As a reminder, FOA has been working on a project to renovate the station since 2008. as part of the Network Rail and City Council's Birmingham Gateway program, which by 2014 promises to completely transform the old 1960s New Street Station building. The main terminal hall is planned to be expanded 3.5 times, complementing it with a huge atrium, as well as covering the brutalist facades with curved "ribbons" of polished metal. The Pallasades shopping center is planned for the southern part of the station, and a huge department store has been designed over one of the three new entrances to the FOA building - one of the largest branches of the John Lewis chain in the country.
The shopping center is a glass cylinder with a total area of 23 thousand m2, containing four store floors, each about 0.4 hectares. The cylinder is erected over the southern entrance to the station and seems to be crushing it with its weight: the metal tape of the facade sags, making room for a large digital display above the entrance staircase.
Presenting the £ 100 million department store project at the just-concluded MIPIM in Cannes, Birmingham City Council chief Mike Whitby said it is a jewel in a groundbreaking new station project that brings real scale and revitalizes the new south entrance.
This week, the project will be submitted to a public hearing, and the application for construction work will be submitted by the end of spring.
By the way, in 2008, FOA architects already designed for the John Lewis retail chain - in Leicester they designed the facades of a new shopping center, proposing an original design move - glass panels with a "printed pattern" of the 1803 model.
N. K.
