Festival Square

Festival square, the epicentre of the festival. Albert square has disappeared, replaced by a white eruption rising up to toy with the grand clock tower of the town hall. Bringing 2 event spaces and a vast beer garden fitted out with benches and deck chairs, akin to a quintessential british seaside. Food and drink are available, entertainment flows throughout the day, and in the evening music explodes as renowned DJs descend in to the tent.

The square is free for all to enter, and check the programme for the music in the evening for a great night.

Alphabet City

Tonight Manchester Modernist Society launched Alphabet City, a beautifully crafted booklet that takes you through Manchester's Modernist History, from A to Z.

With a return to the traditional draftsman, each drawing has been hand drawn to intricate detail. From the Barton Aerodrome Tower to the soon to be demolished Elizabeth House in St Peter's Square the collection of drawings displays the vibrant modernist heritage of our great city.

The booklet has been launched along side Manchester Modernist Society's Open house at their HQ in Salford this weekend and on Sunday a 2 hour tour around the A to Z of modern Manchester will start at 1pm from the Mark Addy. The publication has been produced in conjunction with Manchester Municipal Design Corporation and Forever Manchester, with links to Not Part of Festival.

The exhibition is open till the end of the weekend, at the MMS HQ in Salford, and the booklet will be available there, as well as a view of the drawings in the true form.

The Return

Today, the 30th of June 2011, sees the return of The Manchester International Festival (MIF). A biannual festival that transforms the vibrant city of Manchester in to a thriving cultural landscape, draped in music, drama, design, and art.

Having started in 2007, the festival looks to highlight the importance of the arts in the city, both in it's past and future. The city stands in awe as familiar spaces metamorphise into rich cultural epicentres for events held over the 18 days. Previous events have included the likes of a J. Bach concert hall by the starchitect that is Zaha Hadid (reported previously here - http://lookupmanchester.blogspot.com/2009/08/zaha-hadids-j-s-bach-chamber-music-hall.html) and in 2007 The Gorillaz staged their first production, Monkey: Journey To The West, all in a resulting in a fantastic collection of art in the city.

Bjork (images copyright to MIF)

This year sees the line up expand even future than previous years. Not only does Damon Albarn return with a new production, the opera Dr Dee, directed by Rufus Norris. The magical Icelandic singer Bjork returns to the UK for the first time in over 3 years with a collection of 6 shows held across the 3 weeks of the festival. Among the high profiled events sits the heart of everything on show, the Festival Square.

Dr Dee (images copyright to MIF)

Situated in Albert Square, sits Roger Stephenson Architect's (formerly Stephenson Bell Architects) Festival Pavilion, the centre of the festival. Open throughout each of the 18 days, it will be the pumping heart. From it one can enjoy daily entertainment, or simply enjoy the music from DJs whilst sitting with a nice cold drink. Everything you need to know about the festival will be found here. Constructed over the past few weeks the temporary structure looks to reflect the town hall's clock tower, subtly toying with it's height.

True Faith (images copyright to MIF)

MIF is a fantastic accumulation of our diverse culture here in Manchester, and Look Up Manchester is going to be right in the centre of it all. Reviews and discussions of the festival events will be posted throughout the duration and daily updates will keep you all up to date with what there is to see. The first event to be attended and discussed will be Damon Albarn's Dr Dee at the Palace Theatre on the 5th of July. Following that will be True Faith, a retrospective look at both established and emerging creatives based in Manchester. A mixture of live music and interviews will help to explore the importance that Manchester has as a city of culture.

Many other events will be covered right here in the blog throughout the festival, keep your eye on twitter (by following the MSSA @themssa and our writers @jackpb and @butcherluke) and enjoy the festival!

Endless Design

I was told something disheartening this week. Whilst attending the Job Centre for his fortnightly check in, a friend of mine was asked a question. Would you consider moving to London? On a number of levels this seems rather inappropriate, for starters how could one consider moving to the capital on a chance? Secondly it seems some what unsustainable for a Manchester based service to give up and send every unsuccessful jobseeker to another city, the result can only be a fully mobile population, spending their lives permanently moving city to city, perhaps this week one will be in decorating in Birmingham, and the next answering phones in Glasgow. A city of Manchester’s scale is self-sufficient enough, but it can’t sit back and begin to offload it’s inhabitants, it will only crumble and diminish.

