Brighton Old Municipal Market Buildings, England, News, East Sussex Property Design

Brighton Old Municipal Market Renewal

Development for Cathedral Group and McLaren Property design by shedkm Architects, UK

22 Oct 2013

Brighton Old Municipal Market Redevelopment News

Cathedral Group and McLaren Property submit plans for regeneration of Brighton’s old municipal market

Location: Circus Street, Brighton, East Sussex, southern England

Design: shedkm Architects

shedkm is a young architectural practice based in Liverpool and London. they made their name from contemporary housing schemes in the north west of England, notably Moho Manchester. Other major buildings by the studio are Matchworks in Liverpool and the Fort Dunlop redevelopment in Birmingham. This major £100m mixed-use project will make for an interesting challenge for the office.

22 October 2013 – Following a major consultation across Brighton & Hove, plans to transform the derelict municipal market building in Circus Street into a vibrant new area contributing significantly to both the cultural and economic future of the city, have been submitted to Council Planners by developers Cathedral Group in partnership with McLaren Property.

Brighton Old Municipal Market Renewal:

Renewal images from architects

It is estimated that the project will bring investment of over £200million into Brighton & Hove over the next ten years, create over 600 jobs and deliver two landmark public buildings: The Dance Space, a new home for Southeast Dance and a library and teaching building for the University of Brighton, as well as much needed new homes and office space.

Beautiful green spaces, landscaped public squares and an events square with The Dance Space and University library at its centre, will be able to host street events and outdoor performances. The scheme, which aims to be the most sustainable development in the city, includes a series of well planted character areas, including a fruit tree orchard, with a raft of special initiatives to increase biodiversity and protect the environment, with green roofs, living walls, bird boxes, grey water recycling and food growing pathways.

Richard Upton, Chief Executive of Cathedral Group, said: “Our vision is to create a productive quarter of Brighton, economically and creatively, right on the site of the old fruit and vegetable market; a friendlier, greener neighbourhood where anything from seed swapping to roof top urban farming and orchard picking sits alongside art, culture, modern living and hi-tech start-up business.”

The regeneration plans include 142 much-needed new homes for a variety of family sizes, a community space for local people to use and small ‘Brighton- centric’ independent retail and cafe units, bringing the street level to life day and night. Circus Street will become shared space, where pedestrians can enjoy equal status to cars, which has already worked in the city so well on New Road. 600 cycle spaces, most under cover, and limited car parking, with 43 covered spaces for residents, are also included in the designs.

There will be halls of residence for up to 486 students, to fuel the under supply of dedicated student accommodation in the city and free up residential areas of Brighton for families. They will be conveniently located right next to the Faculty of Arts and a new library and teaching building, becoming part of the University of Brighton’s City Campus.

A modern office building on the corner of Circus Street and Kingswood Street includes over 3,000 sqm of flexible office space to address the city’s under supply of quality space for growing businesses, ensuring that successful creative and digital businesses stay in the city when they outgrow their office space and to attract new companies to move into Brighton. The majority of the buildings are designed with the aim of achieving either BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment) Excellent or Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4.

shedkm was appointed by Cathedral Group in November 2012 to the redevelopment of Circus Street following a design competition.

Martyn Evans, Creative Director of Cathedral Group, said: “shedkm won the competition to design our Brighton project because they proposed a scheme that was completely rooted in Brighton and responded specifically to our brief to design a Brighton-centric scheme. They did it brilliantly.”

Cathedral Group, in joint-venture partnership with McLaren Property, are leading a Public Private Partnership for the regeneration, which includes site land owners Brighton & Hove City Council and the neighbouring University of Brighton, as well as leading dance development organisation, Southeast Dance.

Jamie Watton, CEO/Artistic Director at Southeast Dance, said: “The Dance Space will not only enable us to create a world class hub for dance professionals, but also provide a huge range of dance opportunities for local people. We have received enormous support both locally and from the wider dance community for this development and it is hugely important to us that it now goes ahead.”

Professor Anne Boddington, Dean of The University of Brighton’s Faculty of Arts, said: “We see this as a great opportunity to extend the facilities we have for our students and staff. The new library and learning centre for the arts will showcase our extraordinary creative resources and include publicly accessible space, allowing us to invite the city’s communities to collaborate and see our work and our historic design collections.”

Brighton & Hove City Council will shortly open a statutory consultation of the planning application, inviting the public and stakeholders to comment and developers hope the scheme will be approved by Planning Committee early next year. If it gets the green light, construction will begin next summer.

Brighton Old Municipal Market Redevelopment images / information received 221013

shedkm Architects

Location: Circus Street, Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK