21st Century Town Centre

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Context

Skelmersdale, a deprived New-Town in the North-West of England.

Aim

The project is a transformation of a struggling Shopping Mall into a Town Centre, the building is reshaped and reorganised into a democratic space of many programs in which shopping no longer has a monopoly on civic activity. The project is financially designed so that the town’s community can organise to revitalise their own town, instead of a developer-led project, to create a Town Centre for themselves rather than a Shopping Mall for profit.

Design

The design focuses upon the roofscape becoming the public space to escape the current internalisation and securitisation of the mall. New programs of a train station, a town hall and housing are added to create a balanced programmatic mix. Finally, the large roofscape is designed to have little hierarchy to avoid prioritising a certain activity or type of people in an aim for this to be a space for everyone of the town to be able to enjoy.