This thesis is a two-part investigation into the overarching question of: ‘what makes a street?’ The first focuses on the physical ingredients of a ‘street’ and looks at an iconic post war building – Neave Brown’s Alexandra Road Estate through a playable toolkit to reimagine the street in an impressionable piece of architecture. Looking into Brown’s ideas on housing, domains of privacy and the importance of streets in his schemes,the estate is dismantled into key (physical) elements that play an active role in the ‘creation of a street’. These elements are then reconfigured to speculate different scenarios of what the estate might look in relation to key concepts.

The second part builds upon the first, focusing on the non-physical aspects of a street – culminating in a spatial exploration of an alternative narrative for the future high street, associating with the ideas of deceleration and slowness. The structure of high streets has roughly remained the same since its inception – a set hierarchy and segregation of buildings, pavement and roads. This design thesis builds upon the 21st century concept of ‘shared space’ by speculating a new street typology shared by infrastructure, people and nature, where the ‘street’ unites, rather than divides programmatic spatial relations. It is a visual narrative explored through a singular set of 1:1 tiles in various scales to re-imagine the new high street – the tile as an object, a spatial moment, a building plan and masterplan.