out more venues than any other. The AHOMA houses meet all eight: offices during working hours, residences for the rest of the day, just one hour from Milan.

A typical day

Morning. Those who wake up early find the house quiet: this is the writing window, the time to tackle the difficult part. Then comes a long breakfast and two and a half hours of collective work on a goal set the night before, the most intensive block of the day.

Lunch and early afternoon. Lunch outdoors, an hour and a half: it may seem indulgent, but it is actually the moment when the morning’s discussions have time to settle. Then comes individual or paired work, because attention naturally declines and this part of the day is better suited to reviews and checks.

Mid-afternoon. The outdoor activity: a walk through the vineyards, a bike ride, a winery visit, or an artisan workshop. It serves as recovery and as work, because conversations that happen while walking have a quality of their own.

Evening. Ten minutes to review what the day has produced and define the goal for the next day, then dinner with no agenda and a free evening: a fourth place is also defined by the freedom it gives people to stop working.

Over a full week, it is worth including a free day, usually the fourth. Team building works best when it grows out of the local area rather than from a catalogue: a grape harvest, cooking together, or an artisan workshop.

What to measure after returning

Was the document produced? Are the decisions made still in place after sixty days? And how many people in the group did each person contact in the thirty days that followed, compared with the previous thirty days? The last question comes closest to what a fourth place is meant to produce.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the fourth place?

Hybrid work and spaces: when the office gets in the way instead of enabling work

BURGG — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:33:40 +0000

In summary

Hybrid work has concentrated office attendance into two or three days, leaving the space underused for the rest of the week.
A layout designed around full daily occupancy does not respond well to this pattern and begins to hinder, rather than enable, the way people work.
The Workspace Alignment Index measures this gap across two of its four dimensions: Spatial & Operational Fit and Flexibility & Future Readiness.
The problem does not stem from choosing hybrid work: it stems from the gap between the existing layout and the behaviours that layout is supposed to support.
Reducing this gap starts with an operational question: what is the space actually used for, every day, and how often?

When office attendance is concentrated on just a few days of the week while the layout remains designed for full daily occupancy, the space stops supporting people’s actual activities and begins to restrict them. For a company with a hybrid team, this gap between layout and behaviour is the most common reason why an office, even if well located and well furnished, no longer works as it should. The first article in this series introduced the Workspace Alignment Index (WAI) and its four dimensions; this article looks more closely at the two dimensions that specifically capture the gap between the office and hybrid work.

What happens when the layout does not adapt to hybrid work

Most offices in use today were designed when working on-site was the daily norm: one desk per person, meeting rooms sized for the busiest day of the year, and a mix of spaces designed for consistent occupancy from Monday to Friday. Hybrid work has changed behaviour without, in most cases, changing the layout as well.

The result is a gap that builds up day after day, rather than a sudden breakdown: on peak days (typically Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday), meeting rooms are booked at the last minute, informal work areas are in short supply, and phone booths are always occupied. On low-attendance days, the same floor space remains empty while still being paid for. The office, originally designed to enable work, begins to buckle under the weight of behaviours it was never designed to accommodate.

Why it matters for those managing people and spaces

For HR managers, office managers and operations managers, the gap between layout and actual attendance has two direct consequences. The first is economic: companies continue to pay for space sized for full occupancy, while actual usage is concentrated on two or three days. The second concerns employee experience: on peak days, people struggle to find the right space for the activity they need to carry out, which affects focus, collaboration and the perception of the company as an employer that cares about its team.

The combination of these two consequences is what makes the issue urgent for those making decisions today about lease renewals, reorganizations or new locations: a misaligned office costs more and performs worse at the same time.

Hybrid work changes attendance patterns: the data

According to CBRE data (2026), already referenced in the first article in this series, projects adopting Activity-Based Working principles doubled in one year, rising from 17% to 40% of the total analyzed: demand for spaces aligned with actual work patterns is already taking shape, not a future hypothesis.

On the occupancy side, Basking.io’s Q1 2026 Global Workplace Occupancy Benchmarks report records an average global building utilization rate of 53%, up from 38% in 2024, with peak utilization reaching 80% against a typical target of 65%. Over the same period, the share of employees attending the office three or four days a week rose to 55%, an increase of 19 percentage points in just one year: working on-site on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with Monday and Friday remote, has become the most common pattern of structured hybrid work.

These are global figures, but the trend is the same as that observed in the Italian market: office attendance is concentrated rather than evenly distributed throughout the week. A layout that fails to account for this concentration works against its own objectives.

The two dimensions of the Workspace Alignment Index that capture the gap

The Workspace Alignment Index measures workspace performance across four dimensions, each scored from 1 to 5. Two of these dimensions directly address hybrid work and space.

Spatial & Operational Fit assesses how closely the layout aligns with actual work patterns. An office with a low score in this dimension shows exactly the symptoms described above: meeting rooms that are always full on certain days, empty spaces on others, and a mix of work settings that does not reflect how people actually work throughout the day.

Flexibility & Future Readiness assesses the scalability of the space, contractual flexibility, the role of enabling technology and readiness for change over a two- to three-year horizon. A company whose team changes in composition or ways of working needs to know whether its space can adapt, or whether every change requires a lengthy and rigid contract renegotiation.

The two dimensions should be considered together: a misaligned layout (low Spatial & Operational Fit) becomes a structural problem when the contractual structure does not allow it to be corrected within a reasonable timeframe (low Flexibility & Future Readiness).

What to do when the office is no longer aligned

The first step is to measure, not assume. Before making changes to the layout, it is useful to map actual attendance patterns: which days, which times and which activities (individual focus work, calls, team meetings, spontaneous collaboration). This map provides the direct input for reassessing your profile across the two WAI dimensions.

The second step is to rethink the mix of spaces according to Activity-Based Working principles: fewer assigned fixed workstations, more shared spaces sized around actual peak demand, and a balance between private and communal areas based on collected data rather than on a layout inherited from the pre-hybrid era.

The third step concerns the contractual structure: space that can expand or contract as the team changes, with meeting rooms and shared spaces paid for based on actual usage, reduces the risk of remaining tied to a layout that hybrid work has already outgrown. The same principle was addressed from a cost perspective in the article “From the office as a fixed cost to the office as a governable system”.

An applied example: a hybrid team in Milan

Imagine a fifteen-person team based in a center like The Hive at MIND in Milan, working in a hybrid model with peak attendance on Tuesday and Wednesday. In a traditional layout, the company would have fifteen assigned desks, occupied on average only 40–50% of the week and overcrowded on the two peak days, with meeting rooms booked weeks in advance and no room for spontaneous work.

In the shared-space and Social Floor model, the same team has access to a mix of informal workstations, meeting rooms bookable based on actual usage, and individual focus areas, sized around peak attendance on Tuesday and Wednesday rather than full daily occupancy. Costs remain proportional to usage, peak days no longer create competition for space, and the workspace can grow with the team without renegotiating a rigid multi-year contract.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the problem only affect large companies with multiple locations?

Branded podcast: what it is and why a company should invest in one

BURGG — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 13:52:09 +0000

In summary

A branded podcast is original audio content created and funded by a company to engage a target audience in a way that aligns with the brand’s values, distinct from a corporate podcast aimed primarily at an internal audience.
In Italy, there were 15.2 million podcast listeners in 2024, up 2% compared with 2023, and 63% had listened to at least one branded podcast (Ipsos, Digital Audio Survey 2024).
A branded podcast primarily drives engagement and message retention rather than immediate financial returns: it creates a long-term effect that strengthens audience loyalty.
53% of listeners influenced by a branded podcast look for more information about the brand, 26% talk about it with friends and acquaintances, and 16% purchase the brand’s product (Ipsos, 2024).
The level of brand presence within the format (associated, integrated, sponsor-produced) should be chosen based on the communication objective, not on industry convention.

A company looking to strengthen brand awareness, build audience loyalty or position itself as a reference point in its industry can use a branded podcast as a tool that works over a longer time horizon than an advertising campaign, with a higher level of audience engagement than the average for other digital formats.

What is a branded podcast

A branded podcast is original audio content created and sponsored by a brand, designed to engage a target audience in a way that aligns with the brand’s values and objectives. It differs from a corporate podcast, which is primarily intended for internal company communication with employees or collaborators, typically for training and information purposes. Many companies also combine the two approaches, adapting the format to the specific needs of the project.

