In December 2012 Preston City Council voted ‘in principle’ to demolish the building and replace it with a surface car park. According to Preston City Council demolition will not proceed until Lancashire County Council fund the construction of a new, smaller bus station on part of the site.

This building is a major cultural landmark and we believe that it should be preserved and creatively adapted to serve the city. It should act as a key space to make Preston accessible and temper the decay that is affecting our city, and so many other city centres across the UK.

Gate 81 is a set of downloadable documents and a design workshop. The documents are free and open so that anyone who is interested can create proposals for the Bus Station’s development.

We would like you to get involved. No design or building experience needed, only an active, creative interest in Preston Bus Station and its interaction with you and with the city. And if you have skills as an artist, designer, developer, architect, technologist, anywhere in the world, please use the resources to imagine a positive future for the building.

A Bus Station design workshop will be held in Preston in April 2013 to develop some of these ideas further. 

We’d like you to:

- enjoy the building

- imagine what could happen in and around the building, and how the building could interact with the city

- think about who uses the building and why, and what they might want from the building

- download the drawings and 3d model

- use free software to view and manipulate the model

- make development plans, design, remix, remodel, adapt

- send us your proposals and responses

- contact us if, as a group or individual you want to take part in the HackLab

- preserve the building if you can

- remember the building when it is gone

Some things to think about:

- How do you respond personally, to the building, its forms and spaces?

- Could the surrounding routes and urban spaces be changed to reconnect the building with the city?

- Can we ensure that there is something for everyone in the city’s spaces and developments?

- What does a city centre need to ensure people engage in its social, cultural and economic life?

- What functions could the building contain?

- How could the image of the building be changed to give it new life and meaning?

Gate 81 will:

Provide open access to the drawings and editable 3D model of Preston Bus Station, for anyone with a creative interest in the use of Preston Bus Station

Provide open access to an online platform for diverse creative and developmental responses to the building and the city

Develop a relevant and accessible toolkit of resources for ways of thinking about city spaces and urban/cultural regeneration

Promote worldwide interest in this unique and important building

Work towards an open, creative hacklab workshop in Preston in April 2013 to build upon these responses

Access, participation, publication

Please send your submissions via email to ...

We will showcase submissions online at Gate 81and at the workshop

Contact us if you would like to further explore how you can become involved

We welcome approaches from everyone including educational groups, professionals, organisations, students and private individuals

License

The resources on this website, including the drawings and 3D model, are distributed for worldwide public use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license. You can read the full terms of this license at Creative Commons. Essentially you are free to… share - to copy, distribute and transmit the drawings, 3D model and other resources & remix - to adapt the drawings, 3D model and other resources.

Remember…. Share Alike - If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one … Noncommercial - You may not use this work for commercial purposes unless you have permission (see 'Further Resources’ below)… Attribution - You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).