The Axis Tower has been a landmark structure since the 1970s. Its proposed demolition next year means that this legacy is lost. The tower is and always has been commercial, which has contributed to harsh public/private thresholds being formed around it. Its approach to architecture consists of a uniform, autonomous system build. Each individual panel has been mass-produced to reflect the building as a sole entity and to operate as a single function. The facade, which is generated in response to the system build, is a flat, unresponsive plane which detaches itself from the surrounding framework. These concrete panels act as the skin of the building, that mask the structural components within. This “skin” which wraps the tower creates a separation between building and landscape. This thesis project aims at challenging the current system build approach taken at Axis Tower, by offering an alternative to demolition through adaptive re-use. The atmosphere of the site will be tuned to heighten its presence both locally and into the wider urban fabric. By utilising this approach to architecture, there is an opportunity to work with the existing opportunities of both the site and the prefabricated panel. The thresholds which have been left due to this ‘skin’ will be exploited and introduced as public programmes across a vertical level. These vertical spaces will be assembled from prefabricated modules to enable the tower to inherit a depth to its vertical plane. This, in turn, will allow the building to display a sense of civic identity and to become enmeshed within both the local context of Navigation Street, and the wider urban
framework.