Reimagining our nation’s shopping centres

Redhead Architects are excited lead a diverse team of experts, consultants and community stakeholders to explore ideas and seek new and hopefully more interesting ways to ‘re-imagine’ our nation’s shopping centres, with a view to helping them to make more a more dynamic and more relevant contribution, rather than maintain the now out-dated consumerist ‘mono-culture’ of the 1960s through to 1990s.

There is much debate around how best to realise the potential for ‘re-awaking’ these sleeping dinosaurs, which lay dormant, right in the centre of many of our towns and cities. We believe that the successful and sustainable adaptation and re-use of these existing spaces lies in creating a more stimulating ‘blended’ programme of activities.

We are delighted to receive the commission to help to create a complementary programme of new activities within The Idlewells Shopping Centre in the heart of Sutton in Ashfield. Our goal is to help reinforce the strong sense of community which already exists here, by offering a more varied programme aimed to inform, educate and entertain.

Rather than risk inadvertently ‘throwing-away’ what’s there, by commissioning data-led high-level reports and assessments, we seek to understand better which elements work well already and where adaptation and repurposing would help. This process of ‘adaptive re-use’ aims to strengthen what’s there as well as attracting more visitors to the centre and the town as a whole.

We plan to start by bringing a huge redundant basement car park back to into use, this time, providing a broad range of experiences, including a new museum and arts space, a cafe with hydroponically farmed vegetables grown on site with a programme of cookery classes and events. We also plan to provide a series of workshop spaces to encourage visitors to try their hand at a new skill, learn an instrument or attend a new class.

We also have ambitious plans for the upper level of the Mall, to incorporate the library next door to offer adult education, creche facilities, a climbing wall, and a reimagined hub, providing meeting spaces for small businesses and students from the local college all in the same environment.