New London Architecture is, officially, Londonist’s favourite gallery/ museum/studio-type thing. For those who have not visited, it’s a compact exhibition space on Store Street (off Tottenham Court Road) for showcasing London’s buildings. You can just walk right in for free, like you own the city.
They’ve just updated their centrepiece model of London, and opened a new temporary exhibition about the future of shopping.
A series of panels and models explores the numerous alternatives to Oxford Street. From village-like Marylebone to the drab mall experience of Canary Wharf. And it seems that Oxford Street and its environs face challenges from all four points of the compass.
West: the Westfield London site at White City, which includes two new Tube stations (2008).
North: a major development at King's Cross and a rejuvenated Brent Cross.
East: Stratford City – one of the larges retail developments in the UK ever (2011).
South: Elephant and Castle – 75,000 sq m of new retail and leisure space (2016).
So what can that old Roman road through the middle of town do to address such competition? An ‘action plan’ for Oxford, Regent and Bond Streets (not that the latter exists) is available as a gallery freebee. It contains several visions of how the maligned destination might be improved. We have one word of advice: Monometro.
