Retail buildings
Case studies
Sustainable supermarket: M&S's new Cheshire Oaks store
At this enormous store in Chester, M&S is putting its Plan A sustainability programme to the test. And from the zero-waste policy to the innovative use of natural materials, all the evidence suggests that this is one plan A that is actually working … Building reports
Tesco's green specification process: Every little helps
Supermarkets don’t like to be beaten on price - or on their environmental credentials. To get ahead of the competition, Tesco is now testing every bit of green kit it can lay its hands on to build zero-carbon stores. Building reports on the savings
Mall mania: Majid Al Futtaim Group’s building boom
You don’t have to be British to work for the Majid Al Futtaim Group but it certainly helps. Having built 10 malls in the Middle East, MAF now has plans for another 10 and, it wants you in on the shopping spree
Video: Liverpool One - Building's Project of the Year
Grosvenor’s regeneration of Liverpool City Centre has created a vibrant new quarter featuring architecture of the highest order
Paradise Street, Liverpool: Mayfair comes to Merseyside
With a pricetag of £1bn , Liverpool One could have ended up as a never-ending shopping mall. But it’s a whole lot classier than that.
Liverpool One on-site: Welcome to paradise
How do you co-ordinate a £1bn budget, 40 buildings, 22 architects and 90 consultants to deliver the most ambitious regeneration scheme Liverpool has ever seen? Thomas Lane went to ask the man who has to do it
Marks Barfield cafe: One small, skinny mollusc please
Marks Barfield’s latest scheme is an invertebrate cafe that has attached itself to Birmingham’s Bullring centre – where it is providing weary shoppers with a shell-like retreat
Fellowship of the bullring
Or, how three developers, one city council and a handful of architects transformed a reviled 1960s concrete lump into the apotheosis of cool design. Martin Spring tells the story.
Westfield Stratford City: Maxing out
?Westfield Stratford City in east London - dead handy for the Olympic park - is Europe’s biggest urban shopping centre, a retail behemoth so large it is really a city within a city with more than 300 shops and 2 million ft2 of retail and leisure space. Ike Ijeh goes wild with the credit card
Kazakhstan: Building the world's largest tent
In the capital of Kazakhstan, Buro Happold, Foster + Partners and developer Sembol have built the world’s largest tent. And their heroic attempts to heave that 90m mast upright are enough to make fair-weather campers weep
Tubular belge: Buro Happold's steel shopping centre
Buro Happold’s roof for Liège’s new shopping centre takes the form of a 400m-long steel snake, which undulates to dramatically different heights. Stephen Kennett finds out how it was done
Westfield shopping centre: in pictures
The £1.7bn Westfield London, Europe’s biggest in-town shopping centre, finally opened last week. But is it the shining example of urban regeneration that its developer claims? Martin Spring fought through the crowds to find out
Foreign Office Architects' John Lewis in Leicester: Great Drapes
Foreign Office Architects’ new John Lewis department store in Leicester has revolutionised retail design by wearing its curtains department on the outside. Martin Spring admires the stitching
Westfield at White City: Westway to the world
Need any more evidence of Westfield’s massive ambitions? How about these 14 cranes looming over west London, and the huge mall rising around them. Or the fact that it ditched its contractor to take on this monster of a project by itself.
Gateshead M&S by John Pawson: Nothing to shout about
Marks & Spencer’s efforts to rebrand itself as a sophisticated purveyor of aspirational housewear has led it to put a super-minimalist John Pawson house in its Gateshead store. We ran a jaundiced eye over the results …
Retail designs
Developer LXB Properties granted planning on £34m Gloucester scheme
Mixed-use site covers 18 acres, and work is scheduled to start in the spring
Spenhill's Highams Park development
The Tesco subsidiary has begun work on the £105m project in London
Councils approve Tescos despite planners recommending refusal
Planning officers’ recommendations are ignored by councillors in Hull and Consett
Tesco plans £150m Gateshead scheme
Supermarket giant’s regeneration arm submits application for a new town square designed by 3DReid
CSC submits plans for £180m Lakeside expansion
Development will increase the centre’s size by almost a third and create 1,000 construction jobs
McLaren parks showroom in One Hyde Park
Supercars will be sold on the ground floor of the Rogers Stirk Harbour development
Olympic Tesco gets green light
Bromley-by-Bow scheme to replace current store with one double its size has gained planning permission, despite having been blasted by Cabe