Why it matters for marketing and corporate communications

For those managing a company’s marketing, a branded podcast offers an editorial channel that does not depend on social media algorithms and makes it possible to build a direct, ongoing relationship with listeners. For a B2C company, the format expands the brand’s strategic presence on a channel with relatively low advertising saturation. For a B2B company, the same format becomes a tool for training and informing clients, partners or the sales network.

Market context: the role of branded podcasts in Italy today

According to the Ipsos Digital Audio Survey 2024 report, “Unlocking the potential of podcasts: from passion to strategy”, Italy had 15.2 million podcast listeners in 2024, up 2% from 2023, and 63% of them had listened to at least one branded podcast, also up 2% from 2023. The branded podcast audience consists of 39% under-35s, 29% university graduates, 11% students and 13% professionals in senior roles.

Within this audience, Ipsos identifies a segment of more frequent listeners, known as Hunters: around 6 million people who listen to podcasts every day or 2–3 times a week. 61% of Hunters recommend podcasts to others and 63% receive recommendations themselves, creating a word-of-mouth effect that extends the content’s organic reach beyond the audience reached directly by the brand.

These figures describe the Italian podcast market as a whole, combining general and branded listening, and are updated to 2024: they indicate a growth trend, but do not guarantee the same results for every project, which depend on content quality, publishing consistency and alignment with the target audience.

How it creates value for the brand

The first effect of a branded podcast concerns awareness and reputation: an analysis by BBC StoryWorks for BBC Global News, titled “Audio:Activated”, attributes to branded podcasts an 89% increase in brand awareness and a 57% improvement in brand reputation, as well as a stronger brand identity and positioning the company as an opinion leader in its industry.

The second effect concerns engagement and message retention: according to the same source, 55% of listeners say they are engaged by branded podcasts, while 58% remember the content they listened to over time. The financial return is not immediate: it builds gradually, with a progressive increase in conversions from listeners to customers, a phenomenon often described in the industry as a long-term loyalty effect.

The third effect concerns word of mouth and trust. According to Ipsos (2024), almost 4 in 10 Italian listeners discovered a brand they did not previously know through a podcast, a figure that rises further among Hunters. More than half of listeners also say they appreciate brands that produce audio content.

After listening to a branded podcast, users typically take one of the following actions (Ipsos, 2024):

looks for more information about the brand (32% of activated listeners)
talks about it with friends and acquaintances (26%)
purchases the brand’s product (16%)

The three types of brand integration

The level of brand presence within the format varies depending on the communication objective and can be divided into three models, reflected in three successful branded podcasts published in recent years.

In the associated model, the brand remains in the background and limits itself to the role of project promoter, mentioned at the end of the episode. This is the case with “The Message”, an eight-episode fiction series produced in 2015 by General Electric with the agencies BBDO New York and Giant Spoon, together with Slate’s Panoply network: a story of espionage and the decoding of a 70-year-old radio signal, built using the narrative techniques of auteur radio from the 1940s and 1950s. The podcast surpassed 4.5 million downloads and reached number one in the iTunes podcast charts, remaining recognizable as standalone entertainment rather than as advertising content.

In the integrated model, the brand is present within the narrative and becomes the starting point for telling stories, as in “Accelera, storie di successo di imprese italiane”: four episodes produced by One Podcast (Gedi Group) linked to the free “Accelera con Amazon” programme, in which journalist Mary Cacciola interviews entrepreneurs who explain how they grew their e-commerce businesses. Amazon provides the context and funds the project, but the entrepreneurs remain the protagonists.

In the sponsor-produced model, the brand is the direct protagonist of the podcast, which tells its story or provides B2B content to its audience. “The McKinsey Podcast” features analysis and interviews on strategy and economics led by McKinsey & Company consultants, aimed at an audience of managers and professionals. “Una Storia Dolcissima”, the first podcast by Novi (Grande Cioccolato Italiano), written by Eugenio Signorini and produced by Piano P, tells the story of chocolate across six episodes, from the Maya and Aztec civilizations to modern industrial production, intertwining it with the brand’s identity.

Operational implications: what you need to launch a branded podcast

Before launching a branded podcast project, it is advisable to define several key elements: an understanding of the brand, an analysis of the target audience and the editorial concept; an editorial plan that establishes the most effective narrative for the chosen audience; scriptwriting and, where useful, transcription to improve accessibility and reach; a measurement plan based on KPIs and listening metrics; and a multichannel promotion and distribution plan, to achieve a broader return than publishing on audio platforms alone.

Producing a branded podcast in Stella33’s podcast room

Stella33’s podcast room at Stella Santa Giulia (Milan) operates as a fully fledged branded podcast studio: alongside recording, it offers an editorial consultancy service covering brand and target audience analysis, concept and format definition, scriptwriting, production and post-production, through to a multichannel promotion plan. The four available packages, from Basic to Luxury, make it possible to tailor the project according to how much of the process needs to be entrusted to the external team and how much is managed internally by the company.

For more details on technical equipment, in-room technical support and the difference compared with a DIY recording setup, see Why choose a professional podcast room.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a branded podcast?

From the office as a fixed cost to the office as a manageable system

BURGG — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:31:02 +0000

In summary

For many companies, the office remains a static cost item: rent, operating expenses and fit-out, with little visibility into what happens over time. Today, that model is showing its limitations.
Hybrid work, variable occupancy and changing employee expectations have transformed the office into a dynamic infrastructure that needs to be actively managed.
Managing the workspace means aligning cost, usage and value generated, rather than simply recording a fixed expense on the balance sheet.
Those who manage the workspace now have the tools to move from passive management to active governance, with a direct impact on costs, performance and team well-being.

From a static balance-sheet item to dynamic infrastructure

In the first article in this series, we broke down the office’s Total Cost of Occupancy item by item: rent, operating expenses, fit-out, technology and hidden costs. Once that cost becomes transparent, the question moves one step further: how do you manage, day by day, what was previously just a line item on the balance sheet?

For decades, office real estate was managed as a relatively stable cost line: rent, operating expenses, upfront investments and limited visibility into what happened afterwards. That model worked as long as work itself remained stable.

The landscape has changed. This issue is explored in an analysis by Limitless Workspace, the advisory platform within the Stella editorial ecosystem dedicated to the economics of the workplace: the workspace has become one of the most complex infrastructures to manage within organizations. Hybrid work models, fluctuating occupancy, cost pressures and evolving employee expectations have transformed the office from a stable asset into a dynamic system. Hybrid work has exposed a fundamental contradiction: companies have changed the way they work, but not always the way they manage space. This is where structural inefficiencies arise—inefficiencies that marginal adjustments cannot solve.

What it means to manage the office rather than be constrained by it

There is a clear difference between managing a cost and governing a system. Managing means paying bills, renewing contracts and keeping spaces in order. Governing means understanding how space is used, aligning spending with actual usage and directing decisions toward the value the office generates for people and the business.

Limitless Workspace brings the key question to the forefront: how manageable is the cost of the office? A well-governed office has transparent costs, a flexible contractual structure and alignment between the space being paid for and the space actually used. An office that is merely managed remains opaque, rigid and generally oversized compared with the work that actually takes place within it.

The three levers of workspace governance

Workspace governance is built on three practical levers.

Cost transparency is the foundation. As long as expenses remain scattered across contracts, suppliers and functions, every decision is based on partial information. Bringing the Total Cost of Occupancy together into a single framework makes what was previously fragmented clear and understandable.

Aligning cost with usage is the lever that hybrid work has made increasingly urgent. Paying for space sized for full occupancy when actual usage is lower creates underused capacity. Adjusting space and services to actual demand brings spending back into proportion with value.

Structural flexibility completes the picture. A contract that allows companies to expand or reduce their space as the team changes turns a multi-year constraint into an adaptable resource. Limitless Workspace describes this shift as the move from passive management to active governance, and from fragmented visibility to integrated understanding.

Spending better before spending less

A common mistake is to view the workspace purely as a cost-cutting exercise. More mature organizations take a different approach: their goal is to spend better. This means aligning costs with actual usage, introducing more flexible cost structures, reducing hidden inefficiencies and turning the workplace into a driver of performance.

This is where the cultural shift takes place. The guiding question becomes: how can every euro invested in the office generate value in terms of productivity, well-being and the ability to attract and retain talent? Stella33 applies the same principle through a management model that puts the client at the center and adapts the product-service offering to their actual needs, creating a competitive advantage over alternative workspaces.

How Stella33 turns space into a manageable system

Stella33 designs workplace ecosystems that integrate space, services, technology and community into a single model. For those managing the workspace, this means having a system that is governable by design, rather than a space that has to be pieced together contract by contract.

