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feature


interiors


modular meeting rooms deliver cost and carbon savings


A new independent study has found that modular meeting rooms can deliver substantial  Mute


Commissioned by Mute and undertaken by cost consultancy EthosEQ, the research is the first to compare traditional plasterboard and glazed meeting rooms with modular room-in-room systems across a ten-year operational period. The analysis considered cost, programme impact, adaptability and embodied carbon. The study examined meeting rooms


across 27 cities in Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific, reflecting a broad range of construction and labour cost conditions. Importantly, it also modelled the impact of reconfiguration during a lease term


– a common occurrence in modern workplaces – but one that is rarely factored into initial fit-out decisions. Reuse emerges as the defining advantage According to the report’s author, Colin Wood, the ability to reuse modular rooms fundamentally alters their financial and environmental performance. “Traditional meeting rooms are


effectively single-use assets,” he said. “Once demolished, both their capital value and embodied carbon are lost. Modular rooms retain both through multiple cycles of use, which dramatically


improves whole-life cost and carbon outcomes.” Using market data published by JLL, the study estimates that if modular meeting rooms replaced traditional construction across the occupier market, total savings could exceed €1 billion across EMEA and €1.5 billion in the Americas over a standard lease term. Whole-life cost outperforms capex While modular solutions are often perceived as a higher upfront investment, the study found that this assumption does not hold when measured against real- world use. On average, modular meeting


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