HARNESSING DELIGHT: Rediscovering the Principles of Composition in Preston
How can neo-classical principles of urban design be reapplied today to remedy the underutilized urban spaces of Preston?
Our project follows a reconfiguration of the city of Preston's main public square, the Flag Market, and one of its subsidiary spaces Anchor Court. Host to most of Preston's grand civic structures, in addition to many important annual cultural events, our site, whilst already remarkable, could benefit from several choice interventions that we believe would dramatically improve the viability of the space as the city's commercial, cultural and civic heart. Through our learnings, focussed on the principles of classical composition and ornamentation, we developed an architectural theory that would inform both the urban arrangement and individual composure of the facades that would make up our proposal. This line of thought culminated in decanting an existing modernist tower, discordant with the neoclassical language of the rest of the square, out of the square, where we redistributed its functions into a new structure built into the market's western facade. Called New Anchor Court, our development provides the lost residential and commercial function of the sacrificed structure in a manner that we believe enhances the social life on the square instead of inhibiting it as the tower did beforehand.