Costs are consolidated into a single invoice, with charges aligned to actual usage: shared spaces and meeting rooms are paid for based on how much they are used, bringing spending in line with real occupancy. The amount of space can expand or contract as the team changes, introducing the contractual flexibility that a traditional 6+6 lease does not offer. Day-to-day management, from house management to digital space booking via app, is included, freeing up internal time that would otherwise be absorbed by operational tasks.

The principle guiding our approach is that every space is a strategic lever for the company. Our offices in Milan and the services included are designed accordingly: as components of a system that is transparent, adaptable and focused on the performance of the team using it.

An applied example: rethinking the office for a hybrid team in Milan

Imagine a twelve-person team working in a hybrid model in Milan, with office attendance concentrated on two or three days a week. In a static model, the company pays in full for a space sized around peak occupancy, including large meeting rooms used only a few hours each week. Underused space becomes a pure cost, while a rigid contractual structure makes it difficult to adjust.

In a governable model, the same company sizes its private offices around actual attendance, uses coworking spaces and meeting rooms according to real demand, and adjusts the amount of space as the team changes. Spending becomes proportional to occupancy, internal time is freed from day-to-day operational management, and the office stops being a fixed cost to be endured and becomes a tool that supports the way people work. The result is the same quality of space, with far greater control over costs and flexibility.

Frequently Asked Questions

What distinguishes a “governed” office from a “managed” one?

Palazzo Isola Nova in Venice: working in the business village on the Grand Canal

BURGG — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 21:06:57 +0000

In summary

Palazzo Isola Nova is the business center managed by Stella33 on Isola Nova del Tronchetto, at the entrance to Venice.
The space occupies three floors of the building, with ready-to-use private offices of various sizes, a clubhouse, meeting rooms of different sizes and common areas for informal work.
The People Mover connects Tronchetto to Piazzale Roma in about 3 minutes: a waterfront address accessible by car, with covered parking also available on a subscription basis.
The welcome experience is managed through a smart video intercom system that gives clients full control over access and guests, with one or two house managers always available to support meetings, events and day-to-day needs.
Companies such as CFKAD, Data Cube, Dream Events & Travel and Key Data are already based at Palazzo Isola Nova.

What is Palazzo Isola Nova

Palazzo Isola Nova is the business village managed by Stella33 on Isola Nova del Tronchetto in Venice. The project stems from the regeneration of an 18,000-square-meter office asset that had remained inactive for more than twenty years. Stella33 worked with Investire SGR, the project promoter, on a three-phase strategy that divided the building into smaller, more flexible units, positioned it as a professional destination in the lagoon, and developed a business center with an adjoining clubhouse.

The space is spread across three floors designed as bright, open-plan environments, with large windows overlooking the canal and the internal courtyard. The architectural project, designed by Daniela Carta (Metroquadro Architetti), organizes the spaces around a central social hub, with natural tones such as rope and cream creating a discreet and elegant style. Coworking areas, fully equipped offices, lounges, meeting rooms and a learning center for courses and training coexist within the building. Palazzo Isola Nova also serves as a hub for events and meetings, developed in partnership with Ca’ Foscari University.

Where it is located: Tronchetto Island and connections to Venice

Palazzo Isola Nova is located at Isola Nova del Tronchetto 36, in the distinctive setting of Tronchetto Island, the gateway to Venice accessible by car via the trans-lagoon bridge. It offers a balance between the historic center and the mainland: a fully Venetian address with the road accessibility that the heart of the city cannot provide.

From Tronchetto, the People Mover connects the area to Piazzale Roma in about 3 minutes, with frequent services throughout the day and an affordable fare; alternatively, there are two vaporetto stops on the island. Those arriving by car can use covered on-site parking, with subscription options available. The proximity to hotels and B&Bs also makes PIN a practical solution for traveling teams and international clients, while the historic center remains just a few minutes away for meetings, events or corporate visits.

The spaces and services at Palazzo Isola Nova

Thanks to its modular spaces, Palazzo Isola Nova offers a complete range of solutions for companies and professionals:

Ready-to-use private offices, with 15 units and the option to expand in the future.
Dedicated parking spaces, with subscription options available.
High speed WI-Fi.
Meeting rooms di diverse tipologie e dimensioni.
Self-service kitchen with an internal kitchen area.
Support in finding customized catering services for meetings and events.
Event management with dedicated support.
Shared spaces and lounge areas for informal work.
Clubhouse for meetings and networking.
Event and training spaces for up to 100 people.

The model follows the same pay-per-use approach used across all Stella33 business centers: no CAPEX investment for the client company, shared reception and common facilities among tenants, and predictable costs consolidated into a single invoice. At Palazzo Isola Nova, the fully serviced model delivers stated savings of up to 25% compared with a traditional office in the Venice lagoon.

Smart hospitality: autonomy and house management

Palazzo Isola Nova adopts a different hospitality model from Stella33’s other locations: a smart video intercom system that gives clients full autonomy over access, meetings and guest management. Visitors ring the customized intercom of the company they are visiting; the contact person receives a direct call on their mobile phone through the integrated system and can remotely unlock the building entrance, even when no physical reception staff are present. The same approach applies to couriers and deliveries, which are managed through the dedicated video intercom system.

Despite the automation, one or two house managers are always available on site to assist occupants, coordinate meetings and events, and maintain high service standards. It is a model that combines operational autonomy with human support, designed for a business center where companies manage frequent guest flows without giving up assistance when needed.

The companies working at Palazzo Isola Nova

Among the companies that have chosen Palazzo Isola Nova as their workplace are CFKAD, Data Cube, Dream Events & Travel and Key Data. The tenant mix confirms the project’s multi-tenant positioning: PIN accommodates both companies on traditional leases and buyers of units offered for sale, with shared services available under both arrangements.

The full list of active tenants at Palazzo Isola Nova and across Stella33’s other locations is available in the Community section of the website.

Who Palazzo Isola Nova is designed for

The combination of a lagoon address and car access makes Palazzo Isola Nova a natural choice for companies that host international clients and want a Venetian presence without the logistical constraints of the historic center. Tourism and events companies, such as Dream Events & Travel, benefit directly from the proximity to hotels and B&Bs and the ease of access. For companies that simply need to establish a presence in Venice, whether as a registered office, local branch or fully operational workplace, the fully serviced model reduces setup times, fixed costs and management complexity compared with a traditional office.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Palazzo Isola Nova located?

Podcast room in Milan: why choose a professional studio

BURGG — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 15:42:12 +0000

In summary

A professional podcast room ensures consistent audio and video quality from one episode to the next, something that is difficult to achieve with home equipment.
The hidden cost of DIY recording is the time spent in post-production correcting noise, reverb and inconsistent lighting—when these issues can be fully corrected at all.
A well-designed podcast room often also supports video production, webinars and photo shoots, which is why it is also referred to as a media room.
According to the Ipsos Digital Audio Survey 2024, there were 15.2 million podcast listeners in Italy, up 2% compared with 2023, and 63% had listened to at least one branded podcast.

Those who regularly produce audio and video content, either independently or for a company, achieve more consistent results and reduce post-production time by recording in a professional podcast room rather than in a home environment. The difference can be seen in sound quality, image quality when video is involved, and the time saved during editing.

What is a professional podcast room

A professional podcast room is a space designed for recording audio and video content, equipped with acoustic treatment, dedicated equipment (microphones, cameras and lighting) and, in most cases, technical support during the session. When the same space can also be used for video production, webinars or photo shoots, it is referred to as a media room: a term that describes the room’s versatility rather than a function separate from podcasting.

Why it matters for content creators in Milan

For a company investing in a branded podcast, recording quality directly affects brand perception: noisy audio or video with inconsistent lighting communicates less care than the content deserves, regardless of the value of the message. For a professional using a podcast to build positioning in their field, consistent quality from one episode to the next is part of the credibility the format develops over time. For an independent creator, a fully equipped studio reduces the time spent on technical production and leaves more room to focus on content.

Market context: how important podcasts are in Italy today

According to the Ipsos report Digital Audio Survey 2024, Unlocking the Potential of Podcasts: From Passion to Strategy, there were 15.2 million podcast listeners in Italy in 2024, up 2% compared with 2023. Of those surveyed, 44% said they were listening to more podcasts than the previous year, rising to 53% among people under 25. Meanwhile, 63% of listeners had listened to at least one branded podcast—audio content produced and sponsored by a brand.

