M&S Oxford St charrette shows architects’ appetite for adaptive reuse

Presenting yesterday (23 May) to a judging panel which included architects Simon Henley and Sanaa Shaikh and London School of Architecture chief Neal Shasore, the six winning teams – Connolly Wellingham, Saqqra, Jestico + Whiles, Marks Barfield, Avanti Architects and Add Apt – put forward a host of ideas for the building complex, which includes the 1929 Orchard House and two more recent additions.

Their concepts included creating hubs for the circular economy and slow fashion, introducing atriums, arcades and additional timber storeys, and supporting multimedia marketing activities, pop-up stores and community workshops.

The re:store charrette, organised by the AJ and SAVE Britain’s Heritage and hosted by the school of architecture at Ravensbourne University London in North Greenwich, provided a host of alternatives to demolishing the store – the subject of controversy ever since M&S proposed replacing it with a 10-storey office and retail block, emitting 40,000 tonnes of CO2 in the process.

Following a campaign by the AJ and SAVE, communities secretary Michael Gove ordered a public inquiry on environmental and heritage grounds, but M&S appealed against his subsequent decision to refuse planning permission. The High Court has ruled that the communities secretary must now re-examine his decision, and the charrette feeds into a lively debate over the building’s future.

The process tackles ‘a problem that’s affecting our high streets across England: what to do with these buildings when shopping habits are changing and the economy is changing,’ said SAVE director Henrietta Billings. ‘These are the anchors and the landmarks of our high streets: how do we make them relevant, keeping the memories and what’s special about the architecture and these places? We don't have to erase everything.’

The recent planning inquiry was the first in which heritage and sustainability had been given equal prominence, she added, ‘recognising that heritage has an inherent aesthetic value, but also a really important resource value’.

The charrette aimed to generate broad-brush ideas, Billings explained, and was independent of M&S.

But the programme has elicited strategies that could feed into a new plan for the retailer’s London flagship: ‘This could be a market-leader: an exemplar of how to repurpose and reuse departmental buildings. It could be a blueprint for how to do this – not just on Oxford Street, not just in the South East, but all over the UK,’ she said. ‘M&S has a really strong sustainability brand and this would be a really good way of demonstrating that commitment.’

The presentations were followed by a discussion between teams and judges on the issues around reusing heritage buildings, but the event was not designed to produce an overall winner: each of the final six teams received a £5,000 honorarium, thanks to sponsorship by property developer and SAVE chairman Eric Reynolds and fellow property developer Basil Demeroutis.

‘As an industry, we need to be thinking about championing retrofitting more than we are new building,’ said Demeroutis, who is managing partner of retrofit specialist FORE Partnership. He added: ‘A “business as usual” mindset is deeply ingrained in the fabric of the economy and big companies. We need to challenge that.’

Hence the power of the charrette, which attracted a range of practices and architects keen to realise the full value of what was the M&S flagship – including its embodied carbon, its cultural significance,  its potential to support community and cultural activity – often via a new role within a fundamentally changed retail environment.

The architectural ideas ‘challenged the idea that the best way to maximise value is by maximising volume of space in the real estate industry,’ said Demeroutis. ‘We need to ask ourselves whether that calculus still holds true and expand the definition of value beyond the four walls of a building.

‘If you have a makers’ space or a reimagining space or a remanufacturing space, these spaces probably don't do as well as fancy West End offices. But, by bringing new uses into a fading retail destination, they can bring new life and purpose to the whole neighbourhood. When you take value in its entirety, then I think you come up with some very different answers.’

Billings added: ‘We were really thrilled about the number of entrants and the range of practices and students who entered the competition. And I'm also really grateful to the judges, who’ve given up their time not only in judging today in charrette, but also in the long-listing, the short-listing and today in encouraging the entrants to think harder and more creatively.’

AJ managing editor Will Hurst commented that the day had been a hopeful one, arguing that the six ‘generous’ proposals demonstrated a huge appetite in the industry for retaining and reusing buildings such as M&S Oxford Street.

The work, designs and ideas produced by the six teams will be published in full in the AJ in July.

Source:Ernest Simons