Category Archives: Manchester

Manchester Cathedral dah-dah-dah-daah…

Manchester Cathedral dah-dah-dah-daah You’re bringing me down dah-dah-dah-daah (with apologies to The New Vaudeville Band) Manchester and Salford’s contentious relationship across the River Irwell has always assured a clear, if far from beautiful, distinction between the two cities. The long … Continue reading

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Jeremy Deller’s Procession

Jeremy Deller’s Procession, Manchester, 5 July 2009 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 … Continue reading

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Cashing in the CHIPS

The landscape of urban desolation which New Islington still remains as we plumb the depths of the recession has been recently complemented by the unveiling of Will Alsop’s long awaited CHIPS apartment building. Uncannily similar to the computer simulation produced … Continue reading

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It’s naff up north?

The provincial insecurities which plague issues of urban design in Manchester surface again with these two proposals for familiar landmarks. The austere sublimity which might be thought to characterise the best of Manchester’s civic and industrial architecture had no need … Continue reading

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Order Revealed

Order revealed during demolition at 2-4 Oxford Road. Compare with Leon Krier’s satirical reinforced concrete order from ‘Houses, Palaces, Cities’*. *Porphyrios, Demetri, ed. Leon Krier: Houses, Palaces, Cities. London, 1984 **The building in the background is the former Refuge Assurance … Continue reading

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So farewell then, 2-4 …

CiA are saddened to witness the demolition of 2-4 Oxford Road in Manchester. It provided an atmospheric and convivial, though cramped, studio space in the early hopeful years. We need more spaces like that in the city not less. Editor’s … Continue reading

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By John Rylands Library I sat down and wept…

While the scholastic gloom of Basil Champneys’s John Rylands Library (1899) on Deansgate in Manchester 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 … Continue reading

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Small earthquake?

A rather bland interview with David Dernie, outgoing Head of the Manchester School of Architecture, has appeared on the AJ site: LINK

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Old Manchester

In the period before Manchester’s recent building boom Leach Rhodes and Walker was the finishing school for a number of Manchester School of Architecture tutorial staff (not me!) and was the source of countless amusing anecdotes about commercial architectural practice. … Continue reading

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Old Manchester Town Hall 1834-1912

Architecture in the raw Photographed just before its destruction in 1912 Manchester’s pre-Waterhouse Town Hall was the subject of study by students at the Manchester School of Architecture published in 1915. Few buildings of this quality have ever been demolished … Continue reading

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Waterhouse and Harris – safe in their hands?

Further to a post earlier this year the potential fate of Manchester Town Hall (Alfred Waterhouse), its Extension and Central Library (E. Vincent Harris) becomes clearer. The Manchester Evening News story about the future of the most significant urban and … Continue reading

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Architecture elsewhere

Land towers Shelter Large paintings by James Bowyer, BA Fine Art show. First floor Grosvenor Building (the old Art School).

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