ArchitectMIPIM is the annual property show in Cannes where people come from all around the world to exhibit and promote their countries and cities. Manchester has always had a fantastic promotional presence there – in fact they probably excel more than any other city! Once a year they take over a bar in the heart of MIPIM and re-name it “The Manchester Bar”. That’s where a lot of financiers, architects, designers and visionary developers – like David Campbell and Tom Bloxham – will meet to discuss projects.
While at MIPIM David would invite me to dinner parties at Tom’s house near Cannes. Tom Bloxham is, of course, very well known as the regeneration visionary behind “Urban Splash” and he has this amazing house with these kind of ‘eye’ windows overlooking the Mediterranean. It was interesting to meet Tom at his house then to find out, by chance, that he also owned a public house in Manchester. It hadn’t operated for years and was in Hulme, a historically notorious part of the city. There had even been a shooting on the premises many years ago, before it was shut down.
Manchester has always been close to my heart because I used to run Ian Simpson’s office there. Before Ian started work on his landmark Hilton Hotel building, we worked together in Knott Mill at the foot of Deansgate – a part of the city which Urban Splash have been instrumental in regenerating. So, when Alumno began discussing the redevelopment of the pub site with Tom, his knowledge and insight were extremely useful to the process. It was equally important for all of us to begin a re-gentrification that could both enhance the area and lead to continual improvement.
Hulme has had a lot of social problems over the years and, when we visited the site for the first time, it was blighted and had become a haunt for drug users and various forms of social unrest. Swathes of the post war housing and terraced housing of the 1960s had been demolished and this pub, The Church Inn, stood alone as a stark reminder of the past.
The building itself had become pretty run down and, in deciding how to re-purpose it, we had many meetings with the local community, with council-
Manchester Church Inn
ors, and with Manchester Metropolitan University to help establish the best mix of units and something that would be suitable for the area.
Nowadays the area is mostly residential and, with that, has become progressively safer. With the university nearby, there were already quite a number of students living there – some, in fairly dilapidated 80s & 90s built accommodation and others in a more recent development at the western sector of Cambridge Street. But Manchester has a massive shortage of student housing and some of the kids are actually living in Liverpool and Huddersfield and commuting every day.
To have student housing right next to universities is ideal for a lot of good reasons. If you’re cutting down the amount of travel people have to do then that’s good for the environment, as well as from a cost perspective. Like many of the projects we do with Alumno, introducing more people to an area actually generates income for existing businesses, like small shops, which often may be struggling to survive. Areas are given a new lease of life by taking students out of privately run houses, which in turn releases them back to the local community for families to live in.
With this project we have tried to embody a lot of the aspirations of Manches- ter. We wanted to create a building that would celebrate the achievements of the city’s young people throughout the world, but that could also be a legacy to the past, to the local area as well as Manchester’s wider heritage – not least its international renown as a music and football city. David Campbell was very much pushing for this cultural link, so it was a case of working together to create a brief then to let the building breathe the inspiration from it.
For many people – myself and David included – Manchester is all about foot- ball, so at the bottom of the building, along Cambridge Way, we created big football goal posts. We wanted to convey a sense of fun – which was our starting point for the whole project – but with a seriousness behind it as well.
The building itself is divided up into four parts from top to bottom. As you view it from outside there’s a hierarchy of windows within an overlying skeletal structure, and this helps to signpost aspects within. At the side of the building are the common rooms, which can be noisy, so we decided
to play with this idea and created, in effect, a kind of visual graphic equalizer – a big speaker which is a homage to legendary German hi-fi designer Dieter Rams.
In the middle there are accessible (BDA compliant) studios which are spacious, with large windows, then above and below these are mostly smaller
studios, all with their own kitchens. Each cluster of 8 or so studios share a common space, then there’s a feature stair, made of steel with perforated circular panelling, which runs right through the building and is complemented with pleasing yellow and black balustrading. For outdoor access there’s a shared courtyard in the centre and a landscaped area to the rear. With all the units being studios, the occupants tend to be more mature post graduates, so it’s actually quite a quiet building because those type of students value their personal space, their own room, their own kitchen.
The building is multi-layered with the frame being constructed mainly from pre-cast concrete supported by aluminium on steel posts. As you move back you have dark brick walls, so there’s a recess, behind which you have the
windows of the building itself. These three layers form a relief that creates a lot of interest and shadows, particularly at the top of the building where the lettering “Church Inn” is embedded in a crown.
In Manchester the names of warehouses and depositories will often feature prominently on the buildings themselves, advertising very effectively to the city centre. So this lettering was both a nod to this tradition and a tribute to
the old pub itself. As a bonus it comes with a raised parapet which serves to hide all the lift over-runs and unsightly mechanical aspects. The way different lights play on the building give it such a landmark quality – a beautiful landmark that literally shouts its name!