Over the same period, the video podcast format became increasingly established, distributed both as audio-only content and as video on platforms such as YouTube and Spotify. This trend extends the need for professional production standards beyond audio to video as well, for both creators and companies. These figures refer to the Italian podcast market as a whole, not just the branded podcast segment aimed at companies, and are current as of 2024: they should be read as an indication of market trends, not as a forecast.

What is the difference between recording at home and in a professional podcast room?

A home environment without acoustic treatment introduces reverberation and background noise into the audio track. Hard surfaces, windows and thin walls reflect sound and reduce voice clarity. In post-production, these issues require equalization and noise reduction, which increases editing time and, in some cases, cannot be fully corrected.

When the project also includes a video component, lighting becomes another key variable. Without controlled lighting, color rendering can vary from one shot to another and image detail decreases in low-light conditions, which can affect the perceived authority of the content when it is distributed on YouTube or social media.

The most difficult variable to manage independently is consistency between episodes. An editorial project developed across multiple episodes requires repeatable quality standards: the same audio performance, the same lighting and the same setting. A professional podcast room provides this consistency because the equipment, acoustic setup and, when included, the technician in the room remain the same for every session.

Operational considerations: what to evaluate before booking

Before booking a podcast room, it is worth defining a few key elements of the project: the average length of a session, whether an audio-video technician is included in the price or offered as an additional service, whether video is needed alongside audio, which post-production services are required (editing, mixing, color correction), and which platforms the final content will be distributed on. These factors determine whether it is more convenient to rent the room by the hour or choose a package that includes production, post-production and distribution.

Applied example: the Stella33 podcast room in Santa Giulia (Milan)

The Stella33 podcast room is located inside Spark3, at Stella Santa Giulia, one of Milan’s innovation hubs. The space is equipped with Røde USB microphones and DJI Mic lavalier microphones, Sony Alpha ZV-E10 4K cameras, professional lighting with LED panels and ring lights, and a modular set suitable for interviews, monologues, conversations or photo shoots. An audio-video technician is present throughout the session.

Podcast room rental starts at €100 per hour, with a technician and audio-video setup always included. For a more complete service, four podcast packages are available, from Basic (recording, production, post-production and distribution) to Luxury (which also includes script development and marketing strategy), as well as an initial consulting service covering market analysis, positioning and format development.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a professional podcast room?

Stella Santa Giulia: working in the Spark Business District in Milan

BURGG — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:49:25 +0000

In summary

Stella Santa Giulia is the business center managed by Stella33 on the first floor of Spark3, in Milan’s Santa Giulia Spark Business District.
The space covers 2,325 square meters, with more than 200 workstations, private offices, custom suites and 12 meeting rooms.
The building is LEED Gold certified and located 250 meters from Rogoredo station, with the M3 metro line and high-speed rail just a short walk away.
Companies such as Eli Lilly Italia, Small Pixels, NetCom Group and TransMedics have chosen Stella Santa Giulia as their flexible workplace.
The model follows the principles of Activity-Based Working, with around half of the space dedicated to common areas, events and meeting rooms.

What is Stella Santa Giulia

Stella Santa Giulia is the business center managed by Stella33 inside Spark3, one of the buildings in the Spark Business District, in Milan’s Santa Giulia neighborhood. The space occupies the building’s first floor, with 2,325 square meters organized according to a multi-tenant model: companies of different sizes share the reception, meeting rooms and common areas, while choosing the amount of space their team actually needs.

Active since 2025, Stella Santa Giulia offers more than 200 workstations, ready-to-use private offices, custom suites and 12 meeting rooms bookable via app. Organic materials and colors, careful attention to lighting and acoustics, and a strong focus on art define the character of the space, following the principles of Activity-Based Working: people choose the environment best suited to what they are doing, from focused work to informal meetings.

Where it is located: the Spark Business District and the Santa Giulia neighborhood

Stella Santa Giulia is located in the Spark Business District, the business hub developed by Lendlease as part of the broader Milano Santa Giulia urban regeneration project. The district is part of one of Italy’s largest urban transformation projects, with new green areas, residential spaces and major infrastructure, including the indoor arena that hosted events during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics.

The location is 250 meters from Rogoredo railway and metro station, with direct access to the M3 line, the ring road and, via high-speed rail, to Bologna, Rome and Naples. Linate Airport is around a ten-minute drive away. The building is LEED Gold certified and overlooks Piazza Tina Modotti, which features a food & beverage area and cultural initiatives that make the district a lively destination throughout the day, rather than just an office park.

The district has long been home to offices of major international companies: Sky has its main headquarters here, while Saipem, SMA and Geodis occupy spaces in the Spark buildings. ArcelorMittal and TD SYNNEX Italy have also chosen Spark3 as the base for their Italian offices. This mix of major companies makes the Spark Business District a lively environment throughout the day, with more than 5,000 people passing through Piazza Tina Modotti every day.

The spaces and services at Stella Santa Giulia

Stella Santa Giulia offers:

ready-to-use private offices and custom suites, tailored to the company’s needs;
12 fully equipped meeting rooms, bookable via a dedicated app, for meetings, presentations and workshops;
lounge areas, kitchenettes, phone booths and outdoor terraces;
copy rooms and a podcast room for content creation and internal communications;
reception services covering the entire guest journey, including pre-registration, check-in and logistical support;
on-site community management, overseeing day-to-day operations, events and operational support for clients.

The economic model follows the pay-per-use approach adopted across all Stella33 business centers in Milan: predictable costs, no CAPEX investment for the client company, and the flexibility to increase or reduce dedicated space as the team evolves.

The companies working at Stella Santa Giulia

Eli Lilly Italia deliberately chose the flexible workspace at Stella Santa Giulia to foster agility, relationships and cross-functional collaboration among teams. Within the company, workplace governance is managed by the HR function, which sees it as a driver of well-being, attractiveness and performance.

Small Pixels, a video production and advanced research company, chose Stella Santa Giulia for its range of different environments designed for focused work, brainstorming, calls and creative activities. Team members have started using the spaces intentionally, turning even breaks into opportunities for productive interaction. For one member of the marketing team, the experience of the workspace during the interview process was part of the decision to join the company.

NetCom Group, an Italian consulting company founded in 2006 and specializing in engineering services and digital technologies, has brought to Stella Santa Giulia a team serving public- and private-sector clients across automotive, telecommunications, rail, banking, insurance, industry, healthcare and public administration.

TransMedics, a US medical technology company specializing in the preservation and transport of organs for transplantation, chose Stella Santa Giulia as its Italian headquarters, within a business center that allows it to maintain the same standard of representation as its international offices.

Who Stella Santa Giulia is designed for

The space meets different needs depending on the company profile. Multinationals with an HR function focused on employee well-being find in Stella Santa Giulia an environment that supports collaboration and attractiveness, as in the case of Eli Lilly Italia and TransMedics. SMEs, consulting firms and creative companies, such as Small Pixels and NetCom Group, value the variety of environments designed for different ways of working, from focused individual work to team brainstorming. For all companies, the location near Rogoredo offers a tangible advantage for teams distributed between south-east Milan and other cities connected by high-speed rail.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Stella Santa Giulia located?

Opening an office at MIND Milano: why a district is worth more than an address

BURGG — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 15:41:18 +0000

The Hive is the business center managed by Stella33 in the heart of MIND, the Milano Innovation District, in the north-western area of the city, on the border with Rho. It offers 2,500 square meters of flexible offices, coworking spaces, meeting rooms, and active house management, designed for companies that want to work within one of Europe’s leading innovation districts.

In summary

MIND is an innovation district in Milan where research, life sciences and business work side by side.
Stella33’s The Hive allows companies to establish a presence in the district without a traditional lease agreement.
Flexible offices, meeting rooms and a community make it possible to get up and running quickly.
The model follows the Workspace as a Service approach described on Limitless Workspace.

What is MIND and why companies choose it

Choosing where to open an office in Milan means choosing much more than just a certain amount of space. It means choosing the environment where the company works every day, meets partners and attracts talent. MIND, the Milano Innovation District, is now one of Europe’s most interesting hubs for companies operating in innovation, life sciences and applied research. With The Hive, the business center managed by Stella33, companies can establish a presence there right away, without the commitment of a traditional lease agreement.

MIND was established on the former Expo 2015 site and is being developed by Lendlease as a long-term innovation district. Research, healthcare, education, businesses and startups coexist here, alongside major organizations such as Human Technopole and AstraZeneca. This is precisely what sets MIND apart from a traditional business park: companies become part of a dynamic ecosystem, where proximity to other players creates a tangible advantage.