My friend however is in the world of design. Economic times have reprimanded the need for quality, and money is no longer invested as greatly in to this field. 30 years ago London was the only place to go if one was to make it big. This isn’t necessarily true, more of an urban myth that perhaps still stands today. After several months without a job I began to think that London was the only place where I was to be successful. So much so I moved down with a suitcase and began an internship. I had several interviews during my time there, but nothing came from them. Ironically moving to London is what helped me to get a job in Manchester, discovering that a job in design can be anywhere, London is bigger, but so is the population, statistically you are just as likely to get a job there as you are in anywhere else.

It leads me to wonder what the future will behold for the design industry. Our lives’ have so easily adapted to the modern technology. Taking the past 10 years we have moved from mediocre black and white mobile phones to 3D tvs and phones more capable than high end pcs a decade earlier. The creative industries have merged with technology available, harnessing their capabilities to benefit production, creating a truly 21st century profession.

If we work so well with technology, and have become so in tuned, will we begin to evolve along it’s path? Cloud based storage is about to erupt in technology. The concept of storing all of your data currently sat in your device in the ether. You would be able to access it from anywhere in the world on any device. This immediately reduces device’s sizes and flexibility to take a wider range of forms. By removing the need for storage, and all future devices emulating what is stored somewhere else, we begin to live in a truly mobile world. Interaction can become so immediate and simple that physical presence is no longer required, a life where senses are replaced with technology.

As design and technology evolve together we begin to remove the need for the local. The question then of one’s location in reference to a design job will become negligible. The world will become one local entity. Work can be completed from your flat in Manchester, on a project in Honk Kong, without ever visiting or physically meeting your client. Offices are no longer needed as you begin to realise the trip into work is inefficient and unnecessary. Why spend money visiting consultants when you can all sit round a virtual table. As the synergy between technology and design accelerates the shape of the city will be transformed. The hierarchy will be lost, centers no longer required, uniformed blocks will sprawl out and the eventually physical interaction lost.

Get Over It! Gets Closer

There is now less than one week to go before the Get Over It! Symposium hosted by students from the MA Architecture and Urbanism course at the Manchester School of Architecture. The event is being held at Sandbar, Manchester, a well known watering hole for academics and architects in particular. Sand Bar is characterised by a series of small, intimate spaces where it is hoped informal discussions and debates will take place, supporting the main space that well be set up in a more traditional 'lecture' format. In keeping with the main theme of "Recession. Creative Opportunity?" the event will tackle a range of issues including architecture, technology and economics, with two main debates focusing on the present situation and the future. Lunch will be provided for all those who pre-register for the event with a theme of 'soup-kitchen' (to register please email kathryn.timmins@stu.mmu.ac.uk).

Students will be dressed in home made Get Over It! attire.

The event is being chaired by Owen Hatherley, journalist and author of 'A New Guide to the Ruins of Great Britain' (reviewed here). Other speakers attending the event are: Elizabeth Varley of TechHub London; Mark Lemanski of MUF Architects; Geoff Denton of White Arkitekter; Rose Marley of the Sharp Project; and Dr Mark Jayne of the University of Manchester. Professor Tom Jefferies, Head of the Manchester School of Architecture will also be talking about the new RIBA Hub that will be opening that evening to coincide with the MSA Design Awards 2011.

Student Jack O'Reilly shows off the T-Shirt stencil.

The event will start at 10am and will run until approximately 6pm. Keep an eye on the blog and twitter feed for more information and live updates on the day.

The Importance of Being Warehouse

Design is suffering, our capitalist society is sitting back, dormant and scared of the very standards it lives by. The mass media panic has forced us to retract spending money, defying the economy’s natural sustainability, and tipping the balance between form and function. Consumers have taken to the bare essentials, disregarding quality for the immediate cheap option, disillusioned by price rather than belief in investment.

It’s in the darkest moments that we realise the remarkable. Collaborations help to sustain professions that cannot always depend on themselves. The idea of sharing resources to help strengthen one’s work to produce something not achievable independently is incredibly evident in the creative cultures. The art of multi media has itself become a single entity, and it’s success proves the progressive nature of joint ventures.

Images Copyright of Jack Penford Baker

Manchester has always been a haven for music. Venues litter the city streets, people pour in and out of shows, flirting with the prospect of an eternal stream of live music. From the start of Joy Division, through to the Mercury Prize winning Elbow, Manchester has become a center for music in Britain. With the music came other cultures. A silent collaboration between all underground elements of design has helped to cement a thriving industry in the North of England. Perhaps the pinnacle is seen with the Hacienda. A prolific night club born out of music in the late 1980’s. It’s impact on music is astonishing, and it’s survival highlighted a remarkable prolonged life.

