Building Design Partnership - General - Contract Journal Construction Industry Awards
Date: 10 Oct 2000
Building Design Partnership was awarded the Designer of the Year Award in the Contract Journal Construction Industry Awards 2000 at a ceremony in London last night (5 October 2000).
The award was won on the basis that BDP most effectively used design to produce benefits for the client and the community on its project The Mall, Cribbs Causeway near Bristol.
The judges looked for innovation that raised functionality, improved aesthetics, lowered costs or otherwise added value to the business.
Nick Terry, BDP's architect director for The Mall said "We are delighted to win this award. We have designed one of the finest shopping centres in Europe that provides a high quality environment for shoppers and retailers alike."
The centre which opened at the end of March (1998), provides 62,700 sq m of retail on a significantly landscaped 28 ha site. There is parking for 7,000 cars, and a bus station with eight bus and eight coach stands, plus parking for 50 coaches.
The design follows a classic dumb-bell shape, angled in the middle, with an anchor store at each end - John Lewis with 21,400 m' on four floors, and a Marks & Spencer store of 13,500 sq m. There is a 20 m fall north-south across the site, which is incorporated into the design to facilitate and maximise the flow of shoppers through the centre.
The 130 unit mall is treated as a galleried two storey space, with a strong visual link between the two levels. Vertical circulation is provided by pairs of escalators at the knuckles, and lifts and stairs at the centre and both ends. Each anchor store also has its own escalators and lifts. The public space is designed to provide a friendly and clearly orientated shopping environment.
Materials were selected for their durability and quality. These compliment an interior architecture which creates a classic, neutral backcloth for the colour and vitality of the shops themselves. Lighting of the public spaces is concentrated away from the shopfronts and consists of two principal elements - general downlighting, and uplighting bouncing on the back of solar shades in the roof.
A fully glazed (untinted) 300 m roof links the two main anchor stores, and contains a system for solar shading during the day. It also provides a surface with 50% reflectivity against which to bounce the interior light at night, thus avoiding the night time black hole effect. Another feature of the centre is the energy efficient displacement ventilation system, which brings in low velocity treated air at low levels and lets it rise slowly throughout the building.
The focal axis of the scheme, the central space and 1100 seater food court, includes a multijet fountain and a huge panoramic glass wall; this leads out into a tree lined avenue with water cascades, channel and fountains, and bold groups of seasonal planting, all of which are floodlit after dark.
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