To further honour the old pub we also came up with the idea of actually re-orientating part of the wall of the original building, so the gold gilt on red brick-work of the former Church Inn features side-on as part of the new entrance. It’s a reminder not only of the past, but injects vibrant colours which mix well with Ben Kelly’s interior which is quite, shall we say, nostalgic but also futuristic.
David’s interest in music and the arts, and his love of the bands and culture of Factory Records, had sparked a friendship with Ben Kelly who has been involved with a number of Alumno schemes for years now. This was a sort of homecoming – the first time that Alumno had the chance to work with Ben in Manchester, where he famously made his name as the interior designer for the Hacienda.
With the ground floor, Ben’s approach was not only to create something that was quite dynamic but very much a homage to the Hacienda itself. So it’s not just a series of walls but a physical landscape – the actual floor is articulated, there’s a ramp, a seating area, a place to have a coffee, then there’s a wash bar where people can do laundry but which is also part of the social space. From the outside the goalposts frame this interior which can be appreciated
by passers by as well as the students. The windows become an advert to the workings inside putting it firmly in the public realm.
We wanted the building to feel welcoming for visitors and be a safe place for students to return home to at night, so a lot of thought was put into the way it was lit up after dark – this allowed the interior to really sing and become a visual attraction on the street. It’s similar to what we’ve achieved in Norwich, at Pablo Fanque House, which won awards due to having a large glass area that interacted with the street, with artwork and history inside. Residents of Norwich could feel that building was in the public realm and it became a
loved building in the city.
Manchester is an industrial city and David wanted to retain this kind of feel to the building, so with the upper common rooms we have chosen to leave the service area exposed. As well as being architecturally interesting this also helps to raise the ceilings, removing the need for plasterboard. So it’s actually about making the most of the height within the space – it creates another dynamism, an allure of sculptural objects above.
Then of course the walls of the common room have original photographs and posters from the Hacienda and the wider Manchester music scene. Where- as Liverpool had this enormous 1960s legacy, Manchester was very much the music city of the 1980s and 1990s with many bands, from the Smiths to [choice of other examples] living in this very area. They elevated the cultural significance of Manchester globally.
Throughout the building the furniture has been designed by David Tatum, working in partnership with Ben Kelly. Ben and the two David’s got together to
conceive of how this furniture could make the best use of the space without impeding or cluttering it – for example by making the tables and chairs deliberately low in height. A similar minimalist approach was used in the Isokon building in London, which had Agatha Christie among its famous residents. Maybe one day these pieces will be as recognised and revered as theirs now are!
The attention to detail extends to ‘way finding’ graphics throughout the building and even the numbering on the room doors. For this, Ben Kelly worked closely with Andy Stevens and his team, best known for their work in Sheffield. Ben was inspired by thinking about a church he used to attend in Yorkshire and, specifically, a memory of the way hymn numbers were displayed at the front, showing people what songs to sing. He worked with Andy to use this exact typography, refurbishing the letters in meticulous detail, even down to re-gilding the gold lettering – it’s just that extra nice touch that really makes it! When you open the doors into the rooms themselves, the placement of windows was very important to us. The idea was that you would look straight towards the window, to experience the inside while looking outside. Going back to the football analogy, one side of the building looks towards where Manchester City’s ground is and on the other side – the Western side – you
look towards Manchester United’s ground. Everything feels cohesive and just radiates in a way that goes beyond the building itself!
Overall the quality of this fit out has been really enhanced from previous Alumno projects – the furniture, the way the kitchens have been integrated and even the storage under the beds is another step up! People often forget just how much stuff students, especially mature ones, can have and so we created a huge amount of storage for them under the 1.5 size beds. Careful consideration was also given to socket placement and we made sure to get the best Wi-Fi since fast speeds are important. For the room decor we used robust materials and chose a colour palette that is both calming and conducive to study.
In terms of the construction of the building we obviously had to work to a budget but with one simple goal – We wanted to create as much space as possible on the ground level, without having lots of columns. So we basically used a steel transfer structure at the ground floor which then translates into the structure above and is embodied within the walls of the different compartmented student rooms.
From an environmental point of view there was a strong consensus among the team to go for “Eco Very Good”. As well as being a requirement for planning it also helps to get the BREEAM points needed in order to comply with building regulations. With energy now being so costly, it was important that
Manchester Church Inn
the building would be as green and energy efficient as possible when it came to heating and ventilation. Even with the vast window area, we have been able to achieve this by looking at its lifetime cycle; using heat pumps which transfer the heat and air back into the building itself, via units concealed under the roof parapet.
