Tariff Street, Manchester
A contextual response to regeneration, providing contemporary homes in a sought after part of Manchester.

Our brief was to create a high quality residential development on a derelict site located in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Our design, which takes the form of two separate buildings, provides circa. 200 new homes: a mixture of apartments and townhouses. The cleared site, currently used as a surface car park, is situated close to Great Ancoats Street and is considered strategically important for regeneration by Manchester City Council, who have endorsed an SRF for the area which outlines a range of new uses.

The Northern Quarter has a unique character and patchwork of uses and building forms which influenced our design direction. Roads are narrow and pedestrian focused, with an abundance of active uses occupying old and new buildings to animate ground floors and give back to the street. The two buildings are arranged to re-establish the street edges along Port Street and Tariff Street, helping to repair this corner of the Northern Quarter. By following the pattern of the roads the buildings are naturally orientated to allow for good daylight penetration to all windows and ensure no dwelling is solely North facing.

The taller of the two buildings on Tariff Street, is given greater scale at the point at which the street bends and intersects with a planned pedestrian route connecting through the SRF to Ancoats. Parking provision is dealt with via a 60 space basement car park spanning beneath both buildings. This is topped with a landscaped residents courtyard, alongside numerous rooftop gardens and private terraces providing views across the Northern Quarter.

Robust masonry façades adorned with architectural metalwork, deep reveals and crital style windows make reference to the older Northern Quarter warehouses. Contrasting with this, dynamic roof forms top both buildings, wrapped in contemporary flat and profiled metal coverings.