A Communitys Urban Rejuvenation - The Cabarets Trouper

The 1990s brought innovation to retail shopping, enabling consumers to begin to shop from the comfort of their own home. Today, Online shopping continues to revolutionise the industry, creating a highly competitive market space while advancing “convenience shopping”. As customers can now purchase anything at their fingertips, those that choose to shop in-store find their desires are also competitively meet. Evolution within the retail industry has meant that many stores have become a part of “big box” developments. These facilities provide customers with readily stocked merchandise and the in-store experience of “convenience shopping”.  Online shopping and Big Box stores will continue to lure people away from what once were vibrant urban retail environments posing various adverse effects on our streets, city centres and local businesses. Broadway Avenue, Palmerston North is one of many streets that have fallen victim to these developments creating unpleasant retail experiences for the community. This thesis argues how interior architecture can assist rejuvenating desolate urban environments. It proposes that by applying selected interior principles to an urban street it can create a space that begins to challenge the current programme encouraging the street to adapt for the community.  This design based research proposes to create a community space ‘living room’ by treating the street as though it is a residential space within a retail environment. It aims to preserve and maintain a sense of history and diversity within the cityscape. The existing site attributes will be used to create a set of design rules and regulations within the shopping environment to encourage internal and external spaces to feed off one another adapting frequently to cope with the competitive nature of the retail sector.