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Designer Stephenson Bell Ltd Developer Urban Splash Contractor Urban Splash Planning Authority manchester City Council

Nine separate buildings had gone to make the old Affleck and Brown department store, a full city block in the ‘Northern Quarter’ of the centre of Manchester. Eclipsed by the nearby Arndale Centre, the area suffered a decline until English Partnerships stepped in with grant asistance to kick start a revival. It was a bold decision, however, to go for 80 apartments in what was clearly a confused wreck of a building, and the developers freely admit that an orthodox building contract could not have coped with a process which must at times have been more like an archaeological dig.

Out of the chaos, however, the architects have recreated the original central atrium, carved out another nearby, and turned both into a brilliant winter garden which manages, for fire and building regulation purposes, to be an external space, thus allowing bedrooms to open on to stylish access galleries lined in recycled timber.

In fact, with its basement gym, ground floor shops and café, double, even triple height spaces, exposed services and structure, and bold use of colour, this great liner of a building is very much what the Unité d’Habitation might have looked like, had Le Corbusier been born three quarters of a century later, and supported Manchester United. Problematic though this sounds, the generous size of the walkways really does make them into interior streets, with the paired indented entrances to flats marked by huge slabs of sound deadening coir matting set into the floor.

From the spectacular entrance hall, with its enormous power assisted door, to the detailing of the bathrooms, kitchens and balconies, and the ingenious overhead link to secure multi-storey parking across the road, there is an assurance about this scheme which takes it well out of the run of everyday loft conversions, and makes it an important prototype for city centre living.

We were very heartened by this scheme. It shows how much can be achieved in the revival of our small historic towns by careful, intelligent development backed by a pragmatic approach to construction and design which respects the past without falling slave to it. There are many much larger and more prestigious developments which could usefully take lessons from this project.