Placemarque

Manchester's Oxford Road Corridor

Oxford Road Corridor | Manchester, UK

The challenge

This was a unique challenge in placemaking terms.

Equivalent in size to the whole of Manchester’s city centre and known at the busiest bus route in Europe the Oxford Road corridor is not a single “place” but is a multi-faceted linear space with many different destinations and focal points along its length.

That brings its own challenges when it comes to navigation and projecting a clear sense of place.

What we did

Home to three universities, numerous hospitals and innovative research facilities as well as cultural destinations, it’s an exceptionally busy place and an important destination.

With so many stakeholders, it was important to bring people together. We collaborated with stakeholders to understand perspectives and devise a unified story of the “Knowledge Quarter” that helped cement a cohesive sense of place.

We defined key interpretation themes of culture, innovation, creativity, history, Collaboration, and Sustainability.

These helped us identify “touch points” and the spatial relationships between key knowledge, business and cultural assets across the corridor.

Our high-level wayfinding strategy culminated in a place shaping report outlining various interventions for short, medium and long-term wayfinding improvements.

These included:

  • digital mapping
  • threshold markers
  • street name plates
  • partner integration of the Oxford Road Corridor brand,
  • the use of QR codes for accessing stories and trails
  • enhancing the public realm and street furniture, and
  • highlighting the bridges in the area.

Why it works

Taking a step back and looking at the whole corridor comprehensively, and creating a unified story around the “Knowledge Quarter”, our high-level strategy helped to identify key focal points within the corridor and propose interventions to enhance the sense of place and ease movement across this busy corridor.

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