At the heart of the Hacienda was a brilliant relationship. Factory Records saw music and design bleed into each other. Tony Wilson, Martin Hannett and Alan Erasmus, all from a musical background, set Factory Records up with the help of Peter Saville. Saville’s background stemmed not from music, but graphic design. It was this relationship that saw a fantastic multi media collaboration grow. The artwork was elevated to a new level of importance, treated on par with the music. This infusing of medias began a new age of culture in Manchester.

Images Copyright of Jack Penford Baker

But times have changed. The introduction of the internet helped to snowball cross-media work. Everything began to be celebrated; music began to only be seen as a multimedia presentation. Music videos became an entirely new media, and their importance rose and rose, overtaking the music itself. In the modern generation of music culture the balance has been tipped, multimedia has metamorphisised itself and is now mistaken for music. There no longer is a relationship because it stands as a singular object. This isn’t to say music is no longer music, but rather like all things, it has evolved.

The balance between medias is a difficult thing to achieve. The days of the Hacienda saw a humane understanding between the different cultures, and it appears to be at this scale that multi media works best.

Images Copyright of Jack Penford Baker

The Warehouse Project is a modern example of cross media collaboration, where limits of expansion has helped it to stay at it’s peak. The current recession appears to have been benefit rather than a hindrance. Proving that quality is preferred by the consumer. It’s high cost location has helped to stall planned construction nearby, preventing the inevitable demise for the autumn long event.

Upon one entering the desolate car park housed in the caverns of Piccadilly train station a surprising revelation occurs. The existence of such a large scale event feels hyper real and out of place in such a heavy urban environment. Exiting train passengers are unbeknownst to the frivolous frolics happening meters below their feet. Passerbys catch glimpses of spellbound attenders floating in and out of the ambiguous entrance, but inside a new world of visuals and sound takes one into a euphoric state.

Images Copyright of Jack Penford Baker

Underneath the Victorian arches unnerved by the bellowing bass of music sits music and video, working together as a collaboration, as multimedia. The two work together to lure your senses into the abyss of light and sound. Like with Factory Records, the music takes the more prominent position, but the visuals add so much more to the experience, the two together make the Warehouse Project.

Images Copyright of Jack Penford Baker

The success of the WHP is down to many things, some is pure look, others critical acclaim, but what makes it stand out as a truly individual experience is it’s understanding of a truly great collaboration of multi media. It’s the collaboration that is essential for the survival and importance of the creative industries.

Get Over It! Symposium

On May 12th 2011 the students from the MA Architecture + Urbanism course at the Manchester School of Architecture will be hosting the second in a series of annual symposia. Building on last year's highly successful 'Hive Minds' event, this year the event, entitled 'Get Over It!', will tackle a range of pertinent issues currently afflicting the world of architecture and urbanism.

Recession. Creative Opportunity? A symposium organised by the
MA Architecture + Urbanism at the Manchester School of Architecture MAY 12 2011

"In a time of economic austerity, political uncertainty and social crisis, how can the city move forward? GET OVER IT! will bring together a range of speakers from diverse disciplines to investigate methods for extracting potential from the current recession. Architecture, technology, sociology, politics, economics, culture and education all have a role to play in the reconfiguration of the city. Instigated by the MA Architecture and Urbanism students at the Manchester School of Architecture, the aim of the symposium is to address new creative opportunities for redundant city spaces and the broader built environment."

Further details will be confirmed in the next few weeks. For the latest information keep an eye on the blog or twitter feed.

Guest Blogger: Eamonn Canniffe

Eamonnm Caniffe, a lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture, has politely offered to provide an article to feature on what hopefully will become a recurring section of guest bloggers.

A prolific writer and lecturer, he currently runs the Architecture Research Centre and the MA in Architecture + Urbanism at the Manchester School of Architecture. His work revolves around the urban environment, having published books that cover a wide spectrum of architectural theory, including the Politics of the Piazza: the History and Meaning of the Italian Square and Ethic: Design in the Contemporary City. He frequently publishes his own musings on his blog; Guttae and his lecture series at university are always full of fanatical discussions.

A surfeit of surface and an excess of space: New Islington and Spinningfields, Manchester

A paper delivered at SPACE IS LUXURY the 24th AESOP (Association of European Schools of Planning) Conference Helsinki 7-10 July 2010

Periodically Manchester has been the subject of planning studies that have sought to provide an improved urban environment. These have reflected changes in architectural fashion, and historically have comprised proposals for the central civic areas, slum clearance leading to comprehensive redevelopment, and most recently re-urbanisation. Because of their size and the only partial and haphazard completion of these public strategies, as well as the fluctuating fortunes of commercial development, a fragmentary urban environment has been the result.

