18,150 ft2 sq ft
Retail space delivered
Marks & Spencer Food Store, Derby
We provided Design services for the award-winning Marks & Spencer Food Store in Derby, which is on the historic former Midland Railway Chaddesden Sidings site.
The store is a carefully and subtly crafted homage in design to the once locally listed former 1873 Railway Maintenance Workshop previously on the plot.
Key details
Project name
Marks & Spencer Food Store, Derby
Client
LondonMetric Property PLC
Location
Wyvernside, Derby
Services provided
- Architecture
- Landscape Architecture
- Principal Designer
Design award win
Awarded 'commendation' in Derby Civic Societies' George Larkin Brighter City of Derby 2023, presented by the Mayor of Derby on 17th March 2023.
Challenge
Replacing the last surviving (but in later years, dilapidated and left to decay) element of the Midland Railway Chaddesden Sidings (a former marshalling yard and 150-year-old railway maintenance workshop) presented a series of challenges in the face of local sensitivities and historic significance set against the operational realities of a functioning retail store.
The site is bounded on all sides by Derby’s road network, giving prominence and visibility to the public from all elevations and angles. This presented a compromise of balancing aesthetics and requirements of servicing and developing practical goods areas for the commercial building.
Solution
We successfully reimagined and reinforced the strong visual and emotional link for the public, in form and detailing to Derby's former railway heritage as a key consideration in the design. We honoured the silhouette of the decayed remains of the 1873 built workshop, which mostly disappeared (due in part to a fire in the 1980s), with the necessary updating to contemporary and efficient materials required of today’s modern buildings.
Our Landscape Architecture team delivered a playful design with numerous heritage hints for our client and importantly, the wider community, including a contemporary interpretation of railway tracks within the footways leading to the store and a sustainable planting perimeter with wildflowers and shrubs to encourage biodiversity.
We carefully balanced M&S’s detailed spatial requirements for servicing, goods areas and the other practicalities of a functioning retail store, with the aesthetic challenges of replacing a once historic part of the skyline with a modern, fit-for-purpose building.
Over six years in the making, we achieved the right market balance and addressed sensitivities around a once locally cherished site for our client.
The Derby Civic Society recognised the completed building design and awarded a commendation in their annual 'best new building of 2022' awards.
Key statistics
£ 3.75 Circa £m
Project value (shell)
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