Elephant and Castle Town Centre

The urban conditions of today's Elephant were the result of a perfect storm that first materialised sixty years ago. The area had been heavily bombed in the Second World War, paving the way for tabula rasa development at the same time. The private automobile was ascendent, urbanism was flirting with ideas of social engineering and resources to splurge on new buildings were limited.

High density, slab-block estates and large gyratory replaced the terraced streets that once defined the area - a diverse and dynamic place that in its pre-war days was nicknamed the 'Piccadilly of the South'. The Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre was built in 1965. A modernist podium and tower geared for visitors arriving by car, it was the first shopping centre of its kind in Europe. Next door, the London College of Printing (since re-fashioned as the London College of Communication), set up shop in a similarly functionalist building. The site of a once popular dance hall became a roundabout, whilst a vital node in the city's road network, over the latter half of 20th century it became a neglected part of London. Yet the area had always remained very well connected. Underneath are stations for the Northern and Bakerloo lines, a mainline railway station, and since 1829 with the advent of the first horse bus, one of London's busiest bus interchanges.

The first big move is to move LCC across the street to replace the shopping centre. Built over the Northern line entrance, a new twelve story signature building will incorporate all the functions of LCC as well as additional accommodations for the administrative offices of University of the Arts London (UAL) of which LCC is a constituent college. The first three levels will be publicly accessible, offering a place for students and society to meet in a mixed space incorporating retail and food vendors. A series of four storey voids up and down the building allow for engaging and flexible layouts to suit LCC's evolving curriculum. The UAL:LCC building is nestled in a group of three residential towers varying in height from 21-32 storeys, 2-3 levels of street-facing retail and a 4-storey retail pavilion. The western site responds to a very different condition: three residential towers, 20-35 storeys in height, are clustered alongside a terrace of mid-level homes responsive to the more domestic scale of the site's western edge.

Acknowledging that the current shopping centre has a vibrancy that is sustained by a range and richness of retail, extensive care has gone into developing flexible and diverse retail unit types that will inhabit much of the streetscape. New walkable connections cross both sides of the site and are placed purposefully to integrate easily with the Elephant's neighbours and to help enrich the area's street life. As a transport hub with many commuters constantly passing through, a priority has been to design more direct and pleasant routes as well as an upgraded Northern line underground station. A diverse mix of uses is meant to encourage richness of experiences, including a new cinema (shared with LCC and the public), incubator spaces for recent LCC graduates to encourage them to stay in the Elephant, more than 900 new homes, and a new venue for the Stanley Kubrick Archive.