0256 No3. Circle Square

Environmentally sustainable, new build 288,000sqft office building at Circle Square.

Environmentally sustainable, new build 288,000sqft office building at Circle Square, with associated new public realm space; Symphony Gardens.

The final piece of the Circle Square masterplan – a new build 15 storey office building on the former BBC site at the head of the Oxford Road corridor in Manchester city centre.

The project is a speculative office building with large span floor plates, a large reception at ground floor with integrated café/restaurant, and a complete floor of amenity provision on the top floor, incorporating two large roof terraces.

Symphony Gardens compliments the existing Symphony Park, extending the green parkland at the heart of Circle Square, with a less formal and more lush planting scheme.

The building uses a red brick, punched-opening elevation sat on an oversized-arched base – architectural languages which reference the local Georgian and Victorian red brick buildings and railway arches.

The building will sit alongside the adjacent NCP car park building, reading as a sturdy ‘brother and sister’ pair of carved brick buildings on Princess Street, with the pair of buildings complementing the rest of the Circle Square development but using their own robust architectural language.

A long format, York Handmade brick is proposed with a dark red, weatherstruck mortar joint. Window frames will be dark bronze, with structural glass arched windows at ground floor level.

The scheme will be an exemplar project for sustainable building principals, aiming for a BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating and a NABERS score of 5.5. The project uses floor-by-floor mechanical heat recovery ventilation, with intake and exhaust air taken through perforated brick panels across the entire building facade.

The project started on site Jan ’23

Client:

Bruntwood SciTech

Value:

circa £87m

Main Contractor:

GMI

Structural engineer:

Curtins

M&E

CWC

Quantity Surveyor:

RBA

Planning Consultant

Deloitte

CGI’s

Virtual Planit