UMIST 2024 – Manchester

Posted on by modernmoocher

This may be the last time, may be the last time, I don’t know.

I’ve been taking a look around for several years now, but now the writing is now on the wall.

Anthony Holloway’s wall – the only listed structure on the site.

The site is sold, the contractors have arrived, stripping out the buildings earmarked for demolition.

The site is to be contracted – despite all efforts to have its integrity preserved.

The Pariser Building is to be retained.

Along with the Renold Building – which is already home to start up tech businesses.

The city council has approved Bruntwood SciTech’s change of use bid to transform the 110,000 sq ft Renold building into a tech and science hub.

In a joint venture with the University of Manchester, Bruntwood will create 42,000 sq ft coworking and business incubator spaces for businesses in the sector at the Altrincham Street building.

Place Northwest

Sister is Manchester’s new innovation district. A £1.7bn investment into the city, its setting – the former University of Manchester North Campus and UMIST site – is steeped in science and engineering history. Home to the UK’s most exciting new ideas and disruptive technologies, Sister is a worldclass innovation platform in the heart of one of the most exciting global cities. It stands as the city’s symbol of a new era of discovery that promises progress against humanity’s greatest challenges.

Sister Manchester

So it is with a bitter sweet feeling that I took a group of Modernist Moochers around the site this Saturday – a number of whom had been students there.

As a former UMIST student 1990-1997, I had a wander round the old site recently, sad to see it so empty and run-down.

So let’s take a look at the current state of affairs.


Holloway Wall – 2020

Posted on by modernmoocher

Of course I’ve been here before – and you may have as well.

And I’ve been to Huyton too.

Tony Holloway’s work also illuminates the windows of Manchester Cathedral.

As well as the panels of the Faraday Tower, just the other side of UMIST.

The wall is listed, fenced and obscured by the gradual incursion of assorted greenery.

It’s beginning to attract moss, amongst other things – just not like a rolling stone.

Like nearly everything else, it looks different each time you pass by, more or less light, new tags and signs – so here it is as of Saturday 13th June 2020.

Locked in during the lockdown.

Tony Holloway Sculptural Wall – Manchester

Posted on by modernmoocher

Sculptural wall and sound buffer – 1968 by Antony Holloway in collaboration with architect Harry M Fairhurst.

Concrete approximately 68 metres long and between 4.5 and 6 metres high – Brutalist style.

Grade II Listed June 10th 2011 – Historic England

The only structure on the former UMIST site, now part of the extensive University of Manchester estate.

Regularly visited on our Manchester Modernist walks, along with his nearby architectural panels.

I have even ventured as far afield as Huyton in search of other exemplars.

This is work of the highest order and importance.

It sits by a busy London Road, behind an intrusive green steel fence, slowly acquiring a green patina – as moss and lichen attach themselves to the well weathered concrete.

Receiving occasional visits from the errant urban tagger.

It deserves much better – a lush grassed apron, discrete public seating, regular tree maintenance – respect.

We do not suffer from a surfeit of significant mid-century public art – its guardians should straighten up and fly right.

Right?

Antony Holloway – Huyton Wall

Posted on by modernmoocher

Antony Holloway – artist born March 8th 1928 he died on August 9th 2000.

Dorset was where he was born and grew up and the Dorset landscape was always there deep within him. He was educated at Poole grammar school between 1939 and 1945. After national service in the Royal Air Force in Dorset and Germany from 1948 to 1953 he studied at Bournemouth College of Art. Then came the RCA.

Tony began work as a stained glass and mural designer and jumped, with astonishing confidence, into working as a consultant designer with the architects’ division of the London County Council. He learned how to deal with architects and builders, and became adept at getting as much out of the money available – never enough – for his projects.

In 1963 he was introduced to the Manchester architect, Harry Fairhurst. Eight years later, after they had worked together on commissions in Cheshire and Liverpool, Fairhurst sought Tony’s advice about a plan for five large stained-glass windows in Manchester Cathedral.

Tony asked to design and make the first window, the St George in the inner south-west aisle. It was completed in 1973. Further windows followed in 1976 and 1980 and the final window, Revelation was installed in 1995.

The Guardian

His Sculptural Wall on London Road Manchester – an integral part of Fairhurst’s UMIST scheme, is Grade II listed.

His concrete panels clad two opposing sides of the Faraday Tower which can also be seen on the UMIST site.

I discovered further reference to his work in an old copy of Studio International – serendipitously purchased from a local charity shop.

So I bided my time, awaiting the day I could take the train to Huyton, walk along Bluebell Lane, across the busy dual carriageway to Primrose Drive.

My patience was rewarded – 7,000 square feet of cast concrete retaining wall, surrounding the tower blocks, built on a site raised above the roads.

In 1987 the wall was open to public access – one of the three tower blocks has been subsequently demolished.

Tower Block

Partially covered with greenery and now securely contained within spiked railings, I circumnavigated the site catching and snapping the structure where I could – here are those very snaps.