Henry Royce Building

Client: University of Manchester

Landscape Architect: Plincke

Cost: £1.2 million

Location: Manchester

As an important feature to the newly constructed Henry Royce Institute Building, this project comprised the redevelopment of the external landscape space to the front of Manchester University’s Centre of Excellence. This space forms the frontage to a number of surrounding buildings and is a new campus social ‘green’ space.

WORKS

The redevelopment includes the realignment and resurfacing of a vehicle access road and construction of hard and soft landscaping areas with associated street furniture to provide a space that harmonises seemingly disparate buildings around a central hub. It was essential to maintain a balance between hard and soft works to reflect the historical layout and align with cost constraints. The paving forms the only polished paving scheme in the UK.

A significant number of large mature trees were installed together with a broad range of biodiverse soft landscape areas to align with the University of Manchester’s sustainability aims.

Drainage was installed both linking into existing and creating new attenutation.

The site was a live university campus and safety of pedestrians and vehicles was of paramount importance, together with being able to maintain access for users and service vehicles to the surrounding buildings and wider campus.

CHALLENGES:

  • The project was completed while the area had to remain accessible and the road remained in constant use. The works were carefully planned in phases and the road constructed in two halves, requiring vast amounts of traffic and pedestrian management and creating safe access routes around the construction works

  • Extensive electrical and drainage works

  • Intricate paving pattern set to an exact grid with movement joints

  • Little storage space and compound areas

  • Careful planning of planting between planting seasons

  • Over 25 Blakedown operatives working on site

  • Many existing services unknown to the University which resulted in a lot of hand digging and trial holes during the works

  • Completed during Covid 19