Manchester’s new front door.

A mixed-use office and student residential scheme located at the southern end of Manchester’s First Street masterplan. This is the front door to Manchester and the start of the city centre on the southern approach from the airport.

Our design response proposes a 14-storey office building, providing 280k sqft net of Grade A office space, and a split-height student residential building, housing just over 1,000 students in a 39-storey tower, stepping down to 11 storeys at the north of the site. This is the future of Manchester with integrated, mixed-use, walkable communities.

A new public space faces River Street to the north and becomes the entrance plaza to a flexible-use community centre at the base of the student residential building’s lower block. The building’s façade, facing onto the new public square, features a 10-storey piece of public artwork which will be designed in collaboration with an artist.

The office building features a loadbearing corten steel façade, reflecting the tones and textural richness of the historic brick warehouses on nearby Hulme Street. The building is designed to promote the wellbeing of its occupants, with generous cycle facilities, a shared roof terrace, and external terraces on the office floors providing breakout spaces with views over the city.

The student residential building maximises the potential offered by the site’s gateway location, taking the form of a 37-storey tower clad in a skin of glazed and aluminium panels. Patterned perforations in the aluminium panels conceal openable vents, allowing fresh air into the student bedrooms. This materiality, along with the tower’s faceted hexagonal form, will make the façade appear to shift and change as the sun catches it at different angles throughout the day. Internally, the student residential block offers generous amenity spaces, including a gym, group study areas a cinema room, and a generous roof terrace at the 11^th floor.