Nrep pioneers artificial intelligence in real estate using Spacemaker

desember 15, 2020
Nrep Spacemaker

Urban development is becoming more complex as cities grow denser and regulations increases. To solve this challenge Nrep, a leading Nordic real estate company, has entered a partnership with Spacemaker to adopt a new technology based on artificial intelligence (AI). The ambition is to develop more customer-centric, effective, and sustainable real estate, and a first case hints at the potential: 6% more apartments and significantly  more hours of sun- and daylight. 

Growing cities puts pressure on building faster and denser, yet with high quality and careful considerations for the urban surroundings. The real estate company Nrep now deepens its commitment to using digital technologies to find better ways when designing and planning buildings for the urban environment.

In a new partnership with Spacemaker, an innovative AI-based planning and design tool, Nrep aims to improve urban building design significantly. Pilot projects with Spacemaker’s technology demonstrates almost instant data-driven improvements and quicker design processes leading to solutions with more daylight, better views, and a more efficient area use.

“We want to lead the digitalization within real estate, a sector that traditionally lacks innovation. Nrep became early investors in Spacemaker, as we saw the potential in how they implement AI in early stages of the process and the positive effect it brings to urban development. With this new partnership, we enable seamless digital collaboration on projects in real time across teams and bring the benefit of AI to the planning of our own projects,” says Claus Mathisen, CEO at Nrep.

Nrep will be the first company to implement Spacemaker’s AI-based tool across national borders in the Nordics, thus further accelerating its focus on new technologies which can help create sustainable, customer-centric urban environments, in a time and cost-efficient way.

Successful pilot project 
One of the pilot projects included the world’s first large-scale building to align to all of UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, the ‘UN17 Village’ in Copenhagen. With Spacemaker’s technology, design proposals that showed on poor daylight or blocked views could quickly be eliminated by 3D visualizing these parameters’ effect on the building volumes of more than 500 units and 35,000 sqm.

The digital tool was used to reach the goal of 12,500 sqm of residential area, for the studio apartments planned for the project. The requirements included beautiful view and good sun- and daylight conditions for all apartments.

“After only a few days of stakeholders reviewing previous proposals, the building plans were approved for change, with improved housing quality as a direct result. For example, by revising and optimizing one building, we were able to increase the hours of sunshine in the courtyard from none at all to just over 6 hours’ worth. Without Spacemaker, it would have been much more difficult to obtain the environmental certificate that the project group had decided on,” says Claus Mathisen.

In Sweden, Nrep tested Spacemaker in early stages of a complex urban development project north of Stockholm, to evaluate the platform and the digital tools. The project aimed to meet several requirements in an area that combines row houses, multifamily residentials, schools and retail.

”Spacemaker’s technology allowed Nrep to quickly analyze existing proposals from architects as well as generate improved suggestions of the building volumes and factors such as noise, sun- and daylight. Developing the urban living environments of tomorrow requires both creativity and data to make the best possible decision,” says Carl Christensen, Co-founder and CTO at Spacemaker.

With the new partnership, Nrep will now apply Spacemaker’s AI platform and digital tools for real estate projects in Sweden and Denmark. On November 17, the US-based software company Autodesk acquired Spacemaker, including Nrep’s shares.

See how Nrep revised the UN17 Village building design in this video.

Published: desember, 15 2020