Using tall buildings for visual impact

[Phil Blinkhorn]

It is reported in these pages that at the CUBE event it was stated "The City of Manchester’s current policy is to let developers and the market decide where tall buildings will be located".

Now look at a picture of Manchester taken from a distance and compare it with photos of cities in the US and Australia or of Singapore.

Yes, Manchester has some tall buildings but they are not clustered and the city lacks the visual impact of say, Atlanta, Cleveland, Baltimore or Adelaide for example.

I'm not advocating the vast canyons of NYC or the, to me, totally out of scale development found in Canary Wharf but some measure of planning and clustering would give a much better visual impact when new tall buildings are proposed.

Manchester already lacks the good fortune brought about by the visual impact a good river frontage offers a major city. We can't do anything about that but we can give the skyline real impact rather than the fractured view currently on offer.

[Ashtonian]

I think it's just the beginning.
Given time 10 maybe 20 years more buildings will rise.
Manchester is a bit like Los Angeles in the 1950's before the revision of building codes permitted the creation of tall skyscrapers we see today.
Certainly in my 25 years living here the downtown skyline has tripled in the number of tall buildings that gives LA that characteristic view with the local mountains in the back ground.
http://www279.pair.com/kgalla/images...kyline_400.jpg

[Phil Blinkhorn]

I've been visiting LA since the mid 1980s and the city has certainly developed skywards in that time and it has visual impact compared to the low rise sprawl that is the rest of the conurbation. Mind you the only really stunning view I had was from 5,000 ft, arriving from Seattle one very clear Saturday morning in August 1997. Almost every other time I've been to LA the haze has modified the view a bit!! Not been for a year or two. Is Arnie managing to improve things?

There was, back in the 1960s when the CIS and Sunley Buildings were erected, followed by the SWF Building and others, including Highland House, a move towards tall buildings in Manchester city centre but when Arndale House poked its unprepossessing tiles skywards, things went into suspension for many years.

[aidanorourke]

View of City Tower / Sunley Tower with Arndale tower

But wasn't there an economic reason why no tall buildings were constructed during the 80s and 90s, or did tall buildings simply become discredited during that time? If the trend had continued after its beginnings in the 60s, Manchester could have looked more like an American city, which it will probably eventually look like in another 20 years or so.

The first tall building - taller than the town hall - proposed for Manchester was to have been an upward 'extension' of Lee House, behind the Tootal Building off Oxford Rd. This was planned during the 1930s but never happened.

An then there was the tower that was to have been built in the late 40s on Quay St next to the Opera House. That too didn't get approval and it was only in 1962 that the first building appeared which exceeded the height of the town hall. That was the CIS buidling.

[Phil Blinkhorn]

Well there certainly was a period in the 1970s when there was an excess of office space and some of the 1960s buildings were beginning to show design and construction faults.

As the Arndale Centre was under construction there was a feeling that the city ought to preserve at least the facades of some of the buildings which gave the city its character and a deal of rebuilding behind old facades was carried out.

The office space excess carried on well into the 1980s. I well remember looking at various low and high rise buildings as potential hotels - and there were plenty of options.

Building high rise is an option where there is an immediate payback in terms of rent or another continuous income stream as the construction and maintenance costs are always greater than those for low rise properties.

Developers caught a cold with just about every speculative high rise in Manchester from the Rodwell Tower onwards. Perhaps the next 20 years will see a sea change in their, and Manchester's skyline's fortunes.