The current accommodation between public and private interests presented a series of development opportunities, although the projects that have been implemented suggest a certain level of enduring banality. The image of the industrial city that survived and has been promoted is now complemented by the elaborately patterned facades which conceal the shells of unoccupied spaces. This sharp division between utility and decoration continues to haunt architectural and urban debates, and Manchester’s present state is entirely typical of many British cities, despite the oft-repeated claims to primacy or uniqueness.

On July 5 2009 central Manchester was the site of a performance piece by the artist Jeremy Deller entitled Procession which featured a series of surprising tableaux. While the commissioning of an art event might not have the authentic resonance of a traditional urban ritual (such as the Roman Triumph, or Holy Week in Seville), this populist production for the Manchester International Festival had much to gladden the jaded urbanist’s heart. It had a Roman road, Deansgate, to process along between the castrum origins and the later medieval core. It had an eager and appreciative crowd gathered either side of the route. And it had a series of familiar and unfamiliar sections evoking some mythic scenarios. The Rose Queens of Manchester’s largely defunct Whit Walks traditions were joined by a robust outing from The Ramblers. The all-singing, all-dancing, mock-baroque of ‘The Adoration of the Chip’ contrasted with a fleet of hearses commemorating closed but legendary nightclubs, from The Hacienda to Rotters. The Big Issue Sellers and Unrepentant Smokers (followed by a sobering health warning) provided the smudge of ‘gritty northern realism’ but the procession concluded with the crowd gleefully following down Deansgate. The pied pipers were, alas, not the Shree Swaminarayan Gadi Pipe Band from Bolton, but the equally delightful Caribbean band Steel Harmony, sweetly syncopating the works of The Buzzcocks and Joy Division.

Perhaps the performance of Procession did not have the transcendent qualities of a great urban narrative reenactment, but it said more about the notions of civic pride and place than the banal receptacles of spectacular consumption which form Manchester’s recent cosmetically enhanced cityscape. Early in the sequence a truck mocked up as a textile mill complete with a smoking chimney brought the built environment of the city into the spectators’ consciousness, the ur-form of industrial space drawn as a belching icon through an apparently very different context. In particular two recent developments, New Islington and Spinningfields, highlight the superficiality of the strategies that typify recent planning decisions aimed at transforming the image of the city.

Outside the city centre, in the rather desolate doughnut of inner city margins, more public investment is evident through the attention focused on problematic inner city estates created in the wave of post Second World War slum clearance. As the latest demonstration of this policy, the redevelopment of the Cardroom Estate in East Manchester is intended to remedy the scars of industrial squalour and post-industrial decline. Urban Splash were commissioned as lead developer to deliver a re-invigorated community, with a mixture of social and private housing, between the booming city centre and the Eastlands development initiated on the back of the 2002 Commonwealth Games. The masterplan produced by Will Alsop in that year for the rebranded ‘New Islington’

promised a bright future of ‘urban barns’, an extended waterside landscape with a new canal arm, and the trappings of twenty first century city living. The exploitation of a vivid colour palette suggested a slightly forced optimism in the face of the serious problems of the area and the general greyness of the climate. Whatever the more theatrical aspects of the Alsop masterplan the strategy of ‘fingers’ (of accommodation, of landscape and of water) was adaptable to the compartmentalisation of the plan into different packages, with different scales and housing types, and to be produced by different hands.

New Islington presents a situation where there is the attempt to accommodate both divergent ends of Manchester’s social divided spectrum. The masterplan for the area required the accommodation of the existing depleted population, and the attraction of a new aspirational class who would be prepared to endorse Alsop’s aesthetic with their cash. The area will take some years, possibly decades, to mature, but the first new developments of social housing, Islington Square by FAT Architects and Guest Street by dMFK, are occupied and Alsop’s CHIPS development of apartments is beginning to fill in the pattern of fingers of occupation specified in the masterplan. A further architectural competition, dubbed ‘Tutti frutti’, confidently invited participants to invest £200,000 for an empty plot on which to build a terraced house. Only time will tell whether this optimistic not to say economically precarious vision of the harmonious urban future will root in the previously neglected urban environment of the Cardroom Estate.

