When Westfield began developing design proposals for the main retail centre and adjacent buildings it collaborated with Chris Sutton to fundamentally shape the architecture of the project.
A marriage of design and commercial awareness was necessary in order to convincingly wrap a very large mass, visible from many different vantage points, with a mixture of front and back of house, servicing and goods handling and pedestrianised streetscape.
Chris chose to not shy away from the scale of the building by attempting to break it down, instead the notion of a citadel was explored, the retail centre envisaged as a fortress of consumption, a retail castle, with the monolithic nature of the development being celebrated only at the three major points of access.
Chris lead the project through a long series of Design Review sessions held with eminent architectural critics creating considerable lively debate.
The successful work carried out here has lead to the Practice being commissioned for further roles collaborating with Westfield on various masterplans and retail centres in the UK and overseas.