ADAPTIVE REUSE OF A LISTED BUILDING: REVIVING THE HISTORY
RE_FORUM
The Novel Bookstore
The project is located in the centre Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK a
former shipbuilding and manufacturing hub in the North East of
England during the Industrial Revolution and is now a centre of
business, arts and sciences.
Set within a grand Georgian building within the heart of the city
centre, it stands as a corner stone for the cities Grainger market
dating back to 1830s and is now a Grade I listed building.
Designed by John Dobson and named after Richard Grainger, it is
one of the few remaining covered markets in Britain today. A plaque,
signifying its historical importance of the site as a bookshop and
commemorates individuals who visited the bookshop during the
19th century. Notably, the Italian Revolutionary, Giuseppe Garibaldi
in 1854 in addition to visits by the Hungarian Revolutionary Louis
Kossuth and the American Reformer.
The bookshop became renowned across the city and soon became
an informal meeting place for such people. Reflecting back to
the time when the site was a former bookstore the “re_Forum”
proposal sets out to recreate an informal place to promote the act
of novel reading for a 21st-century city, taking into account the
context of the site and the pragmatics to ensure the functioning of
such an establishment.