Manchester’s Changing Skyline

[jrb]

IAmOlimpia - Twitter



Victoria Riverside - 37/26/18/6 stories - Red Bank

 

[SJT]

Manchatten ;-)
nice thread

 

[jrb]

The warehouses on the Great Jackson Street Plot F site are being demolished.

Click on the link below to see the pictures. Posts #323 and #324.

Renaker - 2 x 52 storey residential towers.

Contour | Great Jackson Street | 154/154m | 52/52 fl | U/C

www.skyscrapercity.com

 

[Coatigan]

All over the world we are creating boring buildings, I don't think people in the future will get enjoyment from these rectangles of glass and steel. Just compare the new buildings with some of the old ones that are (hopefully) still around Manchester. To name a few that are worth a look, Manchester Town Hall, Corn exchange, Refuge building, Royal Exchange. Look at those old buildings, they were built with a sense of grandeur, not pile it high and sell it cheap that we are building today.

All old good, all new bad? As clean as that?

 

[Coatigan]

Wouldn’t it be great if we could go back to Victorian times and build beautiful, grand and ornate buildings once again. Buildings that were sadly destroyed by German bombers or demolished by property developers. Rich Victorians, which there were plenty of in Manchester, due to the cotton trade, were constantly demolishing wonderful looking buildings, only to replace them with equally wonderful looking buildings, which were more ornate and grander.

Sadly we live in different times. Thankfully Manchester has many wonderful Victorian buildings still standing, which stand side by side with many good looking modern buildings. Bar London there isn’t a city in the UK that has such a wonderful mixture of old and new buildings standing side by side, creating an interesting and vibrant city centre streetscape.

As for the new towers in Manchester. It’s all subjective of course. I think there are some good looking towers that have gone up. Sadly there are some poor looking towers as well. With so many towers going up in Manchester there was always going to be a mixture of good and poor looking towers. But that’s the same in any city in the world. There isn’t a city in the world that has nothing but good looking towers.

If someone were to build a Victorian buildong today, I wonder if many would really consider it beautiful. Or if they would moan about the waste of money and how long it is taking.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

All over the world we are creating boring buildings, I don't think people in the future will get enjoyment from these rectangles of glass and steel. Just compare the new buildings with some of the old ones that are (hopefully) still around Manchester. To name a few that are worth a look, Manchester Town Hall, Corn exchange, Refuge building, Royal Exchange. Look at those old buildings, they were built with a sense of grandeur, not pile it high and sell it cheap that we are building today.

The Tower of Light is a beautiful structure:



Unfortunately, it doesn’t stand out against the towers from certain vantage points:



…and is just lost amongst that lot.

Ideally, what I was talking about earlier in the thread, where all a skyline needs is one iconic tower above a skyline of boxes - the Tower of Light could have been that iconic structure had it been built at the height of day Emely Moor Transmitting Tower (the tallest building in Britain) above our box-y skyline.

It would have finished it off a treat and then we can build as many boxes as we want then because what they do is add to the mass that builds up to the iconic tower in the skyline.

Unfortunately, the Tower of Light is only 40m tall.


I also love One Angel Square:





…it’s the best modern building in the country. My mate works in there and said it’s incredible.

So there are some cracking buildings. And from some vantage points the skyline looks brilliant. But we’re still years away from getting the skyline we’d dream of.

Hopefully there’ll be more of the classier and interesting buildings built too.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Modern high-rise architecture is so non-descript and plain these days. Make a social statement, Architects, for fuck sake!!! The fucking slab is gonna be there for a century.

To be fair, also, if you have a proper look at some of the towers that have been built recently, some are more interesting up close than they seem from a distance.

The Great Jackson Street ones are in the shape of concave squares:




The Blade is going to be a stunner when completed as well.

 

[jrb]

If someone were to build a Victorian buildong today, I wonder if many would really consider it beautiful. Or if they would moan about the waste of money and how long it is taking.

Valid points.

The town hall being a prime example of cost. The cost of the refurb alone could be as high as £350mill by the time it's finished in 2024.

Saying that, if a property developer was prepared to rebuild Assize Court which was badly damaged in the German blitz of Manchester and later demolished, and....



the Victoria Buildings on Deansgste that were also destroyed in the German blitz., I'd be eternally grateful.









Sadly that's never going to happen.

 

[Ribble73]

All old good, all new bad? As clean as that?

Those old Buildings were built for the whole Community to take pride in an era where there was a distinct sense of Community in and the various Industrialists of the era bought into the Zeitgeist of the era and followed suit. They were no doubt competing with other Towns in this. A lot of Local Pride came about through this as no doubt we are all aware of through our Ancestors.

These new developments the competition is between developers on eye catching developments with no notion of appealing to any “Community” which has to live or work there. There is no notion of doing anything for the “Community” involved at all.

 

[Coatigan]

Those old Buildings were built for the whole Community to take pride in an era where there was a distinct sense of Community in and the various Industrialists of the era bought into the Zeitgeist of the era and followed suit. They were no doubt competing with other Towns in this. A lot of Local Pride came about through this as no doubt we are all aware of through our Ancestors.

These new developments the competition is between developers on eye catching developments with no notion of appealing to any “Community” which has to live or work there. There is no notion of doing anything for the “Community” involved at all.

All of them?