Building’s sister title Building Design will be electing a city as UK Design Capital of the Year as part of the Architect of the Year Awards 2025. This new award recognises outstanding leadership in architecture, placemaking and regeneration and looks beyond individual buildings to celebrate cities showing strategic ambition in shaping their built environment, from long-term masterplans to bold urban experiments.
Across the four shortlisted cities – Cambridge, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle – architects, planners and civic leaders are testing ideas that could set benchmarks for urban growth across the UK. In this third in the series, Ben Flatman says Manchester stands out for the speed and scale of its reinvention
The well-worn story of Factory Records and the “Madchester” music scene of the 1980s and 1990s remains central to its global image, but it was the post-bomb masterplan led by Sir Howard Bernstein and Sir Richard Leese that set Manchester on a path towards civic renewal. Nick Berry, a director of Salford-based OMI, recalls how those years “opened the door to residential projects in the city”, reshaping what had previously been a commercial core into a place where people lived.
Today, a new generation of leaders, including council leader Bev Craig and chief executive Tom Stannard, are steering the next chapter, under the wider political umbrella of Andy Burnham’s combined authority. For architects such as Phil Doyle of 5plus, the real step-change has come more recently.
“Manchester always talked a good game, but I don’t think the architecture reflected that,” he says. “In the last 10 to 12 years, the city has really upped its game.”
Together their reflections underline a truth: regeneration here has been less about one-off moments and more about sustained cycles of investment, culture and design. From towers on Deansgate to the opening of Mayfield Park, Manchester has become a testbed for how a British city can reimagine itself while still grappling with the legacies of its industrial past.
Identity and evolution
Manchester’s architectural character is still defined by the solidity of its late Victorian and Edwardian commercial core. Blocks of red brick and stone, typically eight or nine storeys high, remain an enduring reminder of the city’s days as Cottonopolis, the global centre of the textile trade. That robust grain gave the centre its northern European feel – dense, walkable and urban – but also set a strong contrast with some of what has followed.
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Over the past 30 years the transformation has been dramatic. The population of the city centre has grown from a few hundred in the early 1990s to tens of thousands today. “It never really had a residential core before,” says Berry, “and that’s part of the reason we’ve seen exponential growth in city centre living.”
Manchester has had to adapt to a radically changed economic environment, and successive Labour city councils have worked strategically – and often highly effectively – with central government of both main political parties to steer its renewal. Hulme’s redevelopment in the 1990s was an early testing ground for new approaches, replacing the notorious crescents with mixed-tenure streets. Later, Ancoats and New Islington became the proving ground for Urban Splash’s brand of adaptive reuse and contemporary urban living.
That willingness to experiment extended to building upwards. The completion of Beetham Tower in 2006 by Ian Simpson, then the tallest residential building outside London, marked the start of Manchester’s high-rise turn. In recent years Renaker has dominated, delivering clusters of towers around Deansgate Square and transforming the skyline.
Berry notes that Renaker’s unusual model – “their client, contractor and everything in between” – gave them a huge advantage, cutting out the risks that stalled many other residential schemes after the financial crash and the massive construction inflation since the covid pandemic.
Cultural and sporting investment has been another constant driver. The Commonwealth Games in 2002 left the legacy of the Etihad Stadium, since adapted to become the campus of Manchester City FC. Aviva Studios, home of Factory International, by OMA and Populous’ newly opened Co-op Live arena extend that strategy, anchoring burgeoning cultural and entertainment quarters.
Doyle points out that these and other projects have “stretched the city” in new directions – south to the universities, west to Salford, east to Mayfield and the Etihad.
Taken together, these cycles of housing, culture and commercial growth have remade Manchester as one of the UK’s most go-ahead cities. What was once a post-industrial landscape of car parks and derelict mills is now one where design, politics and civic ambition are closely entwined.
Strategic regeneration
Beyond individual landmarks, Manchester’s transformation is being shaped by some of the UK’s most ambitious regeneration frameworks. The largest of these is Victoria North, a joint venture between the city council and Far East Consortium.
Spanning 155 hectares across seven neighbourhoods, it will deliver around 15,000 homes over the next two decades. At its heart will be a 113-acre City River Park, a green spine along the River Irk.
The design team, led by architects Maccreanor Lavington, includes SLR’s Place team working with Danish public realm specialists Schulze+Grassov. Their approach aims to deliver a landscape-led regeneration of the brownfield Irk Valley through a “wild urbanism” concept for the new neighbourhood.
