Practice to work on public realm improvements aiming to improve pedestrian experience in the heart of the West End
Allies & Morrison has won a £1.7m job to lead an “ambitious and groundbreaking” transformation of the heart of London’s West End.
Westminster council and the Crown Estate have appointed the practice to rethink Regent Street, Haymarket and Piccadilly Circus following a competition launched last summer.
The project aims to “prioritise [the] pedestrian experience” by introducing more nature and greening, preserving the area’s heritage and improving accessibility.
The brief also aspires to reimagine the vision of John Nash, who designed the streets in the early 19th century, to connect St James’s Park with Regent’s Park.
Discussions are currently underway with the Greater London Authority and Transport for London seeking to ensure the streets “deliver wide ranging benefits” following Sadiq Khan’s announcement last year of plans to pedestrianise Oxford Street.
Allies & Morrison will now draw up a public realm design ahead of a series of public engagement exercises aiming to shape the design which will be held over the course of this year.
The council and Crown Estate have also set up an advisory panel consisting of local resident groups, landowners, developers, transport campaign groups and people with a range of protected characteristics.
Daniel Elsea, Allies & Morrison partner and the firm’s director of landscape architecture Eric Hallquist said: “As a practice that has always been engaged with the public realm and fascinated by the spaces between buildings, we are honoured to kick off 2025 with this new commission.
“We have assembled a creative coalition of designers, makers and doers, from the worlds of sustainability to contemporary art, to work with us, Westminster and The Crown Estate. Together, we’ll help craft the future of the landmark destinations of Regent Street, Picadilly Circus and Haymarket to be enjoyed by everyone for decades to come.”
In September Khan said he wanted to revive a £150m plan to ban traffic on a 1.1km stretch of Oxford Street between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch.
The London mayor’s previous attempt to transform the street into a pedestrianised public space was blocked by Westminster council in 2018 due to concerns over the need to reroute traffic into quieter surrounding streets.
He is proposing the creation of a Mayoral Development Corporation which will have greater planning powers, although this will require a statutory period of consultation expected to take around two years.
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