princesshay

Location: Exeter
Client: Land Securities
Status: Completed 2007
Budget: £21 million


"Princesshay has been a resounding success, giving the city a contemporary shopping experience in an historical setting. It began the process of bringing residents back into the city centre. Princesshay has created its own unique identity, a high quality environment that has become a symbol of a dynamic and growing city.”
Karime Hassan, Chief Exec of Exeter City Council


A vast collaborative regeneration project
Masterplanned in tandem with Chapman Taylor and Wilkinson Eyre Architects, the scheme creates 530,000 square feet of shops, apartments, cafes, restaurants and public spaces.

Biggest regeneration project in the city's history
and is located in the heart of Exeter. A 1950s shopping precinct constructed 1950s was demolished to make way for a development that carefully reinserts streets and squares into the historic fabric of the city, near the historic Cathedral.

We were responsible for five new buildings
in the portion of the masterplan closest to the Cathedral, comprising a department store, retail units, residential accommodation, cafes and restaurants. 

CABE and English Heritage exemplar project
The scheme has regularly been used as a reference project for inner city regeneration, particularly in the manner it has avoided a sealed shopping centre experience but instead reinstated a public realm defined by new streets, colonnades and public squares to provide an genuine urban heart to the development. The scheme’s masterplan and individual homes layouts are orientated to maximise views of the Cathedral from streets and rooftops.

“...Princesshay represents the new retail agenda of regeneration, public space and integration with urban life....Land Securities played to each architects’ strength. Panter Hudspith, enjoying a reputation for dealing with difficult historic contexts, has dealt with the buildings nearest the Cathedral.”
Building Design, April 2007

Photography
Panter Hudspith Architects
David Cornforth

Publications
2017
Devon Live - Princesshay at 10: The development which profoundly changed Exeter
2007
Building Design Magazine - The Princess and the Maze 2008 Retail Week - Shopping location of the year
2008 International Council of Shopping Centres - Best Medium Sized Centre in Europe
2007 British Council of Shopping Centres - Supreme Gold Award
2007 British Council of Shopping Centres - Gold Award for In-Town Retail Scheme (more than 300,000 sqft)