Roxy Goddard, Marketing Officer at Blok, discusses the EIGHTONN Development - a compact living concept, designed with the motif of duality, energy efficiency and modernity in mind.
Marc
Tell us abit more about EIGHTONN?
Roxy:
So EIGHTONN, which is 8 Norfolk Road. And you'll see that all our developments kind of have that naming convention. We just take the number that it is and then put it with the first letter of the name of the road. So EIGHTONN is in sequence. It is our development that we launched end of February this year. It was born from a place of our clients coming into our showroom. Being past clients who have bought from us or people within the network who have come to us because of someone who's bought. Coming in and telling us that this compact living trend that had been happening for pretty much the whole of 2017 was no longer for them. They wanted space. They wanted to live in apartments with their families. They didn't want to have to go into homes or freestanding houses. And so they came in and we listened to them.
We have gone back to building more spacious apartments with really sizable balconies that you can entertain on, and braai on, and be with your family. And so that's where EIGHTONN came from. And because of that, obviously, you are now looking in the higher end of the market again. But that's what the market wanted from us. And so EIGHTONN as a concept was then born from that. And because it runs all the way through two roads. So it sits between Norfolk and Wisbeach. Our architects decided to play on duality. And so the building has two different facades that look slightly different from each other but still tie in together. And that whole duality concept was then unpacked inside as well in how you use spaces and multiuse of space which is, obviously, incredibly important in apartments. And as well into the marketing collateral, which also speaks to our whole duality theme.
EIGHTONN coming at the time that it did, obviously, also had to speak to the water prices and what that means. And so in any BLOK development, we're already energy efficient and do have water-saving techniques in place but we just to had to step it up. So other than the normal energy-efficient kind of lighting, and the way that we use one and a half glazing for our windows, not just single. That keeps your apartments well-insulated. You don't have to heat and cool as much. We also then turned to really, what can we do for water? And for EIGHTONN it will be things like a borehole and filtration system, rainwater harvesting systems, and then as well, all the sanware in the apartments will be water intelligent. Meaning that they will be pushing out less water than a typical tap, for example, would. And you do that by aerating things. And then just other little bits and bobs. Like, for example, we use Smeg appliances in all of our apartments. We'll be using the Smeg appliances that are water efficient rather than the standard appliances. And that's kind of EIGHTONN in a nutshell.
