The University of Manchester Capitals Project

The University of Manchester as we know it today was formed in 2004 by the unification of the Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) making the institution the largest single site university in the United Kingdom, as well as the third largest university in terms of student numbers after Oxford and Cambridge. Subsequent to the merger of the Victoria University and UMIST the university commenced a £600 million programme of redevelopment and capital investment. Project Unity entailed the construction of eight new buildings including the £60 m University Place and £56 m Alan Turing Building, and fifteen major refurbishment projects, like the £18 m re-location of the School of Pharmacy and the £17 m refurbishment of the John Rylands Library on Deansgate,.

John McAslan and Partners were hired to design an area of the main campus on the site of the former Maths tower and the car park behind it. The work consisted of three main projects including a new building University Place (built on the former site of the Maths Tower) which would house a new faculty, offices and a hall of residence. The next project was new landscaping and public realms work which included new footpaths, cycle-paths, paving, planting and lighting. The last project was a Masterplan which affected the much larger area of Oxford Road linking the University of Manchester, Manchester Business School, Manchester Metropolitan University and the RNCM and so on into the city centre. The project entailed redesigning a large section of the university campus to link the new Humanities Building near the School of Architecture and Town Planning with the new Alan Turing Building facing Upper Brook Street. On the site of the former Maths Tower would be the new iconic flagship building; University Place, and the public areas in and around would be redesigned re-establishing a new centre of gravity of the university.

The whole public realms design is a success in my eyes, it is determinably simple and restrained, strict geometric shapes emphasising the typography of the site along with the use of high quality materials. This has created a very peaceful and inviting public space. The external feel of University Place and its circular zinc covered exterior has distinguished it from the other buildings which surround it, whether or not it compliments its surrounding and much older buildings is up to you to decide.

Scan Building(pictured above)

Alan Turing Building (pictured above)

When people used to talk about Manchester University I always pictured the ivy clad Neo-Gothic Whitworth building on Oxford Road, which is aptly the frontage that the university always uses for its glossy magazines and brochures, this is an a very grandios building with all the pomp and circumstance that you would expect from an institution which is nearly as old as Manchester itself. To be honest when you walk around the university's main campus you can't help but feel a sense of being underwhelmed by its architecture. The campus is plagued by the dilapidated buildings from the 60's Masterplan which have frankly left the university with a multitude of unusable ugly buildings which cost more to upkeep then to pull down. In recent years the universities half hearted approach at modern architecture has been quite hit or miss, the new buildings lack neither the heart or soul of their predecessors, don't get me wrong the Alan Turing building could be described as a very understated piece of modern architecture, it's simple, uniformed and even quite clever in its design. This is a stark comparison to the Scan building which can only be compared to a fat florescent eyesore of a building, its heavy almost clinical boringness used to blind me everytime I passed it on the way to my lectures. Looking at the universities eclectic splattering of glass clad boxes reminds me more of an out of town retail park then a world reknowned center of excellence, I think there are some good lessons that could be taken from 60's design in that possibly the university should be looking for a more cohesive approach to the overall design of its campus instead of a multitude of blank, boring, soulless glass and ghastly yellow bricked buildings we see right now. What does tend to amke this plan work on some level has to be the public realms work that has been completed creating useful spaces to socialise and spend time.