Food Court and Trampoline Park – Sunderland

AEW Europe

Sunderland

Bowman Riley was commissioned by The Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland to create a new food court leading to a new leisure destination to enhance the customer experience and increase time spent within the centre.

This project is a joint venture with Sunderland City Council, who own a redundant ice skating rink and leisure centre linked to the shopping centre.

Our brief was to combine two ground floor retail units to form a new food court area for the Bridges and an entrance to the new leisure facility, operated by a trampoline park operator – Flip Out, on the first floor.

The development is planned to be delivered in two phases. Phase 1 includes developing the trampoline park, including ground floor entrance, and two food outlet units. Phase 2 completes the project, installing the remainder of the 7-10 food kiosks.

The development will provide communal food court seating zones dotted through the large circulation space that provides a natural flow around the restaurants encouraging people to interact and sample multiple food offerings.

The food court design combines bespoke cladding, hexagonal panelling, biophilia, lighting and acoustic panels. The internal spaces will be divided by feature perforated walls for each tenant. However, the interiors still allow the whole space to be viewed as one large entity with spaces and smells that flow together as one.

The design themes are standardised for The Bridges food court to enhance the brand of the shopping centre, however, food court tenants have the opportunity to add their own brand identity within cleverly designed zones.