Manchester Town Hall Extension
The Manchester Town Hall Project
Background
Historical landmark brought into the 21st century with Komfort. An intelligent fusion of old and new has created a stunning working environment in this grade I listed building in Manchester.
The Building
The Manchester Town Hall complex is a series of three buildings made up of iconic structures of international architectural significance and exceptional craftsmanship. The complex comprises the Gothic style, Grade I-listed Town Hall together with the Vincent Harris-designed Grade II* listed Town Hall Extension, the Central Library and the exterior spaces – Library Walk and St Peter’s Square. Today, the Town Hall Complex makes a popular tourist attraction and is the seat of local government in Manchester housing around 3,500 staff.
The Brief in Brief
The project benefited from a ‘One Team’, collaborative approach, with all parties including Manchester City Council, main contractor, Laing O’Rourke and architects, Ian Simpson Architects working from a shared office and committed to shared goals, including specific regeneration and sustainability objectives. This created an environment where people and teams could share information and identify solutions to situations before they escalated; formal meeting structures were supplemented by informal meetings and discussion.
The environment was also used to test and showcase furniture and technology that could be incorporated in the final designs including meeting room management systems, social and communal areas for staff to eat and meet and smaller individual meeting spaces for quiet working.
All of the team members were chosen for their quality, ability, understanding and experience of working within a collaborative environment. Komfort worked together with the architects and the main contractor to address the design challenges of maintaining the architectural integrity of the beautiful 8-storey building whilst enhancing it for current and future use by various growing municipal departments.
Komfort’s Solution
Komfort’s intelligent space approach was applied throughout this integrated solution. Specialist architectural glazing, frameless single and double glazed partitioning, with fire screens and doors were used to renovate a historic landmark building in Manchester which increased the useable office floor space by 17%.
Komfort designed, supplied and installed a specialist bespoke integrated solution, comprising architectural glazing, frameless single glazed and double glazed partitioning and firescreens. Doors were of timber and glass – including automatic doors – and a bespoke timber door frame was fitted to the back of a large heritage oak framed door to seamlessly integrate with the bespoke single glazed solution. Whilst always being sensitive to the building’s architectural features, the transformation increased the useable floor space by 17%; this resulted in cost savings through a reduced need for leasing office space elsewhere in the city.
The end result
The Manchester Town Hall Complex Transformation Project has won the 2014 British Council for Offices Northern Awards Refurbished/Recycled Workplace Award, RICS North West Awards Building Conservation Award and the North West Regional Construction Awards: Sustainability Award, Regional Project of the Year Award and was also highly commended in the Project of the Year Award category. It has been named Public Sector Project of the Year 2014 by the Forum for the Built Environment.
Komfort Products Used
Please note that Polar 30 is our new, enhanced single glazed frameless system and Polar 100 is our enhanced double glazed system
Manchester Town Hall Extension Gallery
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