Client:
Bruntwood and Select Property Group
Location:
Manchester
Construction value:
Undisclosed
Completion:
2025
Circle Square is an exciting new neighbourhood in the heart of Manchester City Centre.
It is located on the former BBC site on Oxford Road, Corridor Manchester's innovation district surrounded by leading institutions in art, dance, culture, science and technology.
Unmatched in location and scale, it is a pioneering new destination within the city with over 1700 new homes, more than 1.2 million square feet of offices, two hotels and 100,000 square feet of retail and leisure space for shops, restaurants, cafes and bars situated around Symphony Park - a rare and valuable place in the city for people to relax and interact.
FCBStudios were initially commissioned to masterplan the project and have delivered two office buildings, with another in design development, a pair of residential buildings including a 34 storey tower, student housing and the pavilion buildings - two subterranean buildings located at either end of the central green that will accommodate innovative retailers and leisure operators.
The architecture is informed by the grand Victorian warehouses nearby, with glazed terracotta ceramic façades and a sense of scale and vibrancy for this part of the City.
At the heart of the new masterplan is a central green, an anchor to the neighbourhood and its offices, residential, leisure and retail users. It is a green canvas that can accommodate a variety of scalable uses, from yoga to picnicking, theatre, culture and the arts, to simply relaxing and watching the world go by.
Beneath the green is a vibrant, dynamic and ever-changing events space which will provide leisure and entertainment day and night.
Throughout Circle Square, the energy requirements for heating and cooling have been addressed using passive principles; using high-insulation building fabric to reduce heat loss in winter coupled with solar control glazing to reduce solar gain and associated overheating.
This simple passive approach enables the overall energy use to be reduced, prior to the introduction of low and zero carbon technologies in the building design.
