Big names appointed to design team for Allies & Morrison’s £2.5bn York Central scheme

A host of architects including Sheppard Robson and Haworth Tompkins have been appointed on the design team for the first phase of Allies & Morrison’s £2.5bn York Central scheme.

Corstorphine & Wright, Cartwright Pickard and 3D Reid have also been handed roles on the 45ha site, while Grant Associates and Re:form have been appointed as landscape architects.

Allies & Morrison, which developed an original masterplan for the scheme which was approved in 2019, has retained its role as lead architect.

York Central is a major redevelopment of land around York’s biggest railway station which is jointly owned by Homes England and Network Rail. It is being developed by a joint venture between McLaren Property and Arlington Real Estate.

One of the largest brownfield sites in England, the scheme will include 2,500 homes, 20% of which will be affordable, one million sq ft of office and retail space, an enhanced National Railway Museum and upgrades to York Central station.

Sheppard Robson has been chosen to work on the Government Property Agency’s proposed 195,000 sq ft office, which could be home to up to 2,600 civil servants, while 3D Reid has been selected for the hotel and a western entrance for the station.

Cartwright Pickard is working on residential blocks on the scheme, with Corstorphine & Wright refining designs for the build-to-rent homes and Haworth Tompkins working on the affordable homes. 

Grant Associates, which worked on the Wilkinson Eyre-designed Gardens by the Bay scheme in Singapore, is leading landscape design of the York Central scheme, with Re:form working on a new plaza called Museum Square.

Public consultations on the first phase are set to kick off this summer with a reserved matters application to be submitted this autumn. Work is scheduled to start in the middle of next year and complete in 2028. The wider scheme is expected to be finished by 2035.

Infrastructure upgrades around the station are already underway, with Sisk currently building a new road bridge and footbridge over the East Coast Main Line, a 2km single carriageway road and a rail spur to the National Railway Museum.