BDP, Dixon Jones, Panter Hudspith, Allies & Morrison and Glenn Howells Architects team up at Oxford’s Westgate

Words
Ian Latham
Photos
Gareth Gardner, Nick Caville

Setting aside issues such as whether the historic city of Oxford really needs to rival Reading and Milton Keynes as a retail destination, and what will be the local consequences of 100 new shops, its new Westgate shopping centre is a casebook example of deft urban intervention.

Since Leicester’s Haymarket and north London’s Brent Cross pioneered the type in the UK in the 1970s, architects have struggled to reconcile large shopping centres with urban grain – the diagrammatic flow of goods from delivery lorry to shop to private car has allowed vehicles to hold sway, resulting in inward-looking malls enclosed by blind facades that are skirted by tarmac. In this and in other respects Westgate breaks the mould. The scale of Oxford’s new retail district tangibly reshapes the city centre, but key decisions have been guided by a desire for integration with the city fabric and mitigation of visual impact.

In this respect masterplanner and lead architect BDP’s proposition to involve four like-minded architects in its design has achieved the wished-for permeable urban collage together with some notable surprises.

The primary enabling decision however was to keep vehicles at bay. Queen Street, the main retail trail to Westgate, is soon to be fully pedestrianised by rerouting buses to the south. A road that divided the site has been shifted westwards, and car parking and deliveries have been relegated below ground. All this enabled the new retail quarter to be knitted into the neighbouring fabric. Accordingly, BDP’s masterplan comprises a north-south spine of ‘arcades’ with east-west ‘lanes’ that correspond with the surrounding streets, and new ‘public’ spaces where they intersect. Much of this is a permanently open to pedestrians, while an array of cafes and restaurants and a five-screen cinema will extend activity into the evening.

Previous attempts to redevelop Westgate had came unstuck, with a scheme by Allies & Morrison and BDP abandoned even after starting on site. Land Securities and The Crown Estate acquired the 1970s retail centre in 2010, forming the Westgate Oxford Alliance which, with Oxford City Council, appointed BDP.

Sequential mini-competitions were held to allot an architect to each of the masterplan’s four main blocks, with runners-up moving on to the next contest. Thus the John Lewis anchor store went to Glenn Howells Architects, Panter Hudspith was appointed for the southerly sector, Allies & Morrison for the central building, and Dixon Jones for the northernmost, where Westgate fronts Bonn Square. BDP took on public spaces and common elements (roofs, floors, bridges, parking), and convened weekly charettes for all the architects to develop their designs, a collaborative process orchestrated by project director Peter Coleman that by all accounts was constructive and harmonious.

Most license was given to (and taken by) Dixon Jones, which had to deal not only with the retained old shopping centre but also with how the new Westgate represents itself to the city. The resulting monumental stone wall is an elegantly simple device, its scale and inflected form making Bonn Square into a coherent public space at last, while also resolving the viewpoints from key directions.

With a central archway prefacing a vaulted introductory arcade, and lateral apertures to shops and restaurants, it cleverly reconciles this stone-walled city with the civic significance of the new retail precinct beyond. Reminiscent of Dixon Jones’ big walls at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and at Liverpool One, here the dimensions are tempered and the curve anchored by a delicate glass lantern, a collaboration with artist Daniela Schönbächler.

The other architects’ contributions were constrained by the masterplan’s predefined footprints, floor levels, massing and materials, so particular care has been invested in enlivening external elevations that have scant rationale for enlivenment.

The anchor store – Glenn Howells Architects’ John Lewis store (Building 1) – is conceived as a freestanding ‘palazzo’ with facades of zig-zag brickwork and stone strings that, not inappropriately, suggest a retail bastion with some sense of detachment.

Panter Hudspith’s Building 2 forms much of Westgate’s southerly flank, for now facing fields and small-scale houses. Its collage of articulated brick facades is an ambitious and convincing strategy to temper its dimensions, while its inward-facing, shop-lined facade is distinguished by a heroic, full-height colonnade that lends gravitas to Westgate’s central Leiden Square.

Allies & Morrison has dealt with the substantial building at the centre of the scheme, elevating east, west and mall-facing facades with elegant, considered detailing. The east, least public side features a layered composition that culminates in a syncopated concertina of brickwork that effectively terminates the historic Turn Again Lane.

BDP’s treatment of the public spaces and roofs is suitably restrained, though perhaps the bridges, as key points of transition between blocks, could have been less understated. If the wedge of apartments behind John Lewis, also by Glenn Howells Architects, is rather run-of-the-mill for its privileged riverside site, the Westgate roofscape of cafes, restaurants and viewing terraces is a triumph. Offering hitherto unavailable views across the city centre, this is surely one feature that future retail developments – even in less hallowed contexts – will wish to emulate.

The evident popular success of this fifth elevation, witnessed in the weeks since its opening, will no doubt hasten the day when Westgate feels like a real part of Oxford, something that can’t be envisaged for the rather soulless Radcliffe Observatory Quarter to the north. To achieve an overall outcome of such a high order at Westgate must have required relentless determination, and BDP’s careful orchestration of the architectural teams has resulted in a series of rich and engaging contributions to the city.

Glenn Howells Architects (Building 1)
The John Lewis department store features calm, contemporary facades that are rooted in the genius loci of Oxford, says GHA. Pleated brick elevations span between cast stone string courses, and are ‘drawn back’ in places to reveal activity within the store and afford views out. The primary glazed facade looks onto the covered public Leiden Square (phs: GG, right; Rob Parrish, below).

Panter Hudspith (Building 2)
Building 2 marks the edge of the current city centre, with views across the countryside. A scale analysis of Oxford colleges led to the proposition that the building should be secondary to the John Lewis store. But rather than turning its back to the street, with services and access corridors serving the shop fronts to the north, Panter Hudspith suggested that the long southerly facade should contribute to the townscape as a rich collage of discreet facades.

Allies & Morrison (Building 3)
Building 3 faces outward to housing to the east and west, and inward to the South Arcade and squares. Norfolk Street incorporates shops and restaurants at ground level and the cinema foyer at first floor, with ventilated service corridors between, and the cinema auditoria, set back on the second floor. Old Greyfriars Street provides delivery access, a restaurant, cycle storage and shop windows, with two floors of delivery corridors and the roof terrace above. The 110m-long, glass-roofed, four-storey South Arcade has shops on two levels, plus a glazed mezzanine.

Dixon Jones (Building 4)
Westgate’s northerly building differs from the rest of the scheme in that it entailed the retention of the existing shopping centre’s structural frame, and it comes into direct contact with the historic centre of Oxford. Bonn Square is at the meeting point of Queen Street and New Road. The new frontage closes the view from both these streets and faces Bonn Square. Curved shop windows direct circulation into the renewed arcade – a barrel-vault lit by circular oculus rooflights – that continues via Middle Square and culminates in the new John Lewis store.

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