To the north, the Sister innovation district – formerly ID Manchester – is emerging from the University of Manchester’s north campus. With Bruntwood SciTech, the £1.7bn plan is intended to foster collaboration between research, start-ups and global companies. Its first project, the Renold Innovation Hub, opened in 2024, with further phases set to create a dense new district of laboratories, offices and public spaces.
Equally significant is the Strangeways and Cambridge Strategic Regeneration Framework, straddling the Manchester-Salford boundary. The draft plans, with Maccreanor Lavington leading on masterplanning and urban design and Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios responsible for architecture and heritage, envisage up to 7,000 homes, 3.1m sq ft of commercial floorspace and a major new park, subject to the long-term future of HMP Manchester.
“We know this area has challenges, including the prison that presents a key barrier,” says council leader Craig, “but we also know the opportunity is huge.”
Transport is central to the city-region’s ambitions. The Bee Network, championed by Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, is reshaping mobility with London-style integrated ticketing. Bus franchising was completed in January 2025, and plans are now advancing to bring local rail into the system by 2028. Longer-term, the combined authority is exploring new rapid transit lines, with the potential for tunnelled routes through the city.
Architecture now sits firmly at the centre of debates about density, sustainability and character, shaping how Manchester defines its next chapter.
Timeline: 60 years of design highs and lows
1960s-70s: Hulme clearances and decline
Large swathes of Hulme were demolished under slum clearance, replaced by deck-access housing estates that quickly fell into disrepair. At the same time, deindustrialisation began to hollow out the city’s economic base, leaving vacant mills and warehouses across inner Manchester.
1980s-90s: Cultural renaissance and catastrophe
As traditional industries collapsed, Manchester reinvented itself as a cultural capital. Factory Records, the Haçienda and the “Madchester” music scene gave the city global resonance.
Yet in June 1996 the IRA detonated a bomb in the heart of the city, devastating the commercial core. The rebuilding process, overseen by Richard Leese and chief executive Howard Bernstein, became the catalyst for a new wave of regeneration.
2002: Commonwealth Games and east Manchester renewal
The Commonwealth Games brought investment to east Manchester, including the new City of Manchester Stadium (later the Etihad Stadium). The Games served as a platform for long-term regeneration, anchoring the area with new housing, transport and community facilities, and marking a shift in Manchester’s self-confidence.
2006: Beetham Tower opens
At 47 storeys, Ian Simpson’s Beetham Tower became the tallest building outside London and a new symbol of ambition. The project polarised opinion but announced Manchester’s arrival in the skyscraper era, setting the stage for a wave of high-rise residential development.
2010s: Spinningfields and Ancoats
Spinningfields matured into Manchester’s new financial and legal district, designed by Allies and Morrison and Sheppard Robson, among others. At the same time, Ancoats and neighbouring New Islington underwent dramatic transformation, with Urban Splash’s early interventions paving the way for a dense, design-conscious residential quarter that became a national model for inner-city living.
2022: Mayfield Park opens
On a long-derelict site beside Piccadilly station, Studio Egret West’s Mayfield Park created the city’s first new public park in more than a century. The opening marked a decisive shift towards greener, more liveable development in the heart of the city, ahead of the wider £1.4bn mixed-use district.
2025: Bee Network milestones
In January 2025, Greater Manchester completed the transition to a fully franchised bus network – the first city outside London to do so. Integrated ticketing is now live across buses and trams, with plans to bring rail into the Bee Network by 2028.
The move underlines the region’s determination to match its architectural transformation with equally bold transport innovation.
Vision and ambition
Manchester’s current leadership faces a different challenge from the post-bomb era. With Craig and Stannard now steering the council, and Burnham setting the wider city-region agenda, the emphasis has shifted from rebuilding to long-term liveability.
The question is less whether Manchester can grow, and more how it can grow sustainably. Density, climate resilience and connectivity now dominate the agenda. The Bee Network has become the flagship of this shift – not only a transport policy, but a statement about the kind of integrated, sustainable city Manchester wants to become.
Capital & Centric, co-founded by Tim Heatley, has become one of the North-west’s most distinctive developers, with a portfolio that leans heavily on the reuse and reinvention of historic fabric. Working with practices such as shedkm, the company has delivered projects such as Crusader Mill and Phoenix, helping to establish Piccadilly East as one of the city’s emerging neighbourhoods.
