Manchester city centre, like all big city centres, is now substantially formed of anonymous glass buildings like these, the coating probably not doing much for the insulation, but look at the lovely reflection effect it gives. I like taking pictures of buildings though I am sure all would be better composed if I had a hundred-foot tall crane to lift me up and get the perspective right.
The NGI is still under construction and is the building to the right of this image. The background is formed by the George Kenyon Hall of residence, which last appeared on the blog fairly recently, on day 1,133 (1/10/14).
Monday is a regular Manchester day in term-time. Some more random campus architecture then. The Sackville building was part of UMIST until that institution was eaten up by the University of Manchester in 2004. Not for much longer though — I believe the basic plan is to sell it off fairly soon (it’s been gradually emptied over the last few years) and in the near future will probably become luxury apartments with a bar on the ground floor that prices its drinks at a level designed to ensure the plebs don’t get in.
More Victorian architecture. But because I had to start work again today after my Christmas break, I never left the house, and because I live in a piece of it, Victorian architecture is what you get.
However, there is some additional relevance to the picture, which is that after about a week of heroic house clearance and trips to the tip, sorry, ‘Household Waste Recycling Centre’, this old fireplace is actually visible again for the first time in about two years. Not to mention the floor of this room. Worth documenting, then, in my opinion….
Apparently the design of this building — two more or less circular pods connected by a bridge over the road — is meant to symbolise the bridging of the gap between research and innovation. Or so I was told by a helpful information sheet in the foyer. I was here to speak at a conference – six-hour train journey for an hour or so of attendance, but it was a nice sunny day and I got some other stuff done on the train.
In case this hasn’t been apparent from the pictures, it’s been raining for about three days now: not heavily, but persistently. As it always seems to around now, just in time to welcome the new year’s students to Manchester: hi, here’s that grey rainy city you were being warned about. Wanted to get a picture today that encapsulated their arrival, but with such flat grey light it was better, in the end, to do one like this. I know I could have been more at the necessary right angle to the facade, but hey.
If I’m to keep this blog going, and non-repetitive, I will have to keep finding new slants on the familiar territory of my home town. Particularly at the moment, where I am spending days on end just sat in my office at home, writing the first draft of the book. So here we go, one of the town’s stranger buildings I think. For some reason this shot looks like it might be taken in the USA, the architecture just has that look to it, I can almost see old trams running down the street too (as they used to, a century ago). Here, for once, I don’t think the phone wires detract from the shot.
Task one on arrival in Sydney – head straight to this place. I’ve long admired this building from afar and I was very keen to see it for real – and my high opinion of it has been in no way diminished by being up close to it. (Although I never realised it’s effectively three separate buildings: and it’s also somewhat smaller than I thought.)
Task two – take a photograph of it that is not the same old cliched photo of it that everyone else takes. How have I done?
Being 42 