Swindon Exchange
Our masterplan for the Exchange site, at the heart of Swindon, to the west of London, sought to heal a scar in the urban fabric of the town. This had been caused by the highways infrastructure of the 1960s which disconnects the railway and bus infrastructure from the retail and civic centres of community activity. Working for a consortium of developers and institutional investors and leading a team which included Martha Schwartz, Marks Barfield and Arup, our proposal for the 8 hectare site introduces a mixture of uses to create a new commercial centre, a new urban residential population and new activities throughout the day. Designed to achieve a transformation in perception of the town, particularly through the central role of public realm and landscaping, our scheme is organized into flexible but coherent phases of development, each one achieving a sense of completeness within its own right, together building into an exemplar project for sustainable mixed-use regeneration and stitching into the grain of the town.
Building Design July 2006;