Cruickshank and Seward – Modern Mooch

Roscoe Building

Posted on February 24, 2025February 24, 2025 by modernmoocher

Local Image Collection 1964

The Roscoe Building is to the University of Manchester what the Renold Building was to UMIST; its purpose was the unification of disparate lecture rooms into one building. In this instance it was a central hub for the Faculty of Science. Both buildings are by Cruickshank and Seward and share traits, though the Renold has arguably more flare. In the Roscoe Building the ground floor houses the smaller of the two main lecture theatres, the larger is an appendage to the main building, but both are accessed from the main foyer. As one ascends, the five upper floors are served by a central corridor flanked by smaller offices and laboratories on one side and larger flexible teaching and seminar rooms to the other. The glazed stairwell is expressed as a separate element.

The appraisal of the scheme in the AJ Building Study made claim that, ‘aesthetically the relationship of this staircase with the main tower is scarcely resolved, but the design has achieved the aim of making this an exciting staircase to use’.

This was the aim of the architect – if all the seminar rooms and lecture theatres emptied at the same time, there was not enough capacity in the two lifts to move everyone. The climb up the stairs is rewarded with a good view of the city centre, a photograph of which was illustrated in the same pages. The clear expression of the component parts of this building is a functional response to the demands, but also the part of the formal language developed through Cruickshank & Seward’s practice. Strong volumetric forms became something of a motif in the work of both John Seward and Arthur Gibbon.

Mainstream Modern

The open entrance area has subsequently been compromised.

Photo: Richard Brook

Performance Electrical Limited was employed to carry out the full electrical refurbishment to the new reception at the University of Manchester’s Roscoe Building on behalf of Armitage Construction.

In common with the Renold Building the Roscoe has an elegant glazed staircase.

So I walked it up and down.

UMIST – Manchester

Posted on April 5, 2021April 5, 2021 by modernmoocher

Every now and then, I get the yen to come back here again.

Having included the site on one of my Manchester Modernist Walks, I pop by protectively just to make sure everything’s still there.

The custodians The University of Manchester may well be averse to listing and have already removed Chandos Hall.

Forever.

In addition, a whole block and a walkway have been subtracted.

Thereby placing the Hans Tisdall mosaics: The Alchemist’s Elements in jeopardy – currently held in storage, who knows what fate awaits them?

Discussions have taken place pre-lockdown, another year on and possibly the possibility of a positive resolution.

Consequently I always approach the site with a slight sense of foreboding, it’s Easter and there’s nobody about.

The trees are just about to burst into leaf, there are bright bursts of cherry blossom on the bough.

The sun shines down from a big blue sky, strewn with wisps of cloud.

Let’s have a look around – it’s springtime for UMIST and Modernity!

Renold House

Posted on April 23, 2020April 23, 2020 by modernmoocher

Manchester International Office Centre
11 Styal Rd Wythenshawe Manchester M22 5WB

Renold Chains were once a huge firm employing thousands in south Manchester, their main factory at Burnage, now demolished to make way for a supermarket. This grouping was designed as the administrative headquarters for the company and was in receipt of an RIBA Architecture Bronze Medal in 1955. The scheme, of two parallel wings connected by a central hub running perpendicular, now seems fairly pedestrian, though still exudes some presence by virtue of the evident control in the design and construction of relief within the main façade. This building, though, actually points toward the moment where Cruickshank & Seward were turning, with the rest of the profession, toward new engineered, curtain walling solutions. The three storey glazed stair towers are made of a relatively fine steel section glazing bar and are clearly expressed at the ends of the blocks; these perhaps pre-empt the altogether more refined towers at the Renold Building and Roscoe Building of the Universities. The third floor boardroom was also positively expressed as a curved solid, cantilevered above the entrance canopy. That the building was developed in such close proximity to the airport has ensured its continued viability as office and conferencing space. The firm also delivered the adjacent building for the same client in the 1970s.

Mainstream Modern

Four weeks into a pandemic – cycling somewhere else. I turned off and into the grounds of the former Renold House, currently trading as Manchester International Office Ccentre.

Manchester International Office Centre (MIOC) is a prominent landmark office building extending to some 100,000 sq ft which provides occupiers with high quality space ranging from suites of 450 to 8,000 sq ft.

The building has undergone a complete internal transformation with a total refurbishment of the reception and common areas. The office suites provide a superb working environment in line with the demands of todays occupier.

On arriving home I hungrily rustled up a few RIBA Archive images from 1954.

Much remains intact – though gone is the concrete grid and glass brick insertions of the 1954 central section – replaced with a slick glass and steel skin.