Three Cities, One Vision: Reimagining Amenity Spaces for Build to Rent Living
- Anew Consulting
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
There's a particular kind of satisfaction that comes from walking into a building's ground floor, roof terrace, or kitchen and thinking: this is actually a space people want to use. Not a box-ticking exercise. Not a show-home that gathers dust. A space that earns its keep, every single day.
Over the past year, I've had the chance to do exactly that across three very different Build to Rent developments — Nottingham, Warrington, and Leicester. Same brief in spirit (make the amenity space work harder, on a sensible budget), three completely different answers. Here's how each one came together.
Nottingham: From tired Entrance Hall to Everyday Workspace
The brief here was simple to say and harder to do: take an underused ground floor entrance and turn it into something residents would actually want to work from. This was very much a post-pandemic ask; people were done with hunching over a laptop on the sofa, and a proper work-from-home/breakout space had gone from "nice to have" to a genuine amenity that influences whether someone renews their tenancy.
We reworked the entrance to do double duty: still a welcoming arrival point, but now with the furniture, lighting, and layout to support focused work, casual meetings, or just a change of scenery from the flat upstairs. It's a great example of how a budget-conscious refresh doesn't have to mean a compromised one: smart choices about layout and furniture went a long way further than a full strip-out ever could.
Warrington: A Roof Terrace Built for the Best Summer
This one has genuinely perfect timing. With the World Cup and Wimbledon both landing this summer (and the weather actually cooperating for once!) the Warrington roof terrace is about to see more footfall than any space in the building.
The goal was to create an outdoor amenity that felt like an extension of home rather than an afterthought bolted onto the roof: proper seating zones, and enough flexibility that it works equally well for a big-screen match night or a quiet evening with a book. Roof terraces live or die on the details, wind protection, comfortable seating that can handle year-round wear, lighting for when the matches run into the evening, and getting those right on a defined budget was the real challenge here.
Leicester: The Kitchen as the Heart of the Home
The most recent of the three, and in some ways the most personal brief. Kitchens have always been the heart of the home, and there's no reason that should stop being true just because "home" is now a shared amenity space in a BTR building. The ask here was to blend a proper communal kitchen with co-working; somewhere you could cook a meal, host friends, or open a laptop and get an hour of work done, all without the space feeling like it's trying to be three things badly.
The result leans into that duality rather than fighting it: flexible furniture, considered zoning, and a layout that lets the space flex between "dinner party" and "quiet Tuesday afternoon working" without any awkward in-between.
The Thread That Ties Them Together
Three cities, three completely different spaces, one consistent approach: understand how people actually want to live, then design for that, on a budget that respects the realities of a BTR portfolio. None of these projects had an unlimited spend, and I'd argue that's exactly why they had to be good. Constraint is where design decisions actually matter.
If you're a Build to Rent operator looking at your own amenity spaces and wondering whether they're pulling their weight, I'd love to have a conversation. Whether it's an entrance, a rooftop, a kitchen, or something else entirely; there's usually more capacity in a space than people think.
Get in touch to talk through your next project!