Masterplan for Stockport College, Stockport

Homes & Communities Agency

Jeffrey Bell Architects were commissioned in 2016 by the Homes & Communities Agency in partnership with relevant stakeholders to undertake a master plan study which focused on the existing Stockport College Campus. This study aimed to provide a range of design and development principles that sought to exploit existing historic and cultural assets to create a rejuvenated urban residential quarter that positively impacts on the wider Stockport area.

The site is located on the southern edge of the town centre core forming a “southern gateway”. The site contains existing buildings and land suitable for redevelopment and is a major regeneration site within the borough. At the time, the site was either not in use or an enclosed educational campus; this created an isolated area of urban realm, blocking permeability and potential connections with surrounding areas.

The proposals sought to demonstrate the site’s development potential by setting out a number of design strategies that would create and reinforce a reinvigorated urban quarter with excellent linkages to adjacent areas of townscape.

Working within the framework of existing buildings and spaces, the proposals addressed existing constraints and new interventions to revive these spaces and buildings, whilst simultaneously encouraging them to link with new areas of public realm which combined to form an interpretable whole and revitalise the site’s heritage assets.

The proposals sought to best exploit the existing educational buildings and remaining heritage assets to provide a coherent residential community, simultaneously improving the associated public realm and linkages with the surrounding urban context. The area was a transitory or derelict series of spaces which were unloved and in poor condition.

The aim was to make it this an environment which is cared for, inhabited and active.