Will Alsop’s 2002 masterplan exemplified the mediation of this strategy through the use of seductive communicative means, a narrative which suggested that a difficult reality had been overturned by an urban fiction. After substantial infrastructural works and relatively modest domestic projects by other architects were completed, this landscape of continuing urban desolation has been epitomised by the finalising of the long-awaited CHIPS apartment building, it its own way as baroque as the theatrical vision of the chip which featured in Deller’s Procession. Nothing could be further from the anodyne image of conventional urban renewal in Britain. Uncannily similar to the computer simulation produced as part of the marketing campaign, Alsop’s brightly-coloured reveals, the building’s super-graphics and the waterside location will perhaps distract the architectural tourist from the brittle quality of the building’s construction. While CHIPS exemplifies a certain degree of disengagement from its context, this distance is only a symptom of the frenetic switching between development and disillusion which has provided the backdrop to British urban regeneration.

This see-saw now moves at such a pace that forms are exhausted virtually the moment they are disseminated, diminishing the aura of the architectural and urban object, while fuelling the appetite for further novelty. However, what is most startling in the fulfillment of the masterplan is the meanness of the spaces provided for occupation in contrast to the generous provision of public open space, in sharp contrast to the overdevelopment evident in other parts of the city. The lack of construction caused by the economic downturn therefore means that a series of isolated developments will enjoy an amplitude of open space in varying degrees of completion and abandonment for some time to come. The bus stops are in place to ferry future residents, but eight years after inception one would still have to be a very optimistic pioneer to invest your hard-won mortgage in this key example of contemporary urban anomie.

Whether ambitious projects such as New Islington indicate foolhardiness or naivety, they suggest that an incremental and open-ended policy for regeneration would be less wasteful of resources and aspirations, and would produce an environment where the quality of the public realm could be utilized rather than merely decorated. The economic benefits of such a strategy might take a long time to accrue, but the indications are that such a course might result in a city that is less self-consciously alienated from its inhabitants. As has already been indicated the compromised nature of Manchester’s contemporary urban form is a product of fluctuating regeneration policies of the last quarter century. Beginning modestly with projects for conversion and reoccupation in abandoned industrial areas in response to the economic collapse of the early Thatcher years, an urban aesthetic was developed, a post-industrial interpretation of the postmodern which was specific to the city. Following the damage caused by an I.R.A. bomb in June 1996, Manchester’s regeneration accelerated to place it as a frequently cited exemplar of British urban policy, and its identification with traditional urban forms was in turn abandoned. The result has been that, in the city centre, a policy that with varied degrees of success had sought to preserve the character of the 19th century city was turned overnight, as a

result of the bomb, into a policy of "boom". Aesthetic concern for the city, in the attempt to defend the integrity of historic buildings, was deemed unrealistic and reactionary. A premium was placed on the novelty of the intervention, in illogical contrast to the sensitive preservation of industrial structures and environments that had been followed previously. Projects developed since that post-bomb period have eviscerated the urban structure of the 19th century city and replaced it with high-rise buildings in an ill-defined groundscape. However it is possible to discern that this fragmented cityscape has its origins in planning policies that have been pursued with varying degrees of vigour since the end of the Second World War.

The general situation of decline was a disease for which the 1996 IRA bomb damage was decisive in accelerating radical surgery. Whereas the planned response to decay had been to simulate traditional forms of urban growth in a condensed time scale, even more dramatic possibilities could now be considered. Allied to the commercial threat of out of town retail development, the bomb provided the opportunity for the city to reconsider itself in global terms. As a result Manchester city centre was rapidly redeveloped, and as the new skeletal concrete forms grew from the rubble there was a brief moment to remember the city's aspirations and analyse where current developments were leading. In its 1997 design guide Manchester City Council promoted a particular vision of its stewardship of the urban environment. In particular, this document focused on sustainability expressed through a diet of familiar physical criteria that were deemed to have somehow lapsed from designers' collective consciousness. A strategy was proposed which simultaneously adopted traditional patterns of urban design and projected an innovative vision of Manchester's place in the world. Of course, Manchester has long had an international reputation for commercial

pragmatism regardless of the social and urban consequences. 19th century visitors from continental Europe were shocked. De Tocqueville and Engels remarked on the disastrous social fallout of the early industrial urban experience. Despite this hellish vision, the radical industrialised space of the Manchester mill was exported to Berlin by the Prussian court architect Schinkel and transformed into the beginnings of a new urban vernacular of brick, cast iron and terracotta. More than a century and a half later these processes are reversed and Manchester has to import the latest industrialised building methods in an effort to survive as the commercial centre in the region let alone improve its position in the global economy.

