The changing face of London’s Oxford Street - what’s the architectural future of this tawdry avenue?

The flagship M&S on Oxford Street

(Picture: Getty Images)

Oxford Street in the late pandemic is a buzz-kill of shuttered stores, builders’ hoardings and soggy face masks trodden into the damp January pavements. Some days it feels like you could fire a cannon down its 1.2 mile length without inflicting so much as a flesh wound. The retail woes are now set to gut its architecture too.

In all, some 20 city blocks are set to be rebuilt or remodelled, the once-effervescent destination store Topshop (formerly the Peter Robinson department store), to which teenagers flocked in their droves, and the House of Fraser among them. John Lewis’s flagship store is turning its upper floors into offices.