As the trusted purveyor of pants and socks to the nation since 1884, Marks & Spencer makes for an unlikely villain in one of the most high-profile planning battles of the century. But, since the venerable retailer announced plans to flatten its 1920s art deco flagship store on Oxford Street in London and replace it with a 10-storey mixed-use behemoth, it has been accused of trampling on the very soul of the country’s most famous shopping street, as well as gleefully cheering on the destruction of the planet.
“Don’t ask the price, it’s a penny,” was the slogan of the shop’s founder, Michael Marks, when he opened his homewares stall in Leeds in 1884. “Don’t ask the price, it’s only 40,000 tonnes of carbon,” might be the modern-day equivalent, given its redevelopment plans – which campaigners say would see about that much CO2 released into the atmosphere if built. The retailer has said, however, that its planned development would use 25% less energy than the existing site, with a maximum carbon payback of 17 years.
The proposals, which have been in and out of planning inquiries and appeals since 2021, have been called “a grievous act of public vandalism” and “a climate crime amid a planetary emergency”. The planning application was originally granted permission by Westminster council, a determination that was then called in and quashed by secretary of state Michael Gove, whose decision-making process was in turn ruled unlawful in March, after M&S appealed. The ball is now back in Gove’s (or, more likely, his successor’s) court, as the ailing British brand limps on in its outdated home.
The odd thing, which might come as a surprise if you haven’t been following the saga, is that the department store actually wants to downsize its retail space. In the face of online shopping and declining footfall, M&S plans to condense its current five storeys of retail down to two, reducing the floor area dedicated to shopping by more than half – while erecting a building twice the size of its existing one.
Designed by corporate firm Pilbrow & Partners, the proposed hulk will not be a multi-storey retail palace of comfy cardigans and elasticated cords, but 45,000 square metres of speculative office space, with shopping stuffed down below. The architects plan to wrap their elephantine lump with a relentless grey grid, and crown it with a big overhanging roof (further topped with additional floors), giving it the faceless, tyrannical air of some authoritarian government ministry.
The team is led by Fred Pilbrow who, at his previous employers PLP and KPF, authored the colossal slug of The Francis Crick Institute in King’s Cross, just across town, and the hefty cross-gartered shaft of the Heron Tower in the City. It seems he likes to go big.
The architects argue that their M&S design “possesses a clearly legible DNA when viewed in the Townscape” with “points of permeability” (also known as doors) liberally distributed at ground level. The existing complex – made up of the 1929 corner building flanked by two later additions – is damned as “inefficient”, “confusing” and “hostile”, with facades that are “not unique or particularly unusual”.
M&S, meanwhile, believes its current home, with its misaligned floors and comparatively low ceilings, is “impossible to modernise”, a light refurbishment option unable to “provide an improved retail and leisure experience”. All of which seems to reveal an abject lack of imagination as to how a complete transformation could be accomplished without resorting to the wrecking ball.
But help is now at hand, thanks to Save Britain’s Heritage and the Architects’ Journal. They have been leading opposition to the plans from the beginning, teaming up to inject some more sophisticated architectural thinking than is currently on offer from M&S. Last month, they launched a competition for alternative proposals for the existing buildings, prompting a wide range of ingenious responses. Six teams were shortlisted and fleshed out their proposals at a recent live design workshop attended by the Guardian.
“This is an opportunity to do something imaginative with a building that’s not listed and not in a conservation area,” says Save director Henrietta Billings. “It is an issue that affects high streets across the UK: how to repurpose department stores without flattening them; how to increase their longevity in a way that keeps the memories of the building and the place. Shopping habits are changing, but that doesn’t mean we have to erase everything.”
M&S has threatened to leave the flagship site if it doesn’t get its way, to which many of the shortlisted design teams have said: “Good riddance.” Marks Barfield, architects of the London Eye, think the store could be transformed into the Circular Economy Hub, a multi-storey centre of mending and making. They propose repair workshops, a materials salvage yard, as well as offices and studios for businesses dedicated to the circular economy, connected by a big spiralling ramp.
Jestico + Whiles continue the up-cycling theme with their proposal for a Palace of Sustentation, a sanctuary for slow fashion, conceived as a sustainable alternative to the fast fashion outlets that line Oxford Street. With the fashion and construction industries together being responsible for around half of all global carbon emissions, they imagine the refurbished building becoming a hub, hosting lectures and workshops on repurposing clothes – with new homes built on the roof to help pay for it, playing on the idea of “living above the shop”.
Young Bristol-based practice Connolly Wellingham, specialists in adapting historic buildings, look at where openings could be punched to give the spaces a new lease of life. They imagine a sculptural cylindrical atrium that would bring daylight and fresh air into the centre of the deep-plan complex, adding a dose of spatial drama to the drab floors. They propose ripping out the suspended ceilings to create more generous spaces, and introducing a layout that nods to the smaller plot sizes of the historic street pattern, in contrast to the bewildering scale of the current retail area.
Another young heritage-focused duo, Add Apt, also take an urban-scale approach, imagining two new arcades slicing through the building at ground floor level, bringing the bustle of Oxford Street inside. They imagine one route as an “experiential” arcade, lined with digital screens where brands could woo punters with multimedia product launches, while the other would be a “pop-up” arcade, with smaller units for fledgling businesses. Pilbrow’s scheme also proposes new arcades to lure people in, but Add Apt show that this doesn’t require total demolition.
Saqqra, a new outfit led by Marwa El Mubark and Nile Bridgeman, focuses on the frontages. They argue that the existing store is back to front, with blocked up windows facing the street, and retail buried away in the middle. They propose stripping the existing building of recent additions, bringing back the original “Neo-Grec grandeur”, removing obstacles that have long shielded views of the interiors from the street and replacing them with entirely openable shopfronts that would allow activity to spill out on to the pavement. Strategic demolitions would introduce more light and ventilation, with the removed materials reused in new partitions.
Finally, retrofit stalwarts Avanti have come up with the most comprehensive and realistic strategy, bringing together many of the aforementioned ideas into one compelling package – which M&S could roll out tomorrow. They challenge the current obsession with making retail floors as big as possible, instead choosing to separate the conjoined structures to allow multi-tenanting and improve legibility, removing the disorienting sense of being trapped in a windowless mall.
Taking an overview of the whole city block, they propose to open the blocked-up ground floor windows and work with the original design of the facades to introduce double-height shopfronts beneath reinstated canopies. They would also carve out two new arcades to connect the two sides of the site, and propose adding additional floors on the roof, made of lightweight cross-laminated timber, designed for easy disassembly.
“It’s very easy to fall out of love with buildings when they go through decades of under-investment,” says Avanti director, Fiona Lamb. “They just need some care and attention to reveal their full potential.”
In these six schemes alone, there is a wealth of ingenuity, something that’s sadly lacking from M&S’s short-sighted plan. With a few sophisticated interventions, the current buildings could be eminently reborn, brought up to modern environmental standards, and retain the character of this substantial chunk of the city – without needlessly throwing more fuel on the climate bonfire.
The expertise exists. It is not too late for the illustrious British brand to change its mind and burnish its zero-carbon credentials with a world-leading model of adaptive reuse.