The juxtaposition of these regeneration projects was promoted as part of national urban policy after the 1998 Rogers report Towards an Urban Renaissance with the remaining industrial context, the later 19th century architecture and organic urban cityscape only adding to the pathos of the simulated central business district which has most recently been created in time for the latest financial crisis.

This strategy is most evident in the Spinningfields development, sited in the area of the city that had been most directly affected by the 1945 Plan. Crown Square, a civic area of court and municipal buildings has been rebranded as a financial and retail centre by the developer Allied London. The morphological tradition of disconnected object-like structures has been revived, erasing the intervening six undistinguished decades. Key to the recent developments is the model provided by Albert Bridge House completed in 1958-59, a work of austere modernism which has always provided difficult environmental microclimate conditions for office workers and passers-by. The winds generated might now be funnelled between it and its new neighbour in the Civil Justice Centre (Denton Corker Marshall 2007), which acts as a backdrop to another product of the post-war era the peculiarly retardataire Crown Court (1962) by the city architect Leonard C. Howitt.

The architectural history of Manchester is spattered with previous attempts to create business districts which have survived to be regarded subsequently as high points in its urban heritage. The indigenous typological invention of the ‘palazzo’ warehouse formed the sober scenography to the streetscape of, for example, Princess Street in the mid nineteenth century. Scale and decoration both became more inflated by the time Whitworth Street’s canyon between terracotta facades was formed at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. King Street, the banking district of the city until the early 1990s has a family of many generations of structures from C.R.Cockerell’s Bank of England through to Casson and Conder’s National Westminster Bank. They asserted their integrity (largely) through the articulation of their stone surfaces, rusticated in traditional forms, ribbed and tooled in the modern, occupying their plots from the vantage point provided by high ground floors. The break in this pattern was provided by Lord Esher in Pall Mall Court with its smoked glass lined public space to the rear, which represented the latest developments in business architecture and indicated the way to the present situation.

The treatment of the small number of significant examples of architectural heritage reveals the evaporation of civic values in the Spinningfields development. For example, Lloyd Evans Pritchard’s refurbishment of the original John Rylands Library building has revived the fabric, but the new planning arrangements introduced with the latest ill-advised extension (Austin Smith: Lord 2007) suck the life out of Basil Champneys’s building. While many may mistake the building’s Deansgate frontage for a church, they all recognise that it is a building of significance and quality. The new entrance in the side extension suggests nothing more than yet another banal retail space, or perhaps a failing department store. The new buildings of the area are without any sense of place, and are glumly staid, a small scale vision of the technocratic urban centre fundamentally delineated by Le Corbusier eighty years ago. They stand around the development awkwardly misaligned with each other and unconvincingly heterogenous in their exterior forms, different wrappings around the same sort of functional space. But at least they have a genuine function, unlike the public realm of the area, where the same futile decorative mentality attempts to modify the obvious meaninglessness of the space.

In confirmation of this gestural drift, the largest new civic structure of the development, the Civil Justice Centre presents a series of confusing images. The banality of the building’s organisational diagram, a frontside and a backside, a spine of circulation, presented a degree of self effacing refinement which the architects attempt to overturn by squeezing the floors out as cantilevers. As they slip into the huge structure through an embarrassment of a public entrance what are those involved in the legal process to make of this gymnastic display of potential collapse? The appearance of disintegration is effected to provide the judges with a dining room with a spectacular view, but also a largely enclosed major court room. Such reassuringly utilitarian messages are commonplace in Manchester architecture, so the lack of sentimentality could be thought of as a demonstration of the genius loci of the city, or an appropriation of vacant disregard for reality. Essentially the building represents nothing more than a monument to the bureaucracy of family breakdown, which despite its very expensive efforts is relatively hard to distinguish from the banks and accountancy firms that litter Spinningfields.

The marketing strategy of the city centre residential boom has been transferred to the commercial office sector with the attempt to produce a ‘community’ out of office workers. Not surprisingly economies of scale play their sometimes unacknowledged part. Throughout the Spinningfields development the public spaces are particularly redundant, lacking the sort of fluid changes of occupation one would witness in an authentic place. The new spaces are there to provide hierarchy to otherwise largely indistinguishable buildings, to ‘add value’ in the cost per square metre of an address on a ‘square’, over one on a ‘boulevard’, over one on an ‘avenue’. Urban space in these situations is part of the commodification of urban property rather than the provision a genuinely public realm.

