The Site is centrally located within Shirley Town Centre in Southampton, just north of the High Street. The area within which the Site lies has experienced considerable change over the last century, with insensitive post-war planning that eroded much of the fine-grained townscape of the late-19th and early 20th century. The Town Centre comprises mainly residential and civic buildings, surrounded by suburban detached and semi-detached residential buildings.

The building’s architectural expression responds to its prominent corner location on Victor Street and Crown Street, within the busy, mainly commercial area north of Shirley High Street. Scale, form and massing have been designed to respond to the different street conditions and corners that the building addresses. It aims to activate street frontages and provide interest and activity, also providing a new pedestrian friendly cut through. The height is an uplift for the area but arrived at by an urban analysis of the surrounding townscape as it exists today and also anticipating how this area might evolve in the coming years to support the regeneration of Shirley Town Centre. The overall design has been informed and improved by these studies into placemaking principles, the emerging context of the area, the building’s form within the townscape, urban principles, how it meets and improves the street and its interesting articulation.