On the outside, not one of the campus’s more attractive buildings, but it was looking OK this afternoon, and inside it’s actually quite pleasant, with lots of dark wood panelling etc. Mind you I still get lost in this building sometimes as it has a very confusing room layout, despite (or perhaps because of) hosting the schools of Planning and Architecture.
I have never noticed before taking this picture what a masterly piece of architecture the National Graphene Institute is. The crane you see in this picture is not a reflection. In fact, it stands behind the building, which is therefore translucent in its upper portion. Graphene was discovered by Andre Geim here at Manchester by how it adhered to pieces of sticky tape used to clean graphite, and look — here are those pieces, lined up, black, translucent — just like graphene. It’s brilliant, actually.
I have been meaning to put this building on the blog for a while and today it gets its chance, partly because not much else happened (I spent all day in my office, and it was a nice sunny day too), and partly because of the coincidence of the sun taking out the upper floor window. How did it end up like this? If it was built on its own, why so much taller than its neighbours? On the other hand, if it was once part of a longer terrace, how come it survived when the others were demolished and rebuilt? Someone must know….
POSTSCRIPT: See http://www.theskyliner.org/82-portland-street/ for more info. Apparently it is a newer building than its neighbours, so was deliberately built like this, but no one really knows why. Maybe the builders just had a narrow plot and decided to maximise the floor rentals they could acquire from it (like the tall houses of Hebden Bridge). Thanks to Katie Carina Homer for this link.
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.
