Towering presence
Estates Gazette
19/11/2005
On the rise Things are looking up for Ian Simpson Architects. David Quinn finds out about the firm’s role in the changing Manchester skyline
Ian Simpson is getting bored of being photographed from below. But, as the in-demand architect of so many of Manchester’s recent tall buildings, he must be getting used to it.
As Estates Gazette’s photographer explains, there are a limited number of ways of taking someone’s picture with the skyscraper they designed in the background. And composing the picture from underneath is probably the best way of going about it.
Until recently, Manchester was a bit short of iconic tall buildings. Aside from the ageing CIS Building and Piccadilly Plaza, the most notable point on the horizon was arguably the Victorian town hall. That has certainly changed in recent months, as work has accelerated at the 47-storey Beetham Tower on Deansgate, designed by Ian Simpson Architects.
If any architectural practice can be said to have been synonymous with Manchester regeneration during the past decade, it’s Ian Simpson Architects. The 65-strong practice, co-founded by Simpson and business partner Rachel Haugh in 1987, is behind the iconic Urbis and No 1 Deansgate developments, and played a major part in the redesign of the city centre retail pitch after the destruction caused by the IRA bomb explosion in 1996.
But its newest and most exciting project is the Beetham Tower, developed by the Liverpool-based Beetham Organisation.
At 561 ft, just 49 ft shorter than London’s 30 St Mary Axe – also known as the Gherkin, the skyscraper will be the tallest residential building in western Europe. It is claimed that, on a good day, Blackpool will be visible from the £3m top-floor penthouses, which have, like the rest of the flats in the scheme, already been sold. The building will also house a Hilton hotel spread over 23 of the lower floors.
After a compromise is reached on the photograph – Simpson seems happy with the “drama” of the composition – Haugh disappears, politely explaining that she prefers not to get involved in publicity. Simpson, on the other hand, seems comfortable talking at length about his motivations as an architect and about the practice’s impact on Manchester’s rejuvenation.
A reputation for tall buildings
He says that, despite his reputation for designing tall buildings — Simpson is also the architect behind Albany Assets’ planned 44-storey Albany Tower in Manchester’s Piccadilly, and Beetham’s proposed 47-storey skyscraper on Blackfriars Bridge in Southwark, London, and numerous other skyscrapers – he would never design one just for the sake of it.
“Not everything we design has to be a tall building,” he says. “We won’t suggest them where we don’t think it’s appropriate. We’ve become involved in tall buildings because, once you do one, you get a reputation for it and you tend to get good at it.”
For most people, the first thing likely to spring to mind when considering Ian Simpson’s designs, apart from their height, is glass – acres and acres of the stuff, in fact.
“We often use a large degree of glazing because I like natural light,” he says. “It’s not necessarily because I like the way glass looks on the outside of a building. But if you’re designing a small apartment, it makes sense to let as much light in as possible.”
Simpson has no problem with being labelled with an identifiable style: “I don’t think anyone needs to give apologies for that. You can spot a Rogers building or a Gehry building. That’s fine.”
In fairness, Ian Simpson Architects hasn’t always been focused on tall, glassy buildings. After Simpson and Haugh established the practice – initially without any work and supported by Simpson’s teaching at the University of Manchester – the company’s bread-and-butter was period industrial conversions in Castlefield and Ancoats. A breakthrough came in 1995 when the firm won a competition to design a site in Birmingham. The fee from that commission enabled Simpson and Haugh to splash out on some Apple computers for the first time.
The company began to grow, and Simpson formed a team of engineers and urban planners, including EDAW, to develop proposals for the redesign of Manchester city centre after the 1996 bombing. The consortium won.
Simpson’s concept for the redesign included the idea of extending St Ann’s Square towards the Corn Exchange and cathedral, breaking down barriers in the retail pitch to allow for the creation of what is now the Harvey Nichols-anchored Shambles West, the Marks & Spencer and Selfridges stores, Exchange Square and the Triangle – formerly the Corn Exchange.
“It all worked quite well,” says Simpson, with an element of understatement. “We shifted the retail core and, in the long run, that will help regeneration in the north of the city centre.”
As this project illustrates, Simpson is interested as much in the spaces around buildings, and how people interact with those spaces, as the buildings themselves. Another example is with Urbis, where, uniquely among architects who came up with designs for the scheme, Simpson suggested positioning the building at the eastern edge of the development site rather than in the middle.
“We wanted to create a quiet, contemplative space in contrast to Exchange Square,” he explains. “Architecture needs to be about creating space as well as creating buildings. Positioning Urbis on the edge of the space allowed views of the Corn Exchange and Cheetham’s music school, which wouldn’t have been possible any other way.”
Although Urbis has come in for criticism from some quarters, Simpson maintains that the building is ideal for its purpose. “It’s a flexible gallery, not a museum space,” he stresses. “There’s been change, and I welcome that. The building is robust enough to accommodate it.”
Urbis, like residential development No 1 Deansgate, is among the practice’s signature Manchester schemes. Simpson is undoubtedly enthused by Manchester as a city. “An individual can make a difference in a city like Manchester, but not in a city like London,” he says. “With that comes responsibility, particularly architecturally.”
He adds: “I’d like to see Manchester as a city of towers, but I’m not sure we ever will. We’re respectful of Victorian architecture but we need to move on, to see what comes next. It’s quite a challenge.”
Simpson says he is keen on the way the city does business and the way this benefits regeneration. “The thing I like about Manchester is that it’s all done on trust,” he says. “If you fail to deliver, you probably won’t get a second chance. There’s a strong sense of partnership – you can speak to people to make things happen. There’s an openness and a transparency that helps make things work. It’s very refreshing.”
To illustrate the point, Simpson says that he revealed initial sketches for the Beetham Tower to the council in 2003 and was on site within a year.
Most would agree that the architect’s buildings show a degree of flair. But Simpson says his practice is very much grounded in commercial realities.
“I want to build buildings, not just design buildings that can’t be delivered,” he says. “I think it’s important that architects get involved in commercial architecture and don’t just leave it to’commercial firms’.”
Simpson acknowledges that it would be good to get a “nice library” to work on, but says he is just as happy working on high-density residential schemes. “They are more significant,” he points out. “They become part of the fabric of our city.”
A unique style
Characteristically, Simpson’s residential schemes differ from most others. He dismisses as “big lumps” many of the red-brick canalside residential developments close to the firm’s offices in Castlefield. He says there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be possible to “create a marker for a place” when designing a residential building, and the practice’s spectacular design for the forthcoming residential scheme at 2-4 Chester Road should certainly do that.
Tellingly, Simpson retains a personal involvement in everything the practice does. He says the firm doesn’t “churn out work to service an office” and is pleased when he can get involved in a developer’s “special project”.
He says: “I’ve never done a B&Q or a petrol station. There are no skeletons in the closet. Even Foster churns out some commercial dross, but we don’t.
“Money was never the driving force of the practice – our aim is to respond to a client’s brief to create something exciting.”
In terms of further growth, Simpson admits that a move into Europe could be a possibility. A committed Europhile with a home in the French Alps, he was due to meet a group of developers from Bratislava the week after our meeting. But expanding the UK offices further could be troublesome, with the demands on Simpson’s personal attention already vast.
For now, Ian Simpson Architects will just go on designing buildings. And with the firm’s input, before long, Manchester really could be a city of towers.
Tags: architecture
WHAT TO DO NOW?