PLANS to breathe new life into Liverpool’s biggest dockland warehouses seek to create a vertical village inspired by one of legendary architect Le Corbusier’s most famous buildings.

Councillors yesterday approved plans to regenerate the Tobacco Warehouse, at Stanley Dock, which has been derelict for 50 years.

It will mean the Heritage Market now has to find a new home, and talks are ongoing to locate a new location for it.

Architect Tim Darmody, acting for Irish-based Harcourt Developments, said: “With this building comes a great responsibility on our shoulders, and on the city council, to make sure that we are good guardians of this for decades ahead.”

He said the idea behind the building is to create a sustainable community, with shops on the ground floors and duplex live/work apartments above.

The concept has been inspired by Le Corbusier’s 1950s Unité d'habitation in the French city of Marseille.

The “vertical village” is famous for incorporating large double-floor apartments, a shopping street halfway up, and children’s nursery on the roof, surrounded by park land. The plans for the warehouse have seen the number of apartments reduced from 634 to 335 and converted into so-called “live/work” units.

They will also be larger, with an average size of 1,300 sq ft, and will each have a double-height space with a mezzanine floor, due to the small space between floors in the warehouse.

Mr Darmody added:“It will be a sustainable community where people will be living and working.”

Car parking spaces have been reduced by 200 – to 576.