Gecina launches an open innovation challenge to reinvent the future of office building basements

Basements, a real challenge for tomorrow’s city 

Today, car parks and storage areas are increasingly being deserted in the Paris Region and especially in Central Paris. Why? Because of the development of new forms of mobility, a regulatory framework with a growing focus on promoting car-free cities, and the digitalization of document archives. 

As Europe’s leading office real estate group, we are aware of the potential and value of the basement levels in our buildings. We, therefore, wanted to call on the creativity of young French companies and together find innovative solutions to reinvent and re-appropriate the way these spaces are used.  

Gecina Innovation Challenge: 6 key phases 

Office building basements have specific features. These spaces involve various technical constraints: limited light levels, low ceiling heights, access restricted to building occupants, etc. The challengers will need to work with these constraints while taking 4 criteria into account:

• Attractiveness: the project will need to be innovative and meet the requirements of building occupants. 

• Technical feasibility: it will need to be adapted for the technical constraints faced.  

• Economic viability: the creators will need to ensure the project’s economic and financial viability. 

• Ecological relevance: the solutions retained will need to have a strong focus on sustainable development.  

The solutions selected will be rolled out over the next 2 years and may be trialed in a particular building before looking into deploying the model.  

The Gecina Innovation Challenge will involve 6 phases. An in-house team will analyze the applications and vote on them based on the projects’ relevance and their alignment with the challenge’s criteria. 

Our partner Agorize, a market-leading open innovation platform, has a community of over 5 million innovators. Agorize will support us throughout the Gecina Innovation Challenge, which will run through to the end of January. 

Discover the challenge’s full brief here. 

YouFirst innovation serving our clients  

With the YouFirst initiative, Gecina has put sustainable innovation at the heart of its strategy to create value and anticipate the expectations of its 100,000 clients and end-users. Our real estate portfolio is becoming a network of “smart” buildings serving our clients to support their changing needs as they evolve.