Commercial architecture for a new car showroom

Location:
Wisbech, Cambridgeshire

A brand new car showroom, workshop, preparation bay and hard standing display area for the town of Wisbech, highlighting how a new design for the area can be striking

Overview

An brand new commercially striking car show room, workshop, preparation bay and hard standing display area has been designed to reflect a contemporary solution suited to a modern car showroom development.

Brief

A site, (formerly Victoria Café) was cleared and fenced off for use as a car showroom, workshop, preparation bay and hard standing display area, ready for our client Paragon Motor Company Ltd. The client is committed to a policy of good design and equality and therefore we wanted to create a visually compelling structure that would attract new customers with its commercial style. The site itself benefits from being one of the main routes in and out of Wisbech, in addition to being a short drive from Kings’s Lynn, March, Ely and Peterborough.

Solution

Our team of design experts created a new car show room that exemplified a commercial style of building using contemporary solutions:  

Glazing locations
Parapet walls offer a contemporary solution suited to a modern car showroom development
Bespoke choice of materials
Level topography
Hardstanding area with black macadam finish
All bay areas ‘white-lined’ with thermoplastic paint
Floor level of the building lifted in accordance with the flood risk assessment
Accessibility with a front ramp, large front door with level access, accessible doors, outward opening WC door. This ensures access throughout the building.
Security Lighting

Additionally, low level security ‘hoops’ and bollards to allow the vehicles to be viewed and accessed by the public, whilst providing Paragon with security.

The Full Story

The client Paragon Motor Company rented a car showroom and workshop along Sutton Road Wisbech. A new site was cleared and fenced off ready for assessment from the Geo-Environmental studies group and Flood Risk Assessment due to being within Flood Zone 2. We made sure that all of the recommendations after the report was included within our design decisions.

Benefiting from being one of the main routes in and out of Wisbech, in addition to being a short drive from Kings’s Lynn, March, Ely and Peterborough – this site is located near an area that has many utilitarian industrial type buildings.

We therefore wanted to ensure the final building not only demonstrated contemporary design but was also in keeping with being a commercial building in the area.

Creating a commercial car showroom in Wisbech

The client Paragon Motor Company Ltd. is committed to a policy of good design and equality for their new venture.

By making sure the requirements of quality of environment, sustainability, site access, accessibility, contamination and Flood Risk were met, along with provisions within the design itself to enhance the form and character of the area. We completed the project with the exact outcome that was intended from the initial brief.

The final design was largely governed by the adjacent properties and history of the site (i.e. location of former fuel tanks etc), the existing access points and the natural boundaries of the site.

The site also included a purchased highways land.

To the north of the site is a showroom, whilst the preparation bay is located to the south west. The remainder of the site is hard standing (incorporating the highways land), which is kept for display purposes for the vehicles.