Street Dreams
The High Street is in a moment of change. Our high streets are affected by both global trends and current national issues like the cost of living. The change in our everyday lives post pandemic, the shift to online shopping and the ensuing global retail apocalypse has arguably changed the landscape of the high street forever. With a reduction in pedestrian traffic, and the onslaught of digital consumerism, street shopping is rapidly becoming history.
At the same time, the urgent need for new housing and the climate emergency mean we need to think about new ways of being, acting, producing, and consuming in the street. Just as retail transformed cities at the turn of the century, today, in the context of the Global Climate Crisis and the National Housing Crisis, can the reinvention of the High Street through the exploration of hybrid and hi-tech buildings be the contemporary catalyst for urban change?
The studio started by considering ‘the nation’s high street’ - Oxford Street - one of the oldest thoroughfares in London, Europe’s busiest shopping street, a symbol of London’s identity in a global forum.
In response to the urban challenge of the High Street, the London Plan calls for streets to adapt and diversify. From humble basket workshops to the consumerist paradise of the drapers’ departments stores, the evolution of Oxford Street’s buildings necessarily continues. As well as refocusing ambitions to build more genuinely affordable homes and prioritise the retrofitting of existing buildings, can the City of Westminster’s current review of the City Plan be the framework through which existing planning and building codes that lack flexibility are amended to provide the opportunity to re-envision typologies and challenge the evolution of the mixed-use building?
Within the confines of the street itself, we considered the existing patterns of retailing, the connective tissues that have formed within the public realm, and the existing buildings as part of our proposal to grow new ecosystems and create new scenarios for the inhabitation of the street.
We have considered an alternative, post-retail, Oxford Street through a series of spatial interventions that operate across various scales. The studio explored a new paradigm for hybrid architecture that is different both formally and programmatically and encompasses making, living, working, community and many other uses. In the spirit of creating a circular economy, we reassessed the act of building itself and its ecological impact when reimagining the buildings along Oxford Street. Studio StreetDreams speculates on new hybrid urban manifestations to create more open, accessible, dynamic, flexible and equitable streets.