Architect
Stephenson Bell
Developer
Urban Splash
Contractor
Urban Splash
Planning Authority
Manchester City Council
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When Tom Bloxham, one of the founders of Urban Splash, took the Awards Committee around Smithfield Buildings he remarked that he 'never paid any more for a building than it would cost to carpet'. Allowing for the inevitable hyperbole, this was basically true. The Manchester project was his first after Liverpool where property was, well, cheap, and Urban Splash had pioneered making money out of regeneration where more fastidious developers passed by with noses in the air.
But they did it by using top-flight architects, and making intelligent use of government and local authority grants. There has never been anything cheap about the quality of their investment, which is why they now straddle the North-West with major regeneration projects in Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool.
Smithfield Buildings was a landmark development for Manchester. It signalled a re-birth of confidence in the city centre, and showed other cities that derelict commercial buildings - and by implication, the areas which surrounded them - could be given a new life, but only if high quality design talent was brought in. Those that ignored this proviso paid the financial penalty.
For Stephenson Bell, too, this was a landmark Award. They had woven a single, coherent residential and commercial complex out of a disparate mass of 19th Century junk, and produced a stunning atrium serving flats of a quality which Manchester had never seen before. They went on to win a string of Awards, and build a practice on the reputation gained.
This scheme perhaps typifies the unique position which the Awards hold in the plethora of housing award schemes now around. Small, relatively unknown architectural practices and developers are just as likely to win an Award as their larger siblings, and make a bigger splash later on. We find them first. Watch this space.