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The only thing not a reflection is the man at the bus stop.
Leicester’s new John Lewis has been designed by Foreign Office Architects, dubbed by The Times as ‘the coolest architects in the world’.

With four floors of fashion, beauty, homewares and accessories, it is one of the largest to be opened by the retailer outside London. Designed to be a stunning centrepiece, the entire building is encased in a double-layered glass skin with a cool white filigree pattern applied to both layers, reflecting Leicester’s rich history of hosiery and fabric manufacture. Specialist lighting is also used to bathe the building in different colour schemes and also pays homage to John Lewis as the first department store retailer to introduce electric light.

Facing directly opposite the main ground level entrance to John Lewis there’s a new two-level retail mall designed by international firm, Chapman Taylor Architects. Here, contemporary materials, stone flooring, and high levels of natural lighting and ventilation, combine to create the atmosphere of a wide covered street. Directly above the main mall entrance, a double-height glass footbridge provides a spectacular suspended link to John Lewis as well as to the multi-storey car park.

Joining John Lewis in Leicester is another iconic building the 12–screen Cinema de Lux. With its stainless steel shingle cladding it gives an incredible lift to the Leicester landscape. The layered transparency of the surface will create a lively interaction between the stores and the city. Highcross' new 2,000-space multi-storey car park is to feature a design which will be unique to Leicester. Gollifer Langston Architects have created a bespoke mesh cladding system which will be the first of its kind to be used on this scale. The design, which invokes a hexagonal weave effect, is inspired by Leicester’s traditional textile industry. Made of pressed aluminium sheets punched with large apertures, the mesh is overlaid in two layers with feature lighting incorporated at ground and top storey levels. The interplay of light and shadow between the two layers creates a striking visual effect of shimmering movement which acts to reduce the impact of the building’s eight-storey structure. The car park is linked directly into the upper level of the main shopping mall via a glazed footbridge.

Thanks for the information to www.highcrossleicester.com