Client
Stockport Council & RIBA Competition
Location
Stockport Town Centre
Value
Date Completed
Spring 2003
Development Overview
The competition aimed to raise the town’s profile in the region, and involved producing a vision to guide a facelift for St. Peter’s Square and Mersey Square. It recognised that Stockport has a highly successful town centre, but parts of it would benefit from regeneration.
Complex traffic junctions and a mixture of twentieth century development, incorporated within elements of the densely developed nineteenth century town, have been rationalised within our design proposal. Raised bridge levels, for instance, had drastically effected the flow, views and permeability through the town. Part of our design formed features from the changes in level, which subsequently created elements with strong identities within the new attractive and improved townscape design.
We set out to create relationships between the buildings, to make new spaces that enhanced the existing townscape. We created spaces for people to enjoy, bringing out all the positive qualities of the urban environment.
Our competition design shows how a town centre, which had lost much of it’s original character through the building of recent inappropriate development, could be redefined to provide better places for people and make better use of the spaces that link one part of the town to another.
Complex traffic facilities and a mixture of C20th development with elements of the densely developed C19th town centre, dramatic changes of level and layers of bridge structures were resolved an elegant design to create a strong sense of identity and provide a ne attractive landscape.
