2018-12-14

Grand Central Birmingham

For a long time, training stations have been seen as a necessity to simply catching a train. A transit space for waiting for your train to depart. However much as airports have already come to realise, these stations have the capacity for creating a strong social and public meeting point and these places of heavy public traffic have been realised as places to attract people for eating drinking and shopping. So much so that modern stations are no longer designed for just passengers but also people not even intending to catch a train. As shopping malls and other public venues have accepted, people are drawn to connected spaces that mix function with entertainment and social integration. 

Haskoll has been leading this view for several years and while in Europe we have been responsible for delivering one of the most inspirational new stations at Grand Station Birmingham. In China，especially we see the great untapped potential that will lead station design in China for the next decade.  

Typical First Tier Chinese city station at Shanghai Hongqiao.
 
The Grand Central Birmingham Station replaced the existing city station and transformed the former Pallasades into a new retail environment with a 250,000 sq ft John Lewis department store, 23 restaurants and 40 retail units. This unique environment focused around a new atrium that is shared with the station below is now at the heart of the retail circuit of Birmingham and acts as a catalyst for further development in the city. 5 years of hard work have culminated in the successful opening of the scheme on 24th September 2015.  

The successful completion of this project has ensured that Haskoll maintains a close elationship with Hammerson the developer and we continue to make improvements to existing entrances and circulation spaces.  

Haskoll’s pedigree of 50 years of retail experience has naturally lent us to these new retail, social and entertainment supported stations, it is a way of thinking that we have pioneered in our experience of shopping malls. London also