For a company, this means having potential partners, talent, collaboration opportunities and visibility close at hand, in a place that has become a key hub for innovation in Italy.

The Hive: the easiest way to establish a presence at MIND

The Hive is a 2,500-square-meter business center in the heart of MIND. It serves as a gateway to the district, allowing companies to establish a presence within MIND quickly, with the flexibility to choose the solution that best suits their stage of growth.

The variety of companies already working here demonstrates its versatility: from international pharmaceutical company Glenmark to Nikon, from Italian companies such as Bracco, Umana and LavoroPiù to more specialized players. Some use The Hive as a representative office, others as a flexible operational base, while others use it as a weekly meeting point for remote teams that need a physical place to come together. The space is designed to adapt to different needs, time horizons and organizational models.

What you’ll find at The Hive

Flexible offices and shared spaces. Solutions range from private offices to advanced coworking spaces, configurable according to team size and scalable over time, with fast setup times.

A reception that is much more than a reception. Stella33 has reimagined the welcome experience: the traditional front desk gives way to a shared table, while staff act as community and hospitality managers. The entrance area thus becomes a place for informal work, meetings and interaction between companies, rather than simply a space to pass through.

Meeting and event spaces. Spaces for meetings, workshops, conferences and networking, where the MIND setting turns an event into an opportunity to connect with the innovation ecosystem.

Services and technology. High-speed connectivity, smart access systems and digital tools for managing spaces and bookings, all within an integrated service model that allows companies to focus on their work.

Community support. Through events, content and initiatives, Stella33 creates connections between tenants and the wider MIND ecosystem, because the value of a place is also measured by the relationships it enables. This is the same Workspace as a Service principle that Stella33 explores on Limitless Workspace, the editorial platform dedicated to the future of work in the knowledge economy, and in the supplement produced with MIT Sloan Management Review Italia.

Flexibility as a strategic choice

For companies operating in a hybrid model, MIND offers a particularly efficient solution: spaces that can be used on a non-continuous basis, with the ability to scale quickly as needs change. The space is sized around the moments that truly matter: collaboration, meetings and teamwork.

This approach reflects a well-established trend. International research, including recent work by Harvard Business Review on urban innovation districts, confirms that companies gain more from dense, well-connected, service-rich environments, where the quality of the context reduces everyday friction and creates more opportunities for interaction. The Hive applies exactly this logic at the scale of MIND. We have already explored this topic when discussing flexible offices at MIND; this article shifts the perspective to companies deciding where to establish their presence, opening Stella33’s first content cluster dedicated to the district.

The quality of an office also depends on its surrounding environment. MIND offers a high concentration of services, strong transport links, and a network of innovation-focused organizations, making opportunities for connection easier to create. For companies operating with a hybrid work model, The Hive provides a scalable solution tailored to the moments that matter most: collaboration, meetings, and teamwork.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I open an office at MIND without a long-term lease?

MIND Milan Offices: The Hive, Flexible Workspaces in the Innovation District

BURGG — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:22:25 +0000

In summary

The Hive is located in MIND, a district developed by Lendlease on the former Expo 2015 site, home to organizations such as Human Technopole and AstraZeneca.
The Hive offers 2,500 square meters of serviced offices, coworking areas, meeting rooms, and event spaces, all available without the need for a traditional lease agreement.
Guest services are managed through a house management approach: rather than a traditional reception desk, there is a communal table and a team that acts as both community and hospitality managers.
Current tenants range from Glenmark and Nikon to Bracco, Umana, and LavoroPiù, demonstrating how the model can accommodate international companies, Italian businesses, and niche players alike.
Stella33 also manages Stella Santa Giulia and Palazzo Isola Nova in Venice.

Where is The Hive located, and what is MIND

MIND was established on the former Expo 2015 site and is being developed by Lendlease as a long-term innovation district. It brings together research, healthcare, education, businesses, and startups, with prominent organizations such as Human Technopole and AstraZeneca. The Hive is located at the heart of the district and acts as a gateway to it: companies based at The Hive also become part of the wider MIND ecosystem, benefiting from close proximity to partners, talent, and opportunities for collaboration.

Offices in north-west Milan, between Milan and Rho

MIND occupies a strategic location in north-west Milan, on the administrative border with the municipality of Rho, along the corridor leading to Fiera Milano Rho and the A4 motorway. For companies considering offices in Rho or in this part of the city, the district is easily accessible by several means of transport.

By car. Access to MIND is via Cargo 6, on Via Achille Grandi in Rho (search for “Cargo 6 – MIND” on Maps). Unregistered guests simply need to send their vehicle registration number in advance to thehive@stella33.com. The journey takes approximately 22 minutes from Porta Garibaldi, 25 minutes from Milano Centrale, and just 6 minutes from Fiera Milano. The Hive also offers on-site parking spaces that can be booked through the app, as well as several convenient alternatives nearby, from Rho Fiera station to the free car park on Viale Risorgimento.

By metro. Rho Fiera station, on the M1 metro line, provides access to the site via a direct pedestrian tunnel, approximately a 23-minute walk from The Hive.

By train. Rho Fiera station is also served by Milan’s suburban rail network. It is effectively the same stop as the metro station, with access to the district through the same pedestrian tunnel.

The Hive’s Spaces

Serviced offices and bespoke suites. Configurable to suit the size of each team, scalable over time, quickly available, and requiring no upfront capital investment.

Coworking and flexible workstations. Designed for hybrid workers who need a physical base without committing to a fixed amount of office space.

Meeting rooms and event spaces. Suitable for meetings, workshops, conferences, and networking activities, with pay-per-use booking options available.

Common areas and lounges. The traditional front desk is replaced by a shared table, turning the entrance into an informal workspace and a meeting point for companies.

House Management: A New Approach to Hospitality

Stella33 has redesigned the welcome experience at The Hive around a clear principle: the team does not operate as traditional reception staff, but as community and hospitality managers. Replacing the conventional front desk with a shared table turns the entrance area into a dynamic environment where companies can connect and informal work naturally takes place. Stella33 applies the same approach across the other locations it manages in Milan and Venice.

Who Is Already Based at The Hive

The diversity of tenants confirms the versatility of the model: from international pharmaceutical company Glenmark and Nikon to Italian organizations such as Bracco, Umana, and LavoroPiù, as well as more specialized players. Some use The Hive as a representative office, others as a flexible operational base, and others as a weekly meeting point for remote teams. The space adapts to different needs, time horizons, and organizational models.

The full list of active tenants at The Hive and the other Stella33 locations is available in the Community section of the website.

Why Choose MIND as a Business District

Frequently Asked Questions

Is MIND located in Milan or Rho?

Private Office Milan Startup: Why Santa Giulia Should Be Your First Base

Ahmed — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 10:05:24 +0000

Finding your first private office in Milan is not simply a real estate decision. It is an operational signal to your team, your investors, and yourself that the company is moving from idea to execution.

For seed-stage founders in Milan, the choice of district matters as much as the choice of workspace. The Spark Business District in Santa Giulia is emerging as one of the most strategically sound locations for early-stage teams that need a credible, well-connected private office without the cost and rigidity of a traditional lease.

Why Seed-Stage Founders in Milan Need a Private Office, Not Just a Hot Desk

Coworking hot desks serve a purpose in the earliest days of a company. They reduce friction, keep costs minimal, and allow founders to test their routines before committing to anything.

However, there comes a point when investor conversations become regular, the first hire joins, or client meetings require a controlled environment. At that stage, a shared open floor can stop being efficient and start creating problems.

A private office changes the operating conditions of a startup in practical ways. Confidential product discussions, sensitive HR conversations, and investor calls require a level of privacy that open coworking spaces cannot consistently provide.

A dedicated team space also helps build daily alignment and collaboration. Research on early-stage companies regularly links in-person interaction to faster decision-making and stronger team cohesion.

For a seed-stage founder in Milan, moving to a private office is not a luxury. It is an infrastructure decision that supports the next phase of growth. The real question is not whether to make the move, but where.

What Makes Santa Giulia the Right District for a Startup's First Private Office in Milan

1-The Rogoredo Transport Advantage:

Stella Santa Giulia sits just 250 metres from Milan Rogoredo station, one of the city’s most connected transport hubs. The M3 metro line, regional rail services, and high-speed connections to Bologna, Rome, and Naples all converge here.

For founding teams spread across different parts of Milan, or for investors and partners travelling from other Italian cities, this creates a clear practical advantage over many central but congested locations.

