Destination by design
Published: 03 August, 2011
The architecture of the UK’s retail destinations has undergone a fundamental change the last 20 years according to those who have been at the design coalface, writes Sean Kelly.
Centre design can not only be statement making — it can be history-making as well. The 1979 Milton Keynes shopping centre (now thecentre:mk, was given Grade II listed status by English heritage in 2010.
“Shopping centres developed today are no longer homogenous masses of retail,” says Derek Barker, MD of Haskoll Architects. “They are inspired new places, integrated into the local environment delivering both shopping, leisure and place making for the communities they serve.”
“New developments are more respectful of their surroundings with covered streets and open air spaces,” he says. “High Wycombe and Bristol are good examples of this. The Oracle, Reading is a good example of how one new innovation can change the direction of retail real estate development.
Instead of allowing the new shopping centre to turn its back on Reading’s city centre, we developed external spaces and external food terraces — a first as the fashion had previously been internal food courts.”
For Nigel Woolner, now a consultant for Chapman Taylor, it’s been a dynamic 20 years. His first project at the firm was Eldon Square, Newcastle upon Tyne.
“We came through the incredible boom of the 1980’s with scheme after scheme on the drawing boards,” Woolner recalls. “We had over 600 staff and we only worked in the UK. We had completed Lakeside Thurrock, the Harlequin in Watford, the Glades in Bromley and Meadowhall in Sheffield and suddenly there was no new work to replace these large projects in the UK and the situation required a rapid period of major restructuring.
“In design terms we saw, over that period, a shift away from the megastructure concept of “a shopping centre” and a move towards the creation of looser building forms with far more connectivity to the existing urban grain and context together with natural ventilation and light,” Woolner says.
“As an industry we were literally far more enlightened, creating mixed use environments structured on sound retail design principles but a far cry from the traditional enclosed shopping centre.”
If the early 1990s marked a low point Woolner was at least forewarned. “Only a year or so before, a senior director of MEPC came to a meeting at Chapman Taylor and said: “Nigel be very careful, a whirlwind is about to hit our industry” and how right he was, it was feast to famine again.”
Back in 1991 Building Design Partnership’s Peter Drummond had just accepted an invitation to be an equity partner. Drummond who was leading BDP’s urban planning team which was finishing Centre Court in Wimbledon for Speyhawk, helping to gain planning consent for Cribbs Causeway, Bristol and trying to keep the West Quay project in Southampton alive with Martin Myers of Imry and Neil Mitchenall of agents Lunson Mitchenall.
Drummond, would later lead a team commissioned by government on “The Effects of Out of Town Retailing on Town Centres” — the result of which helped form the first PPG6 planning guidance.
“The mood of the times was difficult — development activity had fallen off a cliff — there was no public sector capital expenditure, and the world was not as accessible as it is today,” Drummond, now chief executive, says. “We were about to enter a time of reflection. The boom years of the late 80’s had a “we can do anything” kind of mood — I even remember looking at the potential for a floating shopping centre on the Thames (not a bad idea actually). But there was a need to see how to get activity going again.”
The major developers were changing personnel and a younger generation was taking over that questioned some of the excesses, and the trader developers were going bust. So a new generation was about to start thinking about urban regeneration, and town and city centres. It was in this time that some of the early principles of the urban renaissance schemes were germinated, even if it then took another 15 years for them to come to fruition.
“Shopping centres were being completed — the Bentalls Centre in Kingston being the culmination of the late 80’s developer competition projects — high spec, four-level, borrowing much from the States,” he adds. “But these were designed in ’86 to ‘88, so newer design thinking was confined to projects that would take a long time, plus the out of town malls that were consented before the planning clamp-down. And neither was going to be repeated for a long while.”
Andrew Ogg, MD of Leslie Jones, has witnessed industry change from a unique perspective. In 2004 he became president of retail property organisation BCSC — the first architect to do so.
“In 1991 the UK was just finishing a boom period where every local authority wanted its own shiny enclosed shopping centre which was generally located on secondary brownfield land extending the prime pitch of towns,” he says. “At the same time we had had a massive growth in out-of-town regional centres which had been assisted by the Thatcher Enterprise Zone rules. In October 1990 we completed the development of Merry Hill in Brierley Hill on the site of the former Round Oak Steelworks.”
But 20 years on Government view has turned 180 degrees. “Today we are focused on the Government’s ‘Town Centres First’ policy, looking to reinforce our existing town centres with an agenda of integrated uses, urban streetscapes, improved quality of architecture and public realm being strongly pursued,” Ogg adds. “Our current projects reflect this new approach.”
In 1991, New York based architect Eric Kuhne took a call from Stuart Hornery. The Lend Lease chairman asked him to fly to England and look at a project called “Bluewater” - a project that had been kicking around for nine years.
“No one in the UK could make the thing stack up commercially,” Kuhne recalls. “We flew to the UK, spent a week doing a competitive audit on all the other centres, and wrote a single fax back to Lend Lease: “You can’t write a cheque fast enough for this opportunity!”
Bluewater marked an architectural step-change. The concept design was by Kuhne. Benoy, led by Graham Cartledge, undertook the architecture delivery. For Kuhne it not only marked a move to the UK (a three-month stay turned into 18 years and British citizenship), Kuhne’s Civic Arts is now designing on five continents.
The “market place of ideas”
It is only a one-page document but it contained a powerful message. Entitled “Market Place of Ideas” it was conceived and presented by architect Eric Kuhn and was made public in 2001 and essentially set out his credo about retailing and shopping destinations.
“It’s never been about the transaction, or the merchandise for that matter. Markets exist because of trust. We surrender our self-sufficiency to others who, by their industry, can make our lives easier, as their lives are made better by ours.
Souk, Bazaar, Market, Arcade, Mall, Passage, Exchange or High Street; they have always shared one basic principal — trade. Commerce between people. One needn’t look far to find the most sustainable examples, for all true markets endure not because of the merchandise but because they are part of the routine of life in that community.
Shopping, by itself, is an empty endeavour, and has soured the art of giving that is so essential and the best part of our lives. We go shopping to buy something for ourselves or for someone we care about. Anything that chips away at this gift-giving experience cheapens our lives.
The future of the mall? For as beguiling and innocent that question is, it requires a touch of hubris in response. I suggest that, once again, ‘past is prologue’. The convenience and comfort that a covered shopping street offered is unmatched…and yet this typology must find its way into the town centres of our cities instead of the perimeters.
We must build for people who seek to spend a day with their friends and families instead of shopping alone. We must restore our centres of our cities as chambers of commerce. And, in doing so, we will restore the pageantry of civic life.
Trade is what breathes life into towns. But it is not just trade in commodities, manufactured goods, services or even experiences. The city has been and always will be a Marketplace of Dreams.”
Eric Kuhne (2001)
