Last day of a long week spent mostly (Monday aside) in Manchester. Was worried it was going to be a day too far but some good things happened and in the morning, at least, it was sunny. So here’s another picture of a building site. But a sunny one.
OK, I know, I know, Manchester, building site…. But, at least, a well-lit one. With piles of red things that look like some big kid’s construction set. In the end, that’s what this is anyway.
The ‘Manchester Technology Centre’ on Cloak Street clearly is no longer technological enough, as it becomes the latest building in the city centre to succumb to ‘creative destruction’. Will the fabled eco-park finally arise in its place?
It became a very bright and sunny day in Manchester but at 8am the whole city centre was wreathed in this rather eerie mist. A long and busy week comes to an end; time for a break….
In Manchester this week, yes, but it feels like a brief interlude, my October looks a little different than in previous years for various reasons. One constant though — Manchester’s a building site. It seems always to have been one, and possibly, now always will be one.
Well, I assume he’s rolling a cigarette, but perhaps he might just be playing a tune on the world’s smallest harmonica.
Last day in Manchester for a fortnight, anyway. If things work out — I have, let’s say, a logistically complex next 72 hours, but the payoff will be good if it does…
I did a survey today and established there are presently ten building sites somehow or other getting in the way of my walk from Manchester Victoria to my office, as follows:
1) right outside the station; 2) the northern corner of the Arndale Centre is being redone; 3) on the corner of Chapel Walks and Cheapside 4) the corner of Mosley Street and Nicholas Street (the one pictured); 5) the building opposite the Chinese Arch that burned down last year; 6) big development blocking Abingdon Street at Major Street 7) the old BBC site, which has spread out to block the cycle path under the Mancunian Way at Brook Street; 8) the Engineering Campus Development at university; 9) the Brunswick Street ‘landscaping’ at same; 10) the Students’ Union redevelopment at same.
Manchester!! give this creative destruction a rest please!
Now that’s a big…. large concrete thing. Actually I have no idea what function this could serve. It just continues the trend for Manchester city centre to be devoured by increasingly voracious machines. It’s like The Terminator meets War of the Worlds sometimes — which is where I came in with this shot.
The new tram lines are in place in Manchester, just behind the point from where this shot was taken: but building work is alive and well in the city centre. At some undefined point in the future — 2021, say — it might be possible to walk through the city without encountering some major construction project or other, but I have my doubts.
Not the most exciting photo either but at least it indicates I had schlepped my way down to campus for the first time since March 2nd. Which, like most of Manchester has been throughout the whole lifetime of this blog, is being rebuilt — here, the Business School, part of the whole ‘campus masterplan’ that will turn us into some world-leading something-or-other, if the money doesn’t run out first, anyway.
Being 42 