Linate Airport is only a ten-minute drive away, while the ring road provides convenient access for those arriving by car. These logistics remove a significant amount of daily friction that would otherwise consume valuable time and energy.

The district’s southeast location also benefits employees living in Porta Romana, Vigentino, Chiaravalle, and surrounding areas. Shorter and easier commutes can have a direct impact on productivity, satisfaction, and retention.

2-The Spark Business District: Built for Growth

The Spark Business District forms part of the wider Santa Giulia regeneration project, one of Milan’s most significant urban developments.

The area combines modern office infrastructure with expanding residential communities, green spaces, restaurants, retail services, and cultural activity centred around Piazza Tina Modotti.

For startups choosing their first private office in Milan, the district offers something many established business areas cannot: the feeling of being part of a growing ecosystem rather than competing for limited space in a saturated one.

The district continues to attract new businesses and services, creating opportunities for networking and collaboration close to home.

Stella Santa Giulia manages the reception and office floors of the Spark3 building under a multi-tenant model. This gives businesses access to professional infrastructure, reliable services, and a credible business address without the complexity and overhead of managing a standalone office.

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How Can a US-Based Company Set Up Its First Office in Europe Without a Long-Term Commitment?

For many US startups and growing companies, opening a first European office is a major milestone but signing a traditional five- or six-year commercial lease can create unnecessary financial and operational risk.

A flexible private office offers a practical alternative. Instead of committing to a long-term lease, companies can establish a professional business presence in Europe with an all-inclusive workspace that can scale as the business grows.

Milan is often one of the first cities considered for European expansion thanks to its international business ecosystem, excellent transport links, and access to talent. A flexible office in Santa Giulia allows US companies to begin with a small team, host client meetings, support business development, and expand their footprint without investing heavily in office management or long-term real estate commitments.

As hiring increases or operations expand across Europe, the workspace can grow alongside the business, reducing risk while maintaining the professional image expected by clients, investors, and partners.

How a Private Office at Stella Santa Giulia Supports the Investor-Ready Phase

One of the most overlooked benefits of a private office is the ability to host investor meetings and team sessions in a professional environment.

Boardroom-quality meeting rooms at Stella Santa Giulia can be booked when needed, providing the right setting for pitch presentations, due diligence meetings, customer reviews, and strategic discussions. You gain access to premium facilities without paying for unused space every day.

The workspace operates on an all-inclusive and flexible model. Founding teams can start with a private office for two to four people and increase capacity as hiring plans evolve or funding rounds close.

This flexibility reduces the risk of overcommitting before product-market fit is achieved while still providing the professional infrastructure needed to attract talent, clients, and investors.

Utilities, high-speed internet, cleaning, and shared facilities are included in a single monthly fee. The result is simpler budgeting and greater visibility over operational costs during a stage when every euro matters.

Private Office vs Coworking at the Seed Stage

Choosing between coworking and a private office is not a permanent decision, and it does not have to be an either-or choice.

Many startups begin with dedicated desks in a coworking environment and move into a private office once the team reaches three or more people and meeting frequency increases.

The signs that a startup is ready for a private office are usually operational rather than aspirational:

Regular investor or client meetings
Confidential discussions around product development, fundraising, or hiring
Increased collaboration between team members
A need for a stronger company identity and culture

When these factors start appearing together, a private office often becomes more efficient and cost-effective than combining coworking memberships with frequent meeting room bookings.

At Stella Santa Giulia, the transition is seamless. Teams can move from coworking to a private office within the same location, allowing them to scale without changing address or disrupting established routines.

For seed-stage founders evaluating a private office in Milan, Santa Giulia offers a combination of connectivity, flexibility, and modern infrastructure that few central districts can match at a similar cost.

Choosing a first private office in the Spark Business District is about more than finding desks and meeting rooms. It is about selecting an environment that supports investor conversations, team cohesion, and sustainable growth during one of the most important phases of building a company.

Ready to See the Space?

If you are looking for a private office in Milan that can scale alongside your startup, Stella Santa Giulia is worth a visit.

The Stella33 team can provide a tailored workspace proposal within 48 hours and arrange access within days. Book a tour of Stella Santa Giulia to explore the space and discuss the best setup for your team.

L'articolo Private Office Milan Startup: Why Santa Giulia Should Be Your First Base proviene da Stella33 Workspace.

Workspace Alignment Index: Measuring Workspace Performance

BURGG — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 15:32:02 +0000

In summary

The Workspace Alignment Index (WAI) is a self-assessment tool designed to measure workspace performance across four dimensions: cost efficiency, space adequacy, impact on people, and flexibility.
The result is a composite score from 1 to 5 for each dimension, highlighting the gap between what is paid and the value received.
It is a diagnostic tool: it does not prescribe solutions, but provides the data needed to inform any decision about the workspace.
It is designed for HR managers, office managers, CFOs, and operations leaders who want to move beyond intuition-based workspace management.
The WAI is available on Limitless Workspace; this article explains its underlying rationale and how to interpret the results.

How many companies truly know whether their office is working? Most assess the workspace in terms of cost per square metre and number of workstations—useful metrics, but insufficient to determine whether the office supports people, productivity, and the organisation’s growth ambitions. The Workspace Alignment Index was created to bridge this gap.

What Is the Workspace Alignment Index?

The WAI is a structured self-assessment framework developed by Limitless Workspace to measure workspace performance across four key dimensions. Each dimension receives a score from 1 to 5, resulting in an overall diagnostic profile of the office. It is not a judgement, but a map showing where the workspace performs well and where it is leaving value on the table.

It is described as a self-assessment tool because the company itself completes it by answering structured questions about its own context. The aim is not to rank offices in absolute terms, but to make visible the gap between the workspace a company has and the workspace it needs.

The Four Dimensions of the WAI

1.Economic Efficiency

This dimension measures how effectively the company manages its Total Cost of Occupancy (TCO): how well it understands the true cost of its workspace, how predictable that cost is, and how closely it aligns with actual usage. Underused offices paid for at full cost, hidden expenses embedded in traditional contracts, and limited visibility into the cost structure are all brought to the surface.

2.Spatial & Operational Fit

This dimension assesses how closely the layout reflects actual work patterns. An office designed for everyone to be present full-time is poorly suited to hybrid teams whose attendance peaks on three days a week and whose activities change throughout the day. It measures the extent to which the physical workspace is designed around people’s behaviours, in line with the principles of Activity-Based Working.

3.People & Performance

This dimension measures the impact of the workplace environment on employee experience, focus, engagement, and the ability to attract talent. The workspace influences both well-being and the company’s attractiveness as an employer. It brings the employee perspective into workspace decision-making, complementing the economic dimension with the lived experience of the people who use the space.

4.Flexibility & Future Readiness

This dimension assesses workspace scalability, contractual flexibility, the role of enabling technology, and readiness for change over a two- to three-year horizon. A growing company, or one undergoing reorganisation, needs to know whether its workspace is supporting or constraining it. This dimension measures the environment’s capacity to adapt.

Why a Score Changes Decision-Making

Workspace management often suffers from three structural weaknesses: fragmented data across different functions—HR, finance, operations, and facilities—disconnects between cost and actual usage, and a lack of visibility into hidden costs. The WAI addresses these three weaknesses through a systematic approach.

When the result is expressed as a number, the conversation changes. A score of 2.8 out of 4 in the Spatial & Operational Fit dimension becomes a starting point for a discussion between HR and real estate, whereas “the layout does not work” remains a subjective impression. The score does not make the decision, but it gives structure to the discussion and makes it possible to compare different situations over time or across locations.

According to CBRE data (2026), Activity-Based Working concepts more than doubled within a year across the projects analysed, rising from 17% to 40%. Demand for workspaces that better reflect actual working patterns is already growing; the WAI helps organisations understand that demand within their own context before making structural decisions.

How It Works in Practice

The WAI is completed as a structured questionnaire, with questions covering each of the four dimensions. It does not require complex technical data: it draws on information that HR managers, office managers, and operations leaders already have or can easily collect.

The assessment takes relatively little time to complete—approximately 20 to 30 minutes. The result is a profile for each dimension and a composite score that can be reviewed over time, to track how the profile evolves, or comparatively, to assess differences across multiple locations within the same company.

The tool is hosted on Limitless Workspace, Stella33’s editorial and methodological platform, where it is available in a self-service format. For organisations seeking a deeper analysis, the WAI output can serve as the starting point for a guided assessment with the Stella33 team, which operates business centres in Milan and Venice and has first-hand knowledge of the variables highlighted by the questionnaire.

