Three Piccadilly Place is a new building in the heart of Manchester that forms part of a major new commercial gateway development adjacent to Piccadilly Station on the Southern approach to the city centre. It creates a new destination for visitors to the city and signals the regeneration of this previously neglected area of the city. It is a building that utilises the best aspects of contemporary invention to create a structure that respects, understands and builds upon the important mercantile history of the City of Manchester.

Outline planning permission for the Piccadilly Place Master Plan, established by Austin-Smith: Lord, was granted in May 2003. The site sits adjacent to Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station at the junction of the city centre, Gay Village and Manchester University areas. The office, hotel and residential development therefore reinforce this important entrance approach to the city centre from the South. The goal of the completed development is to design a group of buildings that will seek to create a distinct sense of place, an environment that moves beyond the ordinary and will greatly contribute to the regeneration of the previously neglected Piccadilly and Station areas.

Phase One includes One Piccadilly Place (City Inn) by Weintraub Associates and Two Piccadilly Place by Weedon Partnership, as well a new footbridge by Wilkinson Eyre that connects the landscaped piazza to Piccadilly Station. The later phases of the development will include landmark buildings by Glenn Howells Architects and Hodder Associates

Working with M&E Engineers, Hoare Lea; QS, Faithful & Gould and Structural engineer, Deakin Walton; Austin-Smith:Lord have created a building which occupies an ‘L’ shaped footprint, wrapping around the new hard landscaped piazza and water feature at the heart of the development. The entrance to the offices is across the piazza space to an oriel window at the junction of the seven and fourteen storey structures that form Three Piccadilly Place. The building entrance is set back behind a colonnade that runs East-West along the building to connect the piazza with the pedestrian activity and Metro station to the East, and connections to the University and Gay Village to the West. This colonnade and rill water feature run under the building along the face of the adjacent Four Piccadilly Place line.

The office elements of the building are conceived as a glass slab wrapped in a thin skin of solid material. The building has concrete foundations and a steel frame super-structure with metal and glass curtain wall. A large scale rain screen responds to the massive construction of the adjacent buildings and creates a scale suitable for a building of this height. While the highly glazed Northern ‘prow’ corner acts as a landmark and beacon to the rest of the city as light spills out of the open corner.

Three Piccadilly Place is in a particularly dynamic and competitive location and it will act as a beacon for the entire development. The physical transformation of the Piccadilly Place Project site into a new vibrant part of the city with the highest levels of top quality sustainable design will be instrumental in bringing added value to the continuing reconstruction of the economic, social and cultural image of the City of Manchester. The project is the largest of its kind outside of London and will be instrumental in reinforcing Manchester as one of the most dynamic and exciting cities in Europe.

Printer friendly version

Email this article to a friend