AEW at ShedMasters 2026

As far as locations go for industry conferences, you can’t get much better than Lisbon, Portugal. Our Managing Director, Andy Rainford, was there in May, joining architects, developers, investors and consultants from across the industrial and logistics sector for ShedMasters 2026. 

Whilst a relatively specialist sector, industrial and logistics continues to attract huge interest, with ShedMasters bringing together around 600 of the industry’s leading voices to debate the ideas, trends and innovations shaping industrial space across the UK and Europe. 

After this year’s conference, if we had to pick one word to capture the mood, it would be resilience. 

The word can sometimes feel like a bit of a cliché in property conversations, where it’s routinely overused. But in a world of geopolitical instability, global supply chain disruption and shifting investment patterns, any sector would need resilience to weather the storm. 

The topics at ShedMasters covered a lot of bases, touching on everything from defence spending and energy security to automation and the growing influence of AI and data centres on logistics demand.  

Let’s get into it. 

Adapting to uncertainty 

Savills’ Kevin Mofid painted a positive picture of the sector. Unlike some sectors, the market continues to perform well despite wider economic uncertainty and global turbulence. Occupier demand remains strong which is great news for developers and architects, but at the same time, speculative development is expected to reduce. Since its 2022 peak, that speculative pipeline has reportedly fallen by 67%. 

So while the demand is definitely there, the nature of that demand has changed. 

In other changes, increased defence spending across Europe is expected to generate significant additional demand for logistics space over the next decade. Data centres are also starting to influence surrounding industrial markets and supply chains in ways that were barely part of the conversation a few years ago. 

Future-proofing industrial space 

When it comes to warehouse design, automation and robotics are a huge influence. One clear consequence of this shift is occupiers increasingly prioritising features such as higher clear internal heights and technology-enabled buildings. Occupiers want to reduce long-term operational risk and improve sustainability performance, and this means electrification and energy resilience are top of their wish list in many cases. 

There are also growing expectations around ESG performance. This will inevitably pose a challenge for developers and designers. While sustainability standards continue to rise, we’ll face the challenge of balancing these ambitions against viability pressures and build costs. One possible direction of travel is increased retrofit activity, particularly as developers look for ways to respond to cost pressures while still meeting evolving occupier expectations. 

Resilience, adaptability and future-proofing are three prongs of the same fork. The buildings we design have to be hard wearing, flexible and responsive to future step changes to technology, energy and market conditions. 

“Danger and excitement” 

The event’s keynote speaker, Lord William Hague, described the current era as one defined by both “danger and excitement”, shaped by the simultaneous impact of geopolitical instability, climate pressures and transformational technologies. 

Despite some element of uncertainty hanging around in the air because of factors beyond the industry’s control, the overall takeaway is that we be cautiously optimistic. The long-term fundamentals underpinning industrial and logistics demand remains strong, but we have to keep our ear to the ground as the sector evolves at pace. 

As architects and designers, it’s our responsibility to stay ahead of the curve and understand how evolving requirements influence the way industrial buildings are designed and delivered with efficiency, creativity and commercial pragmatism.