Looking ahead, the new spaces created as part of the Spinningfields development are so stupendously formless they can only indicate their eventual occupation by yet more office building. Large patches of lawn suggest future development plots that might give more definition to these late manifestations of s.l.o.a.p. (space left over after planning). Lines of skater-proof benches provide rhythm of potential occupation, although hard up against the glass elevation of the Civil Justice Centre, they offer little prospect of comfort, let alone a view. In Hardman Square the enigmatic forms of polished black stone attempt to provide interest to the yawning space which opens out towards the monuments of early twentieth century Manchester, the rear and stage door of Sir Albert Richardson’s Opera House (1912) and the roofscape of Joseph Sunlight’s Sunlight House (1932). This public space complements the essentially private functions of the work place, while the cultural and civic monuments, the Rylands Library, the Crown Court and (perhaps thankfully) the new Magistrates’ Court struggle for a public presence against their newer, attention seeking, commercial neighbours, with their V-sign columns, confusingly suppressed entrances, ineffective signage, and the visual detritus of internal occupation.

The package of aspirations that the occupant is offered by Spinningfields represents a particularly impoverished form of urbanism. Attention lights on the palette of accumulated brands precisely because the physical environment (buildings and spaces) in which they are contained is so banal and devoid of consolation. While the scholastic gloom of Basil Champneys’s John Rylands Library (1899) perhaps offers no direct model for contemporary emulation, the quality of its construction and longevity of its use and occupation present a sharp riposte to the disposable buildings and spaces of today. This lamentable situation is exemplified by the latest miserable product of retail / office space, 2 Spinningfields Square, which has appeared adjacent to the “last significant flowering of Gothic in the city”. Individuality is reduced to the illumination of corporate logos and the complexity provided by a gratuitous and hard to occupy plan form, produced by its prismatic form as a reductio ad absurdam. Nothing more underlines the inappropriateness of this particular commercial bauble to the present economic circumstances than the promotional CGI film where two
improbably refined financial services employees divert themselves with a few minutes of retail therapy before the inevitable arrival of their redundancy notices.

The perhaps equally inevitable arrival of economic stagnation brings a sense of closure to these recent developments. Praised as innovations they have introduced often dramatic change into the Mancunian cityscape, but the incompleteness of their resolution, and the fragmentary discontinuity their thwarted plans produce is firmly rooted in an urban tradition identified by Roland Nicholas well over sixty years ago, where

‘the spirit of materialism and indifference to beauty … has been mainly responsible for the undistinguished appearance of the present city centre.’

References:

Eamonn Canniffe and Tom Jefferies, (1999). Manchester Architecture Guide, Manchester Metropolitan University Faculty of Art and Design.

Eamonn Canniffe, (2006). Urban Ethic: Design in the Contemporary City, London and New York, Routledge.

Eamonn Canniffe, (2000). Tabula Rasa as Tradition: Rebuilding Manchester Again, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Volume 131, 26-33.

Eamonn Canniffe and Sally Stone, (2007). Building Study: de Metz Forbes Knight’s Guest Street Scheme in New Islington, Manchester, The Architects’ Journal, No 18 Vol 225, 25-37.

Eamonn Canniffe, (2007). Exploring the fragments of a discontinuous city: Post-Regeneration Manchester ‘Planning for the risk society’ Association of European Schools of Planning XXI Naples July 2007.

Eamonn Canniffe, (2008). Tradition and Change in Post-Regeneration Manchester, Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, Volume 203.

Northern Quarter: Britain's Best Neighbourhood?

Afflecks Palace. Image from the Manchester Evening News.

The Academy of Urbanism, a think-tank that aims to "extend urban discourse beyond built environment professionals", has awarded Manchester's Northern Quarter the Great Neighbourhood Award in the 2011 Urbanism Awards. At a ceremony in London the Academy, whose members include architects, planners, engineers, developers and designers, announced the Northern Quarter as the winner from an initial short-list that included Belfast's Cathedral Quarter and Glasgow's Pollokshields. The 450 Academicians who make up the organisation were asked to pick a winner from each category based on the results on an assessment visit to each location last summer. Key to the nomination and assessment method was how improved and enduring that urban environment is.

Speaking about the Awards John Thompson, Chairman of The Academy of Urbanism, said: "The Academy of Urbanism created these awards precisely to recognise places ... which have helped transform local quality of life through good design and planning ... the high standard and broad spread of nominees ... inspires confidence in the widespread community-led regeneration that continues to take place across the UK and Ireland." (The Press Release available here). Speaking to BBC Radio Manchester, Mr Thompson added that the Northern Quarter is "one of the most interesting places in the country."

