The Exchange, Manchester City Centre

Bruntwood

The Exchange, formerly known as Rutherford House, is an early 1960’s telephone exchange building. The 1st to 5th floors of the building have in the past been converted into office space with the basement and ground floors remaining as a live telephone exchange.

It was Bruntwood’s intention to comprehensively refurbish the building externally and internally to provide high-quality commercial office space. The works comprised of a newly created entrance/reception, new lifts & lift core, new raised access flooring, ceilings and lighting to the office and common part areas along with a new HVAC system. A new three-storey extension at the rear of the building will help deliver slightly larger floor plates on floors 2, 3 & 4 to help meet the needs of larger occupiers.

The idea of the new entrance hall intervening onto the pavement is to bring forward the façade of the building to align with 26 York Street and adjacent buildings which leads to Portland Street. Fundamentally, the new entrance hall onto the pavement is a vital requirement for the building to work on all floors.

Installation of a linear planter would not only house the existing NTL boxes and shield the unsightly existing escape steps, but also provide new street greenery/landscape and breathe new life into the newly refurbished New York Street.