RCKa has submitted designs for the Smithfield Wellbeing Hub as part of Birmingham Smithfield, a once-in-a-generation project led by Birmingham City Council and Lendlease to reshape a 17 hectare site in the historic heart of the city.
The Smithfield project will transform Birmingham’s city centre, creating around 3,000 new homes and community facilities as well as major economic opportunities, including an estimated 8,000 new jobs.
“This really is an exceptional opportunity to create and celebrate the next chapter in Birmingham’s transformation as an international city.”
Colin Murphy, project lead at Lendlease
The site of the Wellbeing Hub has been vacant since 2018, following the closure of the Birmingham Bullring Wholesale Markets. Our project brings this important city centre site back into productive use as a genuinely mixed-use building that bursts with life.
Standing at the gateway to Birmingham Smithfield, the Wellbeing Hub creates joy out of an assortment of different spaces, and becomes a place where people rub shoulders with each other and feel part of a much wider community.
Our approach has been to embed wellbeing principles into every aspect of the design, underpinned by the promotion of healthy lifestyles. In addition to 142 new homes, the Hub will contain a range of uses including retail, food and drink, a destination gym and spa, leisure activities, and a new pub.
Following an extensive consultation process the plans were submitted to Birmingham City Council for approval in December 2022 and if approved, works could begin later this year.
It has been a pleasure to work alongside Lendlease and Birmingham City Council on this proposal and to be part of a talented and collaborative team of architecture practices bringing the wider Birmingham Smithfield project together including Prior + Partners, James Corner Field Operation, David Kohn Architects, drMM, Haworth Tomkins, Intervention Architecture and Minesh Patel Architects.