A few years ago I accompanied a deal that looked on paper like a golden opportunity.
A talented Israeli developer, one of those with a real aesthetic eye and the courage to try new things, purchased an old residential building in central Berlin, in a neighborhood undergoing accelerated gentrification. He hired a respected architecture firm, poured a generous budget into the renovation, and in particular, put a great deal of thought into the entrance lobby.
The lobby was a masterpiece. Dramatic LED lighting that changes through the day. Furniture designed by a prominent Scandinavian brand. A living green wall full of tropical plants. An elegant community table with high bar-style chairs. Touch screens at the entrance for managing packages and deliveries. Every detail spoke of urban, young, vibrant city life.
“This is what people want today,” the developer told me proudly as we toured together before occupancy. “A boutique-hotel-level arrival experience.”
He wasn't entirely wrong.
The tenants came. The lobby stayed empty.
Three months after occupancy, the developer called me with a question I didn't expect:
“Why is nobody using the lobby?”
The community table - empty. The high chairs - empty. The green wall - beautiful, watered as required, and without guests. The tenants came in, pressed the elevator button, and went up to their apartments. The lobby was a set that no one played in.
My local partner approached a few tenants to ask. The answers were varied, but a common thread ran through them:
“It doesn't feel like our home. It feels like a hotel.”
“The high chairs are very uncomfortable for sitting a long time.”
“There's nowhere to put a bag, a coat, anything. It's all aesthetic, not functional.”
And one tenant, a German woman in her sixties who had lived in the building for thirty years and moved into the new renovated apartment, said the sharpest thing of all: “In Germany the lobby is a place to pass through on the way home. It is not a place. Whoever designed this thought we were Americans who want a ‘community lounge.’ We are not.”
The gap between vision and culture
This is where most foreign developers fall. Not from lack of talent, not from lack of budget, but from lack of cultural translation.
The design was excellent in the abstract. It would have been perfectly suited to a luxury building in Tel Aviv, to WeWork entrance halls, maybe even to certain projects in London. But Berlin, and especially this specific neighborhood, with its population, was an entirely different space.
The Berliner tenants, even the young ones, look for something else: a tidier bicycle shed over any LED lighting. Accessible, not designer, mailboxes. An organized bin room. And if there must be a community element, wide stairs with a low bench, not a bar table.
The need was not to educate the tenants to live differently. The need was to listen before starting to plan.
What we did in hindsight
The developer, to his credit, responded maturely. He did not try to defend the sentimental investment. He shortened the high chairs and replaced them with a wide, low wooden bench. He added simple coat hooks and a real neighborhood bulletin board. He removed the touch screens, in which nothing worked as desired.
The lobby lost a little of its “wow factor.” But people began to sit in it.
The lesson I take into every deal
Before every project abroad I ask the developers I accompany one simple question: have you visited similar buildings in the neighborhood and noticed how the tenants really use the spaces?
Not what you told yourselves they need. Not what looks pretty in a magazine spread. What they do in practice.
Innovative design is a real asset when it speaks the language of the place. When it doesn't, it becomes an expense item that someone will have to explain to the bank.
Stories are based on real situations, with identifying details changed. Not legal advice.
Translated from the Hebrew original. עברית