What to Do with the Results

A low score in Economic Efficiency indicates that the workspace’s overall TCO should be analysed, including costs that do not appear under the “rent” line in the financial statements. A low score in Spatial & Operational Fit suggests mapping employees’ actual behaviours before making any changes to the workspace. A weak People & Performance profile is a signal that should be brought to the attention of those responsible for employee engagement and talent retention.

The WAI does not prescribe a solution; it indicates where to look. What an organisation does with the insights depends on its specific context, including company size, growth stage, existing real estate contract, and team composition. This is why the WAI works best as the starting point for a conversation rather than as a checklist to complete and file away.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the WAI Suitable for Every Type of Company?

How Much Does Your Office Really Cost? The Total Cost of Occupancy Many Businesses Overlook

BURGG — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:24:31 +0000

Quick summary

Total Cost of Occupancy (TCO): the sum of all the costs associated with an office, including rent, operating expenses, fit-out, services, technology, and the hidden costs that rarely appear under a single line item in the budget.
In most companies, office costs are fragmented across different contracts, suppliers, and departments, making it easy to underestimate the true cost of the workplace.
For a company with 6–12 employees, in the same area of Milan, a serviced office can reduce occupancy costs by around 30% compared to a traditional lease, thanks to the elimination of upfront investment, day-to-day operational management, and unexpected expenses.
Those managing the workspace should start by looking at the total cost, rather than just the rent, when deciding between a traditional lease and a serviced office.

Workspace managers should consider total costs, not just rent, when choosing between a traditional lease and a serviced office.

The true cost of your office is almost always higher than the rent stated in the contract. Beyond the rent, there are shared expenses, utilities, maintenance, cleaning, reception, meeting rooms, connectivity, furniture, and internal time spent on tasks unrelated to your core business. The sum of all these costs is known as the Total Cost of Occupancy. Calculating it fully is the first step to understanding whether your current office is truly working in your favor.

What is Total Cost of Occupancy

The Total Cost of Occupancy (TCO) measures everything a company spends to occupy and operate its workspace throughout the entire period of use. It includes explicit costs, first and foremost rent, as well as all related expenses such as operational services, technology, fit-out, and indirect costs that often remain hidden.

The concept originated in the corporate real estate sector and is now one of the key metrics closely monitored by CFOs, as office costs are often among the most significant items in the income statement, second only to personnel expenses. According to the analysis by [ ], a workspace evolution advisory platform, the real challenge for companies is not only how much the office costs, but also how manageable that cost is.

Why rent only tells part of the story

Anyone evaluating an office by looking only at the price per square metre is only seeing the beginning of the story. Rent is the most visible and easiest cost to compare, which is why it often drives the decision-making process. However, the true cost impacting the balance sheet includes much more.

Three weaknesses are common across almost all companies:

Data fragmentation: expenses are spread across rent, facilities, technology, services, human resources, and indirect costs, and are rarely consolidated into a single, coherent overview.
Misalignment between cost and usage: many companies still pay for office spaces designed for full occupancy, while hybrid work has reduced the actual use of available square metres.
Hidden costs: from operational inefficiencies to the time spent on non-core activities and administrative tasks.

Limitless Workspace identifies these three factors as the reason why many office-related decisions are made based on incomplete information.

The five components of the true cost of an office

To fully understand the Total Cost of Occupancy, it is useful to group it into five main cost categories.

Direct real estate costs

Rent, operating expenses, and service charges. These are the most visible costs and the easiest to forecast.

Operational costs

Utilities, maintenance, cleaning, reception, and day-to-day workspace management. In a traditional lease, these costs are entirely the company’s responsibility and are managed through separate contracts.

Technology costs

Connectivity, IT infrastructure, booking systems, access control, and digital tools for workspace management.

Capital costs (CAPEX)

Fit-out, furniture, systems, and adaptation works. These represent an upfront investment that impacts a long-term lease from day one, even before the office becomes fully operational.

Indirect and opportunity costs

The hardest costs to quantify: internal time spent managing the office, underutilized spaces, and limited flexibility when the team grows or downsizes. Limitless Workspace refers to these as hidden cost exposure and identifies them as the portion that most often remains out of control.

Hidden costs: the portion of expenses that escapes control

Hidden costs deserve a dedicated section because they are what make the difference between an estimate and a reliable calculation.

A large meeting room used only a few hours a week is space you are paying for but not fully using.
A team that spends entire days coordinating cleaning suppliers, maintenance providers, and connectivity contracts is using valuable time that could be dedicated to core business activities.
A rigid lease that prevents a company from reducing or expanding its office space as the team changes creates an opportunity cost that never appears on any invoice.

Making these costs visible is exactly the goal of a thorough Total Cost of Occupancy calculation. The value of this exercise lies in bringing to light what usually remains hidden.

How Stella33 makes Total Cost of Occupancy predictable

Stella33 designs work ecosystems that integrate space, services, technology, and community into a single serviced office solution. For workspace managers, this translates into a Total Cost of Occupancy that is easier to understand, predict, and manage.

Stella33’s offices for rent in Milan come fully furnished and ready to use, with services included in a single fee: reception (managed according to the Stella33 house management approach), meeting rooms, lounges, phone booths, connectivity, and digital workspace management through an app. The costs that, in a traditional lease, are spread across multiple suppliers are consolidated into a single invoice, with expenses aligned with the actual use of the space. The upfront investment in fit-out and furniture is absorbed by the serviced office model, freeing up capital that can be allocated to the business.

The principle behind our approach is simple: every workspace is a strategic asset for a company, and office costs become a clear, predictable figure aligned with how the space is actually used.

An applied example: a 6–12 person team in Milan

Let’s imagine a nine-person company evaluating two options in the same area of Milan: a traditional leased office and a Stella33 serviced office.

Traditional lease

The budget starts with the rent, but the true cost grows item by item: service charges, initial fit-out, furniture, connectivity contracts, cleaning, maintenance, and the share of internal time someone in the company will need to dedicate to managing it all. On top of this comes the constraint of a long-term lease, typically 6+6 years, based on a fixed amount of space.

Stella33 serviced office

The fee includes furniture, services, technology, and management. Meeting rooms are charged based on actual usage, and the workspace can expand or shrink as the team changes. In the same area, for a company of this size, a serviced office can deliver average savings of around 30% on Total Cost of Occupancy, by eliminating upfront investment, fragmented operational management, and a significant share of hidden costs.

Stella33 data: companies with 6–12 employees, compared within the same area. Figures to be verified against the client’s specific contractual scope.

Checklist: the questions to ask before signing

Do I know my complete Total Cost of Occupancy — beyond just rent — including services, technology, and indirect costs?
How much of my office space is actually being used compared to the amount of space I am paying for?
What is the ratio between fixed and variable costs in my current contract?
How much internal time do we dedicate to the operational management of the workspace?
Does my contract allow me to adjust the office space if the team grows or shrinks?

Do you want to know the true cost of your office?

Measuring the Total Cost of Occupancy is the first step to understanding whether your workspace is working in your favour. Limitless Workspace, an advisory platform and partner of the Stella editorial ecosystem, has developed the Economic Efficiency Score, a free tool that measures the financial health of your workspace.

When you want to turn that result into a concrete solution, iscover the Stella33 offices in Milan or explore the included services: our team will help you understand your total cost and make it predictable.

FAQ

Is Total Cost of Occupancy only relevant for large companies?

The fourth workplace: when remote working becomes a way of life

BURGG — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:14:49 +0000

There comes a precise moment when an idea stops being a trend and becomes part of the structure. Remote work crossed that threshold a few years ago. Since then, it has reshaped the way people think about the spaces where they live, work, and connect with others—and it has made a new concept necessary: the fourth place of work.

Ahoma was born in this context. And Montemagno Monferrato, with its homes, its landscape, and its human scale, is where this concept takes tangible shape.

From the first to the third place: a brief history of the workplace

In the 1980s, sociologist Ray Oldenburg had already recognized that quality of life depends to a great extent on the quality of the spaces we inhabit. His theory distinguished between the first place, the home, the realm of private life, and the second place, the office, the space of institutional productivity. The third place occupied the ground in between: informal and community-oriented, it encompassed the neighborhood café, the town square, the local club, places where people gathered beyond the obligations of home and work.

For decades, coworking sought to occupy this third space, adding Wi-Fi and shared desks to the experience of the neighborhood café. It was undoubtedly a step forward. Yet something was still missing: depth. Continuity. A way of living, not just working.

The fourth place emerges precisely from this realization.

What is the fourth place of work?

