Our proposal for the M&S Re’store competition aimed to promote the dynamic character of Oxford Street, and by extension, all retail high streets. We connected the Highstreet with the retail through an animated façade containing ‘pocket’ community programmes, all operating symbiotically to build stronger relationships between residents, businesses and visitors.

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We proposed to retain and celebrate the existing façade, bar the apertures, with an inner façade set back into the building. Using this porous, threshold volume allows a network space of unlimited flexible sub-spaces boasting public features and attractions, private functions and services as well as hidden food and drink ‘gems’. This network also extends and provides a platform for the existing retail shop within, by projecting it out to the high street through ancillary experiences, but also revitalises the high street by stimulating facades and drawing people in.

Oxford Street Context and ‘the high street’: Flexibility! Our imagery shows an exaggerated, utopic example of the possibilities and potential that the concept could unlock. Here, in the diverse setting of Oxford Street it is enhancing the vibrancy of the area, but elsewhere it can be tailored to requirements of that cultural microenvironment. More greenery can be added, fewer food stalls, more event spaces, less advertising. The brief and proposal can be altered using our ‘slider’ key which sets the limitations.