Spring 2020, the UK is locked down due to coronavirus restrictions. Non-essential shops have been forced to close, but a site visit has been called at the Metquarter shopping mall in central Liverpool. Many of its units were empty in advance of the pandemic due to competition from the neighbouring Liverpool ONE and the future is uncertain. The city is eerily quiet.
A new prospective tenant wants to take the leases of all the vacant space and be operational by the Autumn. Liverpool Media Academy (LMA) want to transform the building into a new campus for their growing intake, requiring state of the art film, dance and recording studios and teaching space. Is this technically feasible? Is this programme deliverable?
This project is a refurbishment and change of use of almost half of the floor area of the Metquarter shopping mall, itself a redevelopment of the former Liverpool City General Post Office into a new education campus for Liverpool Media Academy.
The first phase was completed in Autumn 2020. The aim was to reimagine a struggling retail environment and to create a vibrant mix of uses, with education rubbing shoulders with neighbouring retail and leisure, and in doing so to set a benchmark for the future of the UK High Street.
Opened in 2006, the Metquarter is arranged around a central toplit internal mall with units to either side arranged across three floors. By 2020, a broad range of different shopfronts, in different materials, with inconsistent fonts, colours and branding were the legacy of a revolving door of individual tenancies and fitouts completed without adherence to the overarching design guidance, each trying to stand out from its neighbour in the retail marketplace. LMA’s priority was the opposite – to provide a consistency of brand, a clear legibility, and an unambiguous identity.
It was agreed to replace all shopfronts that would be within LMA’s demise, with a coherent single glazing system, colour scheme, brand, and font.
This was far from the traditional education project, where the requirement is to carefully manage the public gaze in the name of student privacy and safeguarding. But LMA is far from a traditional education provider. Co-owned by Robbie Williams, its courses provide industry-led training that prepare students for careers in the creative industries. Life thru a Lens.
The shopfront was a key part of the scheme, literally the public-facing façade to the content within. For LMA, they performed a traditional function – grabbing the attention of the passer by, advertising and selling their offer. For their students, preparing for professional life in the media, the shopfronts would ensure performance became normalised, the glare of the public eye and the spotlight literally part of daily life. For the Metquarter, each LMA shopfront brought activity, ambition and excellence throughout the week, and variety alongside the remaining retail offer.
Education facilities are not normally co-located in shopping centres, but in a challenging retail climate that is unlikely to recover, LMA’s Metquarter campus has shown that it is not only possible but can also be a runaway success.
Compromises were inevitable as is typically the case when adapting any existing building, but particularly here given the inherent rigidity of the retail shells they were designed as. Relaxation of acoustic standards was a necessity – to stop noise breakout through the shopfronts would have blown much of the project budget on increased glazing specification – but this has been mitigated by a pragmatic relationship with the landlord and careful timetabling.
Indeed, the limited noise breakout adds to the buzz in the mall, and the wider feeling of life and activity; an open, collaborative melting pot, all showcased through the former retail shopfronts.
In the end, any compromises were more than outweighed by the benefits, and there was enough flexibility in the building to satisfy LMA’s needs for an accessible, highly visible, and inspirational environment where their students feel free to express themselves.
A measure of LMA’s success has been the expansion of the campus into neighbouring units as retail leases have expired – K2 returned to complete the latest phase in Autumn 2025.
