The new Victorians

The occasion was indeed unique. New Victoria, IVG’s ten-year-old building in the heart of the Wola business district of Warsaw, opened its doors to the agents of potential tenants of the LEED ‘Gold’ certified offices. At the entrance to the showroom on the tenth floor, every guest was given authentic construction site gear and soon the room was filled with people decked out in helmets and handy tool belts. Przemysław Borkowski of the legendary Polish comedy troupe Kabaret Moralnego Niepokoju kicked off the evening with a rather memorable statement: “Victoria is now a girl of marriageable age. All beautiful and grown up – and attracting the attentions of suitors. Or, if you prefer, tenants,” he said. The cabaret sketches that followed married two themes: the young face of the growing city with good old fashioned pre-1989 Polish construction site traditions. The new-old symbolism was the theme of the night, a mood in no small part sustained by a graffiti artist, quietly working a large mural on one of the office walls for the entire time. “It is probably the highest-made office grafitti painting in Warsaw. We hope that the future tenant will keep it as an integral feature of these very special, high quality premises,” said Maciej Zajdel, the managing director of IVG Poland. Meanwhile, after taking graffiti painting classes, three corporate teams were formed to compete against each other. Equipped with fully professional painter-decorator outfits (or astronaut costumes, as some wag described them), they only had 45 minutes and an app. 3x3m blank canvas to demonstrate their out-of-the-box skills. Vertigo’s team passed the “spray-can fun test” with flying colours, leaving their by no means ungifted rivals, Colliers and Ober-Haus, behind them. Traditionally more comfortable with using the spoken or written word, the agents also took the chance to show off their physical prowess. Having first watched a few professionals demonstrate, the agents bravely stepped up to participate in a parkour competition. Maybe physical fitness could give office agents a crucial edge over their colleagues in the sector? Anyway, it was hard to believe, watching the squats and pull-ups that they completed, that they were not indeed pro athletes. Łukasz Orzechowski and Kuba Parys (Colliers), Maciek Skubiszewski (Knight Frank), Ewa Dragunajtys (Nuvalu) and Ola Dawidczyk (Sharman Church Chartere surveyors) took first place in each of their categories, winning the never-to-be-overestimated drill-drivers. But the fun and games were by no means over. The dining and wining part was equally special, as the best flavours and spirit(s) of the communist era were served. “We wanted to confront the new Warsaw with the old traditions, and show our agents, the bulk of whom were born after 1989, what Polish construction sites looked like in the past,” explained Maciej Zajdel summing up the evening. ν