Absolute City Part 2 Project 2025 Alex Watson London Metropolitan University | UK Set within the commercial heart of Coventry, 'Absolute City' explores an alternative use for our city centres in the legacy of high street retail. Shopping, the activity which has organised our urban environments for so long, has vacated in favour of the online ether, and as a result, British cities are today faced with the abandonment of multinational retail conglomerates. The project responds to Coventry’s contemporary challenges by replacing a diverse retail offer with a diversity of a different kind. Reintroducing production to the city and reducing dependence on external actors, the project will begin to restore local agency and absolve Coventry of its dependence. The diversified piece of city will contain a range of programmes arranged around a large industrial building created from the adaptive re-use of the Barracks Car Park and Bull Yard, currently scheduled for demolition. By disrupting the retail monoculture and establishing a mixture of uses including living, working, production, and consumption, the project improves resilience, allowing the city to respond to its future challenges, the extent of which remain unknown. Tutor(s)