‘The Electrified Automotive Future and its Relationship to Architecture’ was the subject of an evening hosted by Jaguar design and a group of London’s leading RIBA architects, planners, property developers and infrastructure experts.
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is the professional body for architects in the UK. It has more than 40,000 members around the world. Jaguar’s Ian Callum Director of Design is an Honorary Fellow at the RIBA.
Callum spoke of the international success of the all-electric I-PACE as well as of the opportunities presented by automotive electrification becoming more mainstream.
“I am incredibly proud of what we have created in the Jaguar I-PACE and the reception it has received since its launch. It is a truly revolutionary vehicle with one of the most advanced zero-emissions powertrains ever fitted to a production car. The I-PACE is instantly recognisable as a Jaguar, with the beautiful design and dynamic capability inherent in our vehicles”, Callum said.
“As a designer, I am hugely excited by the opportunity this widespread adoption of electric cars presents. We have a unique chance for wholesale change of the facilities available to drivers as we reinvent usage and ‘filling’ patterns for our vehicles. The concepts we are presenting here with the team of architects show a vision of what is possible, what is needed and what it could look like.”
Ian Callum and a number of architects led by award-winning Jon Eaglesham of Barr Gazetas presented different concepts. They depicted a joint-vision as to what an urban future of automotive electrification could look like.
The concepts
Today – what a motorway service station could be…
In this example, the specialists take a traditional, tired motorway service station and breathe new electrified life into it. It is based on Forton Services on the M6. When it opened in 1965 Forton Services was a beacon of modernity. It featured an up-market restaurant as well as a sun deck. Today motorway services are often an unpleasant jumble of commercial buildings servicing noisy, polluted motorways. Electrification leads to much-reduced noise and pollution. Together with increased ‘dwell time’, that results in such stations becoming destinations with an array of amenities and services. And that includes farm shops, gymnasiums, swimming pools and restaurants. All of that gives travellers greater options to occupy the time required to charge their vehicles.
The trend towards connecting these stations to their local rural and urban community is enhanced by the environmental improvements electric cars will bring. Encouraging people to visit for a variety of reasons, be it for leisure, to work or to trade produce and ideas, they will revive the lost model of the ancient caravanserai.
Tomorrow – NCP of the future…
This is based on one of the UK’s most iconic multi-storey car parks. That is Welbeck Street, hidden behind Oxford Street in London’s West End. It is from 1970 and originally provided car parking space for shoppers. The structure symbolises an era of fossil fuel consumption. Re-imagined as a self-sufficient charging plaza, the proposal is to reinvent the existing stock of city centre multi-storey car parks. The idea is to have the opportunity to charge cars adjacent to good public transport links. That is for owners of electric vehicles who are less likely to have access to off-street parking at their homes.
The proposal at Welbeck Street makes use of the existing structural grid to support solar photovoltaics panels that will provide clean energy for inner-city electric vehicle owners to charge their cars. The result is cleaner and greener surroundings and parts of the building freed up for retail and leisure use. A public artwork on the side of the building indicates the renewable energy generated to charge the cars within the structure.
Electric City – a fast-approaching reality of completely emission-free major cities…
Reimagining post-industrial wastelands. Here we have taken Liverpool’s Stanley Dock as an example. The built in 1901 building was once the largest in the world. But it fell into disrepair in the 1980s, symbolising lost industry and economic difficulty. In this image it has been reimagined as a community interchange, helping to rejuvenate the city through the creation of new community facilities and industries based on green energy on redundant sites countrywide. Linked to the future of transport and car-free city centres, redundant brownfield sites like Stanley Dock can offer the multi-modal ‘last mile’ connection to cities, whilst rejuvenating the communities they are situated in.
Electric future – an opportunity for wholesale change, up and down the country…
In this image, London is a cleaner, healthier city. Repurposed, new infrastructure, connected to electric vehicles, has allowed a proliferation of vegetation and green space. Meanwhile, cities across the UK are electrically self-sufficient. They harness solar and tidal power to power the increased number of electric vehicles, both land-based and airborne.
London architecture practice Barr Gazetas’ managing director, Jon Eaglesham said: “This study is all about realising opportunity. These four concepts should all be possible within a generation. Electric vehicle successes such as the I-PACE represent a huge catalyst for change. As architects, together with town planners and authorities national and local, we need to embrace this opportunity now, and bring visions such as these to reality, improving experiences, and indeed lives, up and down the country.”
