Ealing Town Square
A project reorganising Ealing Broadway shopping centre around a public square, with timber arcades connecting shops, terraces and new routes in from the wider town.
Ealing Broadway shopping centre contains shops, offices and the central library within a late twentieth-century block. Set behind brick towers and pitched roofs, it creates a distinctive impression on the Broadway, yet its internal square is difficult to find from the surrounding streets.
The brief called for renewed retail and dining and clearer ways in. Nex proposed to treat the square, rather than the retail frontage, as the organising centre of the scheme.
The project begins at the thresholds to the city. Gateways of light and colour at Oak Road, the Broadway and Gospel Hall would mark the ways in, so the square could be found before it is fully revealed. Arched timber frames define the edges of the square and connect the ground-floor shops with dining terraces above. Made from laminated English oak in modules, they form a covered gallery of shops at ground level, dining balconies above and canopies to the rooftop terraces, with some modules roofed in transparent ETFE to give shelter and collect rainwater for reuse.
The square itself remains open and adaptable. Flush water jets animate one end, misting in the morning and rising into fountains through the day, while a stage wrapped in stepped seating anchors the other. Kiosks and loose furniture let the space hold weekday markets, weekend play and evening performances, with new restaurants and planted terraces overlooking it all from the floors above.
