This article first appeared in City & Country, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 2, 2026 - November 8, 2026

London-based developer Ballymore has observed a shift in how residents use communal spaces, prompting it to rethink the design of its latest residential project, 25 Cuba, on Cuba Street in Canary Wharf, London. The 52-storey tower was launched on Oct 29.

Since the pandemic, residents have increasingly used as workspaces the communal lounges in apartment towers, even though these spaces were designed for relaxing and socialising.

“If you walked into the lounge spaces of our apartments on a weekday afternoon, you’d see people sitting with a MacBook balanced on their lap, wires trailing all over the place. Some even bring down their computer monitors,” says Ballymore marketing managing director Brian De’Ath.

“That’s not what the buildings were built for. Those lounges were built for them to come back in the evening and have a glass of wine, or a cup of coffee in the morning and read the newspaper.”

Reflecting that shift, Ballymore has dedicated the entire first floor of 25 Cuba to co-working spaces, meeting pods, a reading room and content creation studios for residents with side-hustle lifestyles.

Currently six months into construction, the development will offer 376 homes, from studio to three-bedroom apartments, with prices starting from £395,000.

The project is an equal joint venture between Ballymore, which is acting as development manager and contractor, and Prague-based Penta Real Estate, which De’Ath describes as one of the largest developers in Central and Eastern Europe. The partnership marks Penta’s first venture into London real estate.

Ballymore is leveraging about 30 years of experience in Canary Wharf, with the new development located 100m from its 760-unit The Wardian, completed in 2021. 25 Cuba is among three joint ventures between Ballymore and Penta, following The Capston at Embassy Gardens, launched last year.

Where work and life meet

According to De’Ath, the developer’s target buyers, who are in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, tend to work from home at least part of the week, while some run side businesses or create content in their spare time. Ballymore has designed communal spaces to suit these habits.

“Speaking to our purchasers who are in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, they view their lifestyle in a much more integrated way — they don’t see a hard line between work and leisure.”

Designed by Gensler, which also designs WeWork’s global offices, the first floor comprises a library-style co-working area with built-in power and cabling, five meeting pods for video calls and a reading room where phone calls are not permitted. The floor also includes a podcasting studio and a YouTube room for residents who create content, whether for work or leisure, equipped with audio and professional camera equipment.

To plan the amenities, Ballymore gathered feedback from residents of its existing developments by engaging a polling company to interview more than 1,000 people about their work habits.

“What people don’t need is a building that caters to a lifestyle they’re not going to lead. We think it will lead to a slightly younger buyer demographic, more 25 to 35 [year-olds], whereas if you looked at some of our more recent launches, I’d say the buyers of those would be a good 10 years older,” says De’Ath.

Other facilities include a gymnasium, a personal training room as well as a yoga and Pilates terrace on Level 32. On the ground floor, a café will be turned into a wine bar in the evening, with a DJ booth.

The café and the building’s entrance open directly into Cuba Street Gardens, a one-acre park that Ballymore describes as the largest new green space of its kind in this part of London in nearly three decades.

“In effect, it is like your front garden. You will approach the building by walking through this park area, which is really nice. It’s very, very nice compared to arriving at the building from the pavement or road,” he says.

“Green space in central London comes at a real premium. So if you are able to deliver it, purchasers will love it.”

Going beyond regulatory requirements, Ballymore is planting mature trees and hedgerows in the park to improve biodiversity.

Of the 376 apartments, 89 are studios, 101 are one-bedroom units, 132 are two-bedroom units and 54 are three-bedroom units. Studios start at £395,000, one-bedroom units at £550,000, and two-bedroom units at £765,000, with prices increasing on higher floors.

Compared with its other developments, Ballymore is offering more studios and smaller one-bedroom units at 25 Cuba, with fewer penthouses and larger units.

“I’d say we’re offering more studio flats and one-bedroom apartments than we have in some of our other developments, just to make sure that from a purchasing perspective, more people are able to buy in the building,” says De’Ath.

The two-bedroom units average 750 to 760 sq ft, compared with about 900 sq ft in some of Ballymore’s earlier projects. De’Ath notes that more buyers now use the apartments for their children studying in London, or as a base while working in the city three or four days a week. “They were larger apartments, but that meant the capital sum had to be significantly higher and the service charge was significantly higher,” he says.

“What we’re seeing is people being much more sensitive to how much service charge they’ve got to pay, how much time they are going to spend in their apartment versus how much time they spend outside of it.”

The estimated service charge is £7.53 psf per year, with no ground rent for the 999-year leasehold property. All one-, two- and three-bedroom units feature balconies of about 100 sq ft, while homes on the 11th floor and above offer unobstructed views of central London.

With fewer sites for development left in London, De’Ath estimates that only about 3,000 to 4,000 new homes are due to be completed across the city in 2029, a factor in the project’s launch timing. “We wanted to launch it as soon as we could, especially when [looking at] how many homes were going to be completed in 2029.”

As the exclusive marketing agent for 25 Cuba, JLL remains positive about the outlook for Malaysian and Singaporean buyers in London for the rest of 2026 and going into 2027, according to its Malaysia International Residential Lead, Chong Shu Ling — even as buyers become increasingly value-conscious.

Buyers are more considered and price-sensitive than they were several years ago, but London’s underlying fundamentals remain strong, supported by a structural housing shortage and strong rental demand, she explains.

For Malaysian and Singaporean buyers, London offers a hard-to-replicate mix of factors, including a transparent and established property market, global connectivity, world-class education and a deep rental market, Chong notes.

“The UK has long been a popular education destination for Malaysian and Singaporean families. We continue to see parents considering London property not only as an investment, but also as accommodation for children studying in the UK,” she says.

Buyers now look closely at the entry price, rental demand, connectivity, developer track record and the location’s longer-term prospects, and are less likely to buy simply because a property is in London. At the same time, developers are pricing more competitively and offering incentives, which makes it a good time to buy, says Chong.

Demand from Malaysians remains driven by repeat buyers with good rental experience, she adds. Some say their Canary Wharf units have not been empty for a single day in five to 10 years. “It is increasingly a place to live, work and enjoy, rather than somewhere people simply commute to for work.”

Chong points to the Elizabeth line, which opened in 2022, as the biggest transformation to Canary Wharf, alongside more restaurants, retail outlets, green spaces and leisure facilities, and new sectors such as technology and life sciences. “JLL data shows average rents across the neighbourhood have increased by around 55% over the past five years, outperforming London-wide rental growth over the same period,” she says.

While UK mortgage rates are still higher than they were several years ago, Malaysian banks such as Maybank, CIMB Bank and RHB Bank can finance up to 80% of UK property purchases for Malaysian buyers, says Chong.

Malaysians are also entitled to the UK personal allowance of £12,500, which they can deduct from rental income, along with service charges and interest, leaving little or no UK tax to pay, she adds. Singaporeans are not entitled to this allowance, she notes.

“Rather than trying to perfectly time the bottom of the market, we encourage clients to focus on the fundamentals: location, connectivity, rental demand, quality of the development and the long-term prospects of the neighbourhood,” says Chong.

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