The award has sparked a debate in the city and the country as a whole as to what exactly constitutes a great neighbourhood. Some critics have cited that the Academy, by its very nature of dealing with Urbanism' excludes certain communities however the response from Mr Thompson to this has been to define Urbanism as the "footprint we collectively leave on the planet." Comments on the Manchester Evening News article responding to the award were mixed but on the whole reaction from Mancunians has been positive

Manchester City Council's Pat Karney, speaking to the BBC, said he was "pleased as there's a real community feel to the place [and] the warmth of the people  that live and work [there] and the cluster of small business has created a very desirable neighbourhood."

Vaughn allen, chief executive of Cityco, Manchester's city centre, also speaking to the BBC was keen to point out how the Northern Quarter "has transformed itself and diversified, creating an eclectic mix of fashion designers, independent shops, bars, cafes and restaurants, creative agencies and private galleries."

However, Dave Haslam, author and DJ (he DJ'd over 450 times at the legendary Hacienda club) was quick to disagree as to him "a neighbourhood' should be a fertile, intriguing, comfortable mix." He went on to add that "it's increasingly become a spill-over from the Printworks in the evening and some of that arty bohemian thing was part of what made the area special is draining away ... the fact is you never see children in the Northern Quarter - or old people. I imagine a perfect neighbourhood to have a school of a nursery, a park, somewhere for old people to sit and watch the world go by, and so on."

What is clear here is that the term neighbourhood is a loaded one, with different meanings to different people depending upon their own personal experiences of the urban space that makes up their own past, present and visionary (future) neighbourhoods. Something which can not be denied has been the ability of the Northern Quarter to regenerate, re brand and reinvent itself without little private capital investment which has come to symbolise city-centre regeneration projects of the last 20 years.

Cornerhouse and Library Theatre to Share New Home

Cornerhouse Entrance (from Cornerhouse Website)

Two of Manchester's leading institutions for the visual arts have announced plans this week to share a purpose built facility in the City Centre. Cornerhouse is a centre for contemporary visual arts and film in Manchester, located on a prominent and busy site at the intersection of Oxford Street and Whitworth Street, with Oxford Road Station nestled in behind. The Manchester Library Theatre Company has, over the past 58 years, produced high quality seasons of drama, musical theatre and plays with a growing education programme in the basement of Manchester Central Library.


A new "major cultural facility" will become the home for both Cornerhouse and Library Theatre Company. The City Council hopes that the new £19 million purpose-built facility - boasting five cinemas, 600 sq m of contemporary gallery space, a 500-seat theatre and smaller studio/education spaces - will help "unlock" up to 10,000 jobs in a key regeneration area in Manchester city centre - The First Street development.


Dave Moutrey, the Cornerhouse Chief Exectuive, had this to say on his blog: "Clearly the arts do have real hard economic value and can make a very positive impact on people's lives so it is a credit to Manchester that public and private sectors recognise this and are still prepared to act." Whilst Sir Richard Leese, Leader of Manchester City Council, said: "These highly imaginative proposals will be a win-win for Manchester. They support existing jobs and will help attract others to this important gateway site. In the aftermath of the recession and facing unprecedented public sector cuts this is exactly the sort of scheme we need to get people into work, get our economy moving even faster, and show the world that Manchester is still an ambitious city still on the up."


Cornerhouse has drawn up a number of plans for expansion in recent years, most recently there was Arca's black rubber-clad box (2008) and David Chipperfield's reworking of the former Kinemacolour Palace cinema (1998). However, it appears that the constraints of the site and the current building have meant that a move to a new purpose-built facility, with the increased potential to expand its creative programme, is too attractive to turn down.Nothing has yet been announced about the redevelopment of the Cornerhouse's current home but occupying such a key site in the City Centre careful consideration should be given to programme this takes.


The Library Theatre, as part of the ongoing refurbishment work to Manchester Central Library (by Ryder Architecture), was investigating the potential of moving to the Theatre Royal in Peter Street (being worked on by Stephenson Bell) however these has been scrapped on cost grounds.

'Functional model and outline design concept'
by RHWL for developer of the site, Ask (from Architects Journal)

The new site, close to the former Hacienda club on Whitworth Street, could be open by 2014. An international design competition will be launched for the project which already has £16 million of financing ring fenced (as part of the Library Theatre relocation deal) and a further £3 million expected to come from third party contributions and future capital receipts.


Read the full 'Report for Resolution - First Street Cultural Facility' by Manchester City Council here.