2025: A Year That Forced the Construction & Real Estate Sector to Look in the Mirror
2025 will not be remembered as an easy year for the construction and real estate sector.
Rising costs, persistent uncertainty around interest rates, pressure on land availability, regulatory complexity, and a growing mismatch between what we build and what people actually need have exposed the fragility of traditional development models.
But if 2025 was challenging, it was also clarifying.
Across Europe, the sector has shifted from volume-driven development to purpose-driven projects. Less speculation. More responsibility. More attention to real usage, social impact and long-term resilience. Building more is no longer enough. We must build better, differently, and more consciously.
At CO-HO, 2025 confirmed convictions we have held from the start.
From Square Meters to Human Needs
Housing and real estate are too often reduced to numbers: units delivered, yields, density ratios. Yet what became increasingly clear in 2025 is that cities are struggling not because they lack buildings, but because they lack connection.
This disconnect affects all generations… differently, but profoundly.
Young generations increasingly prioritize mental and physical health over traditional forms of socializing. Sport, movement, wellness and community-based activities often replace conventional social spaces.
Millennials, caught between performance pressure and family life, seek balance, meaning and shared experiences rather than accumulation.
Seniors, too often isolated by urban design, hold experience, time and perspective, but lack accessible places to transmit and engage.
The issue is not fragmentation.
The issue is the absence of spaces designed to bring these worlds together.
Wellbeing and Social Life Should Not Be Opposites
An insightful conversation I recently had with Daphné Dulait highlighted a simple truth: the holiday season naturally brings families and friends back together, but why should this sense of connection be limited to a few days a year?
The same applies to wellbeing.
At CO-HO, we believe health and social life should not be separated.
Why choose between taking care of yourself and being part of a community?
The rise of sports and wellness communities offers a powerful answer:
Collective training instead of individual isolation
Movement as a social catalyst
Shared routines that naturally create bonds
By designing shared, modular spaces that host sport, wellness and collective activities, we allow:
Young people to socialize through health-focused practices
Millennials to reconnect through shared purpose
Seniors to remain active, involved and visible
Wellbeing becomes a bridge between generations, not a silo.
Learning Across Generations: A Forgotten Urban Asset
One of the most underestimated resources in our cities is intergenerational exchange.
Youngsters bring energy, new habits, and openness to alternative lifestyles.
Seniors bring resilience, perspective and lived experience.
Millennials sit in between translating, adapting, structuring.
When urban spaces allow these generations to meet naturally, through shared kitchens, sports modules, gardens, workshops or communal hubs, something powerful happens:
Knowledge circulates
Isolation decreases
Mutual respect grows
This is not nostalgia.
It is social sustainability.
Offsite, Eco-Responsible Building as an Enabler
These ambitions require a new way of building.
In 2025, the limitations of traditional construction became impossible to ignore: long delays, labor shortages, high carbon impact and rigid structures that age poorly.
At CO-HO, we focus on eco-responsible offsite building techniques because they enable:
Faster deployment of community-driven spaces
Adaptable layouts that evolve with users
Reduced environmental impact
Precision and durability
Thanks to prefab, we reduce by min 40% the construction time and by min 50% the carbon emissions by reusing circular materials.
Offsite construction allows us to respond to real human needs, not frozen masterplans.
Revitalising Districts Through Life, Not Just Architecture
Urban regeneration is not about adding buildings.
It is about restoring life.
CO-HO positions itself as a partner for cities and developers who understand that:
Shared spaces create safety and belonging
Temporary or modular solutions can unlock long-term value
Social dynamisation strengthens economic resilience
Our modules are designed to activate districts, foster encounters and support daily life — across generations and lifestyles.
2026: Making Circularity, Durability & Modularity the Norm
If 2025 was the year of awareness, 2026 must be the year of normalisation.
Circularity, durability and modularity should not be buzzwords. They should be default principles:
Build to suit, not to speculate
Use available, reusable and local materials
Design for transformation, not demolition
Think in life cycles, not delivery dates
Circular design is the key lever to change the entire value chain, from material sourcing to usage, reuse and reconfiguration. It is how we shift the paradigm from extraction to regeneration.
2026 in our sights
At CO-HO, we enter 2026 with a clear conviction:
The future of construction lies at the intersection of eco-responsibility, wellbeing and social connection.
We will continue to design modular, circular and human-centered spaces that reconnect people, not only during the holidays, but every day of the year.
Because building is not just about what we construct.
It is about how we live together.
