MArch | Fifth Year | Material Practices [Individual]

The former Teleperformance House is a vacant building located along Hagley Road, an arterial connective link between Edgbaston and Birmingham City Centre. Situated within the New Garden Square site on the Calthorpe Estate, it is earmarked for demolition. The site straddles the boundary between the Edgbaston and Ladywood Wards, offering an opportunity to activate the facade as a means of creating a new boarder, as explained by Sennett (2017) to provide a ‘new zone of active exchange’ between both communities. The former Teleperformance House building, originally built during the 1970s, was redeveloped in the late 1990s with a new curved glazed entrance façade that was unsympathetic to the existing building. The intention for this proposal is to advocate for the retention of the existing building whilst redeveloping key spaces to provide greater community exchange as well as redesigning the façade to provide a more sympathetic intervention.