What we’ve achieved is a feat of engineering through which the building uses only the minimum amount of energy it needs. This, in turn, translates into substantial savings for the students and – from a building management perspective – can really help keep costs down, including rent levels. When students search online they are often surprised that Alumno rents are among the cheapest available yet the quality is so high. David’s approach has always been to provide rents that are affordable rather than the kind of glitzy eye watering figures that other operators charge.
Their culture is about improving standards along the way, so every new building is better than the last. To be genuinely the best is necessary when you have a city with as much need for student accommodation as Manchester does, and especially when the whole sector has suffered reputational damage due to rip off developers charging huge money for bad quality. I suppose that’s why Alumno have won all these awards, for not being like that. The public assumption is that there’s “too much student accommodation” but that isn’t factually correct in deprived areas like this where there’s actually not enough of any kind of accommodation.
Throughout this project we have worked closely with Dave Roscoe, Head of Planning for Manchester City Council. Dave is a highly influential planner who has been helping transform Manchester since the 1980s. As we went through different iterations of our programme, he was involved in every stage and, because our teams gelled so well together, it was easy to explain our concepts to him. Dave’s priority is for great design that would be acceptable for the whole area and be visionary enough to jump start future regeneration, such as better housing for local residents. By having a building of this standard and significance, it creates a quality benchmark one hopes will become the norm over the next decade; a unique building which raises the bar for student housing in the UK.
Hulme is an area that was crying out for regeneration . Our goal was to be part of a new dawn for this part of Manchester, connecting to and appreciating its history while trying to solve some of the huge problems it had in its
past. Our team, Alumno, Ben Kelly and Dave Roscoe got together and said “let’s just do this right”. What we’ve ended up with is a building that could only be here, it couldn’t be anywhere else.
Manchester Church Inn
Accommodation Manager
I’ve been with CRM Students for ten years now, across various sites in Manchester. I started off as a part-time admin assistant and worked my way up to accommodation manager. I’m from Oldham which isn’t far away, so no problem commuting to anywhere in and around Manchester.
Before getting into this, I’d actually been working full time in a hairdressing salon, as it was handy and I had also trained as a stylist, though I had to leave that job after I had my first child. He was born fifteen weeks premature, so for two years I was a carer for him because he was oxygen
dependant. He’s absolutely fine now thankfully. A healthy teenager. After my two years away, the hairdresser I was working at had closed down and I was pregnant again, so I thought I’ll just wait. Then I saw an advert for a part-time admin job which was four till eight at night, so I thought, ‘well, I’ve got the necessary skills, I can be at home all day with the kids and then swap over with my partner’.
I applied for it and got the job. Initially I thought, ‘it’s only four hours and it’s getting me out of the house again because I’ve been stuck in for so long’. Then we got a few more sites in Manchester and I became Assistant Accommodation Manager – then we got more sites, lost sites, things like that, and it just continued like that, children grew up a bit and their care was organised, so I went full time. Along the way, I was doing in house training and, of course, learning on the job, which was the most important thing for me in building up my knowledge, understanding and confidence, then, to cut a long story short, I was offered the Manager’s job here and that’s where I am today.
I really enjoy this work and like the fact that it’s different every day – literally no day is the same in this job, there’s always so much variation. I like helping the students with things and just being interactive with them. It’s quite small, but I didn’t want to manage a massive site by myself anyway. Overall it’s very rewarding. Some days are difficult but then some days are difficult in every job.
There are quite a few Middle Eastern and Chinese students here this year, but also students from different Continental European countries as well, as well as from the UK. We’re very multicultural really. It’s like a multicultural community I think. That’s what we want to aim for, a community.
They all know me and Bob, who’s looks after the building. He’s a lovely guy and also really cares about the students welfare, so we’ve both got to know them a bit more. With a massive site sometimes you don’t know who’s who, but with a smaller one it’s definitely more personal.
This part of the city is changing rapidly. I think a lot of Manchester’s changing quite rapidly, to be fair. There’s a lot of work going on in and around the city. Manchester has become this really really fashionable place. It’s great for the students, lots of young life. It’s a really nice kind of vibe. I think that’s maybe why a lot of students want to come here. I come into Manchester quite often, whether it be for shopping, food or whatever. I’m still relatively young, but old enough to have seen a lot of changes changes. I remember
the old Arndale Centre.. The list goes on actually. There are so many places that have been hit by all sorts of problems and been rebuilt and improved. It’s definitely changed a lot and I think for the better.
I think the university sector, is having a positive effect on Manchester. It’s bringing people here. It’s changed the vibe of the city, it always had a great university but it was probably traditionally more of a local university where people from England went. Now it’s very much a university where the whole world comes to. So that kind of changes the atmosphere of the city. All in all this job has shown me a lot. I do see myself keeping on working in this kind of job, as long as I keep enjoying it and feel I’ve got something to give.
