Crewe Festival Works
Confronting Big-Box Urbanism in Post-Industrial Crewe
This project investigates how architecture can address the erasure of industrial heritage, using the former Crewe Locomotive Works as a case study. Once central to British railway engineering, the site was lost in stages, first through the demolition of the Works in the 1970s, then through its replacement by a Tesco superstore. Crewe's loss, however, extends beyond the physical. The town also saw the decline of its intangible heritage, most notably the end of the Crewe Carnival in 2010, a civic tradition closely tied to the railway workers who once built its floats and supported its production.
This project responds to both types of loss: the erasure of physical infrastructure and the fading of a cultural practice rooted in collective memory. Rather than pursue further demolition, it proposes an adaptive reuse of the existing Tesco frame—transforming it into Crewe Festival Works, a new public space focused on the revival of festival-making as a cultural craft. The scheme introduces three new buildings beneath a mesh-clad canopy, housing artist residencies, festival production workshops, exhibition spaces, and a renewed open-air heritage centre.
The design aims to preserve the memory of Crewe’s industrial and social past—not through nostalgia or reconstruction, but by reactivating the spirit of making, collaboration, and civic celebration that once defined the town.
