The Crewe Portal
CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW
This project reimagines a forgotten stretch of Crewe’s railway infrastructure as a civic threshold—reconnecting the station to the town centre through a sequence of landscapes, reused structures, and architectural interventions. At its heart stands the Portal, a mixed-use building that stitches together residential, commercial, and cultural programmes while memorialising the ruins of the General Offices. The design responds to Crewe’s industrial past not through imitation, but through transformation—celebrating material reuse, layered spatial connections, and public generosity. It proposes a new kind of town centre: one rooted in memory, but oriented toward civic life, access, and identity.
DESIGN PROCESS
The project evolved through iterative testing, starting with urban analysis and narrative mapping, followed by masterplan strategies and tectonic studies. Early experiments in fragmentation, Dadaist collage, and spatial sequencing helped establish a framework for design grounded in context, contrast, and connection. Key moments—such as the reuse of railway materials, portal thresholds aligned with historic streets, and the layering of public and private space—were developed through drawing, model-making, and detailed sectional resolution. Each phase prioritised spatial clarity and narrative coherence, ensuring the architecture remained both grounded in place and open to public life.
