P25

Sane Architecture

In refurbishing and extending the ideas of the original building, and in creating a genuinely public purpose for the currently underused expanses of Ingham's generous design, we think that the civic pride embodied in this building can finally be rescued from decades of neglect. A square lined with trees runs out from inside the Bus Station's high, airy concourse, which is turned over to restaurants, pop-up shops and art exhibitions (in an analogue to the Harris' pre-modern art collection) towards the civic heart of Preston, treated informally, with chairs left around as if in someone's garden. Connected to this is the pitch of a youth centre, and then, the structure of the youth centre itself, which cuts this square off from the ramps leading to the car park, making a viable civic space out of what had been the Station's forecourt. That youth centre, meanwhile, subtly repeats the rippling curves of Keith Ingham's original station design, in a laconic form that doesn't attempt to compete with the Brutalist grandeur of the original, but doesn't ignore or patronise it either.