The fourth place of work is the space that integrates everything the previous three could not fully hold together. The comfort and privacy of the home. The productive structure of the office. The sociability and cross-pollination of coworking. And the beauty, the slower rhythm, and the value coherence of a consciously chosen way of living.

It has several defining characteristics that distinguish it from the hybrid solutions of the past.

The first is the quality of physical space. Well-designed environments, carefully chosen materials, natural light, real silence: conditions that allow for deep, focused work without giving up the comfort that makes life genuinely enjoyable.

The second is human connection. The fourth place brings together people who share a similar outlook on work and life—independent professionals, digital entrepreneurs, consultants, creatives—united by the belief that the context in which one works profoundly shapes the quality of thought.

The third is philosophy. The fourth place has a recognizable identity. It proposes a rhythm, an aesthetic, and a set of values. A space where one can feel aligned with oneself, as well as productive.

The fourth is territorial radicality. The fourth place belongs to a specific location, with its own history, landscape, cuisine, and light. It is born within an authentic place, carrying all the specific weight that a place brings with it.

Monferrato as the fourth place: why it works

Monferrato is a land of slow time, shaped by agricultural cycles, the changing seasons, and a beauty that needs no amplification. Its hills, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2014, frame a landscape of villages that have resisted urban acceleration. It is a place where the scenery enters through windows, settles on work tables, and accompanies lunch breaks.

Montemagno sits at the center of this system, about an hour from Milan and thirty minutes from Turin, in the direction of Asti—an area that combines real accessibility with qualitative isolation. Fiber-optic connectivity is available. The highway can be reached in just a few minutes. Wineries, local osterias, walking paths through the vineyards, and a community of people who engage with the territory with care: all of this exists within the same radius of action.

It is the kind of place suited to those who have understood that productivity depends on the quality of the context in which one immerses oneself every day.

Ahoma is a concrete response to the fourth place.

Ahoma is a contemporary Mediterranean living platform created to make all of this accessible. The project is grounded in a core belief: contemporary well-being requires realignment. There is a profound difference between looking for a place to stay and choosing a context in which to live better.

The four pillars of Ahoma—Spirit, Body, Mind, and Relationships—define the axes of a well-designed fourth place.
Spirit represents personal direction and clarity of purpose: knowing why one is there, what one wants to build, and where one is going. Body stands for authentic comfort, natural movement, and mindful nourishment: the territory becomes an integral part of everyday life. Mind is the space for deep thinking, away from digital noise: the silence of Monferrato becomes a cognitive infrastructure. Relationships refer to real connections and a form of sociability built around shared values.

Ahoma homes in Montemagno: where the fourth place becomes bookable

Ahoma homes in Montemagno are designed to integrate work and life without forced hierarchies. They function as private offices during focused working hours and as real homes the rest of the time.
Reliable connectivity, essential and carefully considered design in continuity with the local territory, and a direct relationship with the landscape that enters through every window.

Stays are designed to adapt to different durations—short, medium, or long-term—depending on the needs of those arriving: a week of intense work and regeneration, a month of remote working immersed in Monferrato, or a longer period for those who want to experience temporary living as a genuine alternative way of life.

The stay is part of a broader ecosystem: experiences within the territory, a curated community of people who share a similar approach to work and life, and editorial content that helps orient and deepen one’s understanding of the place they are in.

The fourth place of work is a mature idea. Ahoma in Montemagno Monferrato is the concrete answer to that idea, built within one of the most beautiful and most understated landscapes in Italy.

What is the fourth place of work?

Cross-Departmental Collaboration in Milan: How Hybrid Workspaces in MIND & Santa Giulia Drive Results in 2026

Ahmed — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:25:22 +0000

Milan’s corporate environment demands speed, innovation, and tight alignment across departments. Yet hybrid work models have intensified silos between technology, marketing, sales, operations, and finance teams. While digital tools manage routine tasks, cross-departmental collaboration in Milan still requires intentional physical spaces that foster meaningful interaction, creative problem-solving, and relationship building.

Strategic hybrid workspaces in innovation districts offer the ideal solution. They combine professional design, flexible capacity, and prime locations without the cost or commitment of traditional offices. Stella33’s locations at The Hive in MIND Innovation District and Stella Santa Giulia in Spark Business District are purpose-built to support enterprise teams seeking measurable improvements in collaboration and performance.

The Hybrid Collaboration Challenge for Milan Enterprises

Hybrid work has transformed how corporate teams operate. While remote tools handle daily coordination, complex initiatives — such as digital transformation, product launches, and strategic planning — suffer when face-to-face interaction is inconsistent.

Many Milan-based organizations report slower decision-making, duplicated efforts, and reduced innovation due to fragmented cross-functional engagement. The solution lies in workspaces that support both scheduled collaboration days and spontaneous interactions while remaining accessible across the metropolitan area.

Why Innovation Districts Excel for Cross-Departmental Collaboration

Milan’s major regeneration projects — MIND and Santa Giulia — create vibrant ecosystems that naturally support collaboration. These districts blend business, research, residential, and green spaces, making them ideal for modern enterprise needs.

The Hive at MIND Innovation District: Built for Technical and Innovation Teams

Located in northwest Milan, The Hive sits at the heart of the MIND Innovation District. This environment is particularly effective for technology, R&D, product development, and design teams that require deep cross-functional alignment.

The space features private office suites, collaborative lounges, focus areas, and well-equipped meeting rooms. Excellent public transport connections make it accessible for employees across northern and western Milan. The innovation-driven atmosphere encourages knowledge sharing between engineers, product managers, marketers, and business leaders.

Stella Santa Giulia in Spark Business District: Ideal for Commercial and Operational Alignment

In southeast Milan, Stella Santa Giulia benefits from strong connectivity via the Rogoredo metro and regional rail hub. This location supports teams focused on commercial execution, customer operations, finance, and go-to-market strategies.

The design includes flexible team areas and varied meeting spaces that accommodate both structured workshops and informal discussions. The developing neighborhood with green spaces enhances employee experience on collaboration days.

Design-Led Spaces That Drive Better Collaboration Outcomes

A workspace is not merely a desk — it is infrastructure that shapes how teams perform. Stella33’s human-centered, design-first environments reduce friction and stimulate productive dialogue.

High-quality meeting rooms, collaborative zones, and thoughtful layouts support different collaboration modes: brainstorming, decision-making, training, and alignment sessions. Reliable technology ensures seamless hybrid participation for remote team members.

Cost Efficiency and Scalability for Corporate Teams

Enterprises using Stella33’s hybrid workspaces typically achieve around 30% cost savings compared to traditional leases. All-inclusive monthly pricing ranges from €450 to €720 per person, depending on configuration and team size. This model eliminates fit-out costs, long-term liabilities, and underutilized space.

Teams can scale up or down according to project needs, making it ideal for organizations with fluctuating collaboration demands.

Best Practices for Implementing Hybrid Collaboration Strategies

Successful cross-departmental collaboration Milan requires more than just space. Leading organizations implement:

Fixed collaboration days with clear expectations across departments
Varied room types matched to session objectives
Informal areas designed for spontaneous interactions
Hybrid technology that integrates remote participants effectively
Regular cross-functional workshops in professional settings

Both The Hive and Stella Santa Giulia are equipped to support these practices with flexible layouts and professional service standards.

Strategic Benefits and Measurable Impact

Organizations that invest in strategic hybrid workspaces report:

Faster project delivery and decision cycles
Reduced internal misunderstandings
Stronger innovation through diverse perspectives
Improved alignment between technical and commercial functions
Higher employee engagement during in-office periods

A multi-district approach using both MIND and Santa Giulia often delivers the best geographic coverage for larger enterprises

In 2026, cross-departmental collaboration in Milan is a critical driver of enterprise performance. Hybrid workspaces located in innovation districts like MIND and Santa Giulia provide the physical and cultural infrastructure necessary to break down silos and accelerate results. For forward-looking organizations, this strategic choice delivers both operational excellence and significant cost advantages.

Ready to strengthen cross-departmental collaboration across your Milan teams? Explore Stella33’s premium hybrid workspaces at The Hive in MIND Innovation District or Stella Santa Giulia. Book a site visit to experience how thoughtfully designed environments can transform how your departments work together. Whether you need private offices, flexible team spaces, or professional meeting rooms, Stella33 delivers the performance-led infrastructure your organization needs.

L'articolo Cross-Departmental Collaboration in Milan: How Hybrid Workspaces in MIND & Santa Giulia Drive Results in 2026 proviene da Stella33 Workspace.