Market Buildings and the Fish Market, Northern Quarter, Manchester City Centre

ICIAN

In 1998, Ician, a joint venture between Crosby Homes and AMEC Developments, commissioned Stephenson Bell to develop designs for a mixed-use development of the site to provide residential accommodation within the existing Grade 2 Listed building Market Buildings and new build proposals contained with the external wall of the partially demolished Fish Market.

We renovated and converted the existing building to create loft-style apartments with commercial spaces on the ground floor. The staircase and circulation in the listed building were well preserved and good examples of their type; however, as they did not provide adequate means of escape, we inserted new vertical circulation; the building fabric was otherwise left largely intact.

The solution we adopted was to pair the building with a parallel new block behind with an entrance and circulation space between the old and new, thus providing vertical circulation and means of escape for both the old and new blocks without compromising the listed staircase. A new double block has also been constructed at the north end of the site which refers in form and materials to the southern block described above.

The retained walls of the old market building completed the enclosure of the west and east sides creating an enclosed city garden. A clear distinction was made between the old and new architecture - both in formal terms by means of expressed separation and in material terms by the use of ‘machined’ modern finishes on the new blocks which contrast with the Victorian red brick of the old.