John Lewis, Trafford Centre

John Lewis Department Stores commissioned Norman Disney & Young to design the services for their new store in the Trafford Centre in Manchester. The store is 205,000ft² split over two main selling floors with a total of 125,000ft² and two small mezzanine floors of storage and office space. The store also included three ‘places to eat’ for public and staff use.

The Trafford Centre opened in 1999. It has 1,000,000ft² of retail plus 325,000ft² of catering and leisure space. The centre ranks fourth in out of town centres in the UK and attracts 27 million visitors per year.

The site for the store was handed to John Lewis as an empty shell with a minimum of incoming services. Intermediate floors were added to the building shells’ multi-storey void to increase the total floor area of the store. Norman Disney & Young designed all of the building services required within the store and integrated this with the architectural design. Creative lighting design studio NDYLIGHT was responsible for the lighting of all key areas.

The store was designed with flexibility in mind, to enable the services to be easily modified to suit changing business needs throughout its useful life.