Abergavenny Town Centre

We used cues from the local architecture and street map to develop a proposal to open up and regenerate this old town centre cattle market site. The scheme won an invited design competition judged by local people.

Abergavenny needed to relocate its ancient cattle market to a new setting, leaving a large vacant site in the town centre. The council held a design competition to select a regeneration scheme where the main use for the site would be retail and would include a much needed new ASDA food superstore.

This presented a unique opportunity both to create a new public space within Abergavenny, as well as integrating large scale spatial demands of modern retail into the intricate urban context of a market town.

In addition to addressing the criteria set by the council, we recommended adding residential accommodation to improve the mix of uses. We were delighted that our proposed design plans won the competition.

Our designs split the food retail within the supermarket and non-food retail in the additional retail units. In addition to this, there was a new public library, car park, public space and residential development. We added new public routes, opening up a formerly impenetrable block and improving access to the heart of the town.

The retail units were configured to be flexible and attractive to speculative retail operators but also arranged to produce a consistent and appropriate street frontage. The rear of the units were arranged to provide servicing access that is secure and hidden.