Toxteth Re-imagined by students from the Liverpool School of Architecture

In Semester 2 of the academic year 2023/24, we selected Toxteth, Liverpool, as a place in which to explore the complexity of design questions in an urban context. We focused on understanding the street as an urban mechanism for creating a public space. We considered the central axis of the area: a 1.5km spine constituted by the transition street comprising Windsor St and Admiral St, which connect St James Mount Gardens (attached to Liverpool Cathedral) in the north with Princes Park in the south. The street offers an exciting mix of urban fabrics, mostly configured by housing (detached houses, terraces and low-rise blocks) combined across the street, creating an urban composite lacking cohesiveness and identity.

Reflecting on the history of Toxteth, we believe that the development of this area could play a key role in the future of this part of Liverpool, due to the proximity of the Baltic Triangle development and the historical importance of Chinatown, both in the north-west, and the suburban development around Princes Park and Sefton Park in the south-east.

The cohort of over 200 second-year students worked on 13 potential sites under an umbrella brief titled ‘Radical Dwelling in Toxteth’. Four different approaches to this brief were developed by different groups: ‘Food for Thought’ (addressing housing for senior citizens), ‘Towards an Architecture for Emplacement’ (focusing on hosting internally and globally displaced people), ‘Toxteth Cohousing’ and ‘Radical Housing for Young Professionals’.

In June and September 2024, a group of students continued to develop the urban spaces and contributed to the exhibition model. This exhibition presents an exploratory and hypothetical vision for the Toxteth neighbourhood. Through creative design and critical thinking, Toxteth’s urban spine is re-imagined as a shared street that gives back its public space to the neighbours. In this way, Liverpool recovers an essential axis, connecting the city centre with the green infrastructure in the south-east (Princes Park and Sefton Park).

You are warmly invited to join us on the evening of 2 October (6–8 pm) at the Caribbean Centre Liverpool to see the models and drawings and talk to our students about their ambitions and care for the communities at Toxteth.

Two community-oriented workshops will take place during the exhibition time, to collect feedback and engage teenagers in the design of the future city (5 October for the general public and 12 October for teenagers).

For more details, please contact Dr Junjie Xi ([email protected]), School of Architecture, University of Liverpool.

Exhibition curated by Dr Paco Mejias Villatoro.

Host or Publisher Junjie Xi