Manchester Church Inn
I’m studying in my first year of university. I was doing some research about potential places to go and my preference was the UK. It then came down to a choice between London and Manchester, but I felt that London is really really big for a new person coming into the UK. So I thought that Manchester would be better and super student centric.
I mean most of the people I see around are students. The degree that I wanted to do also corresponded with the university’s strengths. I’m currently doing an undergraduate degree, but I am thinking of staying in the UK for post grads.
That could well be Manchester. I do like being in Manchester actually yes. Again, because it’s very very student centric and it’s a really good university. It helps me to actually bring out my strengths. So I feel I’m getting the right quality of education.
There are lot’s of young people like Manchester. Apart from there being a lot of students, if I could pinpoint what it is about Manchester that young people like so much I think it would be the nightlife – there’s a lot of energy in the city. The nightlife is very good. Clubs like Impossible, Factory, that type of thing and the bars in Deansgate as well. Whether it is night or day there is always something to do aside from university, you know.
Manchester is good for food and things as well. There are quite a few good places to get food here, but I mostly do my cooking at home or with friends.
I’ve got a studio flat. It’s a really good size and I like the way my kitchen area is laid out. Personally I actually really enjoy it here. It gives me privacy and I have also been able to meet people in the building as well. So I’ve got the combination of the privacy, and I can do my cooking, but it’s still got a feeling that I can get to know people here as well. Mostly I’m in my room but some- times my friends and I will play cards down in the communal area. We all have
PlayStations so sometimes we just hook up to the TV and play.
As I said, the thing I like most about this accommodation is the mix of privacy and the community side. So when I want privacy I can have privacy. It’s also a really good flat. Really large compared with others I’ve visited in other accomodations. It’s well designed, comfortable and quiet. The heating and ventilation is good to, so I’m always at the temperature I want to be, which is important for study, relaxation and sleep. I like the design of the building and all that. The physical feel, the look of it type thing. It’s an interesting area, in a way. It’s also really close to the Uni. I just have to go down Oxford Road and I can get anywhere I want on the campus within seven to ten minutes walk. It’s
also really handy for anything I want to do in Manchester. Great public transport too. I actually like that it’s it’s quite a quiet area because when I want my time alone I come here, then when I want to go out I have the option to go out.
Manchester has a wide range of students from all over the world. There’s a lot of international students. I get to meet people from the UK as well. I haven’t visited other bits of the UK yet. I’ve only seen Manchester so far but that’s good, but I plan to go to different parts as well.
Marketing Student
University of Manchester
I’m from Lebanon, but I’m half Lebanese, half Venezuelan. I’ve been in the UK for six months now.
I decided to come to Manchester for study. Pure study. It was the best course basically. The university ranking was attractive to me, that was the main reason. I wanted to find an institution that would actually make me feel I was privileged to join it, which was University of Manchester. There are a lot of marketing post-graduates so it’s really important to find a good one and the ranking of the business school itself was the 9th worldwide. So, that number kind of attracted me. So that’s why I came here. I actually moved before I found accommodation. I stayed in a hotel for 3 nights and tried to look for somewhere. I wanted to find accommodation that I was going to be hap-
py to stay in for the whole semester. I found this and I immediately liked it.
The room is very good, it’s more than nice, well designed and well furnished, all the necessities are there. There are only two types of studio – one which is already a really good size and the other which is even more spacious. I chose the smaller one. Everything’s fine, the comfort of the room, the heating and ventilation, bathroom, shower, kitchen area, it’s all good.
I like being in Manchester. In terms of living here it’s nice. I didn’t pick it for the city but I like the city. I lived in London before, for four years. This is my fifth year in the UK. I did my undergraduate in South West London, at the University of Surrey. I lived in Guildford. I didn’t mind being in a sort of semi rural Surrey area, You’re living in a town, but at the same time if you want to go to London it’s very near. That’s quite good because you can have all the London stuff when you want it and if you want a bit of peace to study then you’ve got the peace.
Here, it’s nice as well. Even though it’s very close to central Manchester. it’s remarkably quiet. For me I like that, certainly this semester there’s somehow an Arab vibe as well, though there are students from all over the world. After I graduate I’ll have a graduate route visa so that if I graduate and find a job I can stay here and gain experience for two years. So I might consider staying in the UK it if I have a good offer. In my field it’s quite useful to have knowledge of all the different countries, so I’m pretty sure that the experience that I would get here, whilst working, could be interesting and beneficial for me for my
future career, wherever that is
Manchester Church Inn
Manchester Church Inn
