Wednesday 10 June 2009

GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE AUTHORITY HQ, CENTRAL PARK, EAST MANCHESTER BY AEDAS

Oh Aedas, you make really bad architecture quite a lot of the time. Here is a quite monumentally ordinary building for the police on a business park in Manchester. What I like about it most is how it marks the corner entrance with a full-height void, a big glass atrium and one spindly column sticking up. And what does this sculptural corner, wherein all the architecture of this building is contained, face? A roundabout.
They could have at least make it convenient for the cops, who, arriving by car and parking presumably at the back of this building, will have to walk all the way around it to get inside. People driving by won't care anyway. They'll be too busy crashing after belly laughing at the pathetic piece of public art that occupies the centre of this roundabout. I wonder if Aedas designed that, too?

6 comments:

  1. Manchester is rich in such atrocities as this. The skyline is a sea of cranes knocking up bland horrors that look like they'll fall apart in a couple of years.

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  2. Looks a bit five years ago, with that bloody great atrium and the windows all over the shop. Is that how long it took to go through planning?

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  3. I live fairly close to where this is going. You should check out what else is at Central Park http://www.downtownmanchester.com/

    mmmm orange bricks and white render

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  4. You think this is bad, take a look at some of the apartment blocks in Belfast..... take a two storey terrace with a pitched roof add 8 more storeys beneath and you get shit ass apartments.

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  5. I fear we haven't seen the worst side of this building, having looked at the planning drawings. Take a look at the other "artists impressions" at http://www.publicaccess.manchester.gov.uk/publicaccess/tdc/dcapplication/application_searchform.aspx Application ref 088200/MO/2008/N1
    I was also amused to see the police had to submit a crime impact assessment for their own police station. My favourite reccomendation was to avoid the use of loose surface material as it can be used as 'missiles'.

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  6. how will people know it's a police building?

    we'll just stick a massive logo on it

    oh of course

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