Heatley’s philosophy is rooted in adaptation rather than demolition. “We seek [old buildings] out because we know them, and we’re used to them,” he says. “We’re not scared of them – we’re used to the curve balls they throw at you.”
Alongside headline regeneration schemes, Manchester has also invested in support for vulnerable residents. OMI Architects’ reconfiguration of Mustard Tree’s Ancoats headquarters has given the charity a more visible and welcoming base from which it combats poverty and works to prevent homelessness, offering practical support, training opportunities and creative programmes to help people build more settled lives.
In Ardwick, south-east of the city centre, DK Architects’ Clover House for Jigsaw Homes provides 24 one-bed apartments for young people seeking stability and independence. Together, such projects highlight the city’s broader commitment to tackling housing insecurity.
For architects, this is a moment of both opportunity and challenge. The next chapter will test whether Manchester can convert this momentum into a model of urbanism which others might follow, a testbed for Britain’s post-industrial cities to flourish in ways that combine growth with green infrastructure and sustainable communities.
Architectural culture
Manchester’s architectural culture is unusually visible in civic life. This is partly the legacy of local practices such as Stephenson Bell (now stephenson hamilton risley STUDIO), Hodder + Partners and SimpsonHaugh, which defined much of the post-1990s landscape. Earlier this year Ian Simpson received the Manchester Society of Architects’ Outstanding Contribution Award, recognition of his central role in reshaping the city and its skyline alongside Rachel Haugh.
At the same time, an influx of national practices has reinforced Manchester’s importance as a northern base. Hawkins\Brown, Allies and Morrison, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Sheppard Robson and Bennetts Associates have all established studios in the city, drawn by its scale of opportunity and long pipeline of regeneration.
But what stands out most is the breadth of the local ecosystem. Studios such as OMI, 5plus and Tim Groom Architects have helped to sustain a more diverse debate about scale, retrofit and housing, while CIVIC engineers, led by Stephen Malley, have played a key role in advancing sustainable design approaches.
This concentration of talent has made architecture and urbanism a mainstream concern in Manchester in a way that is rare for UK cities. Whether the subject is tall buildings, retrofit or new frameworks for growth, architects are part of the civic conversation. That visibility has given the profession influence, but also responsibility, as the city decides how it should remake itself.
In terms of architectural education, the Manchester School of Architecture has established itself as one of the leading institutions globally. Operating as a collaboration between Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Manchester, it was ranked fourth in the 2025 QS World University Rankings this year.
Under the leadership of Professor Kevin Singh, the school has built a strong reputation for teaching quality, research and graduate employability, reinforcing the city’s wider cultural and professional influence.
BD columnist David Rudlin, the principal of Rudlin & Co and a visiting professor at Manchester School of Architecture. argues that the city stands apart from most other UK cities specifically because of the strength of its design culture. While many local authorities stifle innovation through overcontrol, he believes that Manchester has managed to avoid this trap.
“Without being too partisan, there is only really Manchester where this doesn’t happen,” he says, pointing to a combination of strong local practices and a planning culture that trusts them. For Rudlin, this has created the conditions for an unusually confident architectural scene – one that has allowed the city to repeatedly reinvent itself and justifies its claim to be the UK’s design capital.
Mayfield
Mayfield Park has become a symbol of Manchester’s ambitions to create a greener, more liveable city. Opened in 2022 as the city’s first new public park in over a century, it transformed a long-derelict industrial site just east of Piccadilly station into a 6.5-acre landscape threaded by the River Medlock.
Designed by Studio Egret West, the park was delivered ahead of the wider £1.4bn regeneration, setting the tone for what will follow: 1,500 homes, new offices by Morris + Company and Bennetts Associates, and a mix of leisure and community uses.
Studio Egret West’s Max Aughton describes how the design used the meandering Medlock to structure the park: “The river zig-zags through the site, breaking it up into three distinct spaces”, with lawns, wetlands and play areas layered to balance ecology, flood management and recreation.
The next phase is now advancing. Studio Egret West and shedkm have submitted proposals for nearly 900 homes, alongside shops, cafés, a health and wellbeing hub and community spaces. For the design team, the ambition is to carry forward the same ethos into the residential blocks, ensuring that Mayfield continues to set a benchmark for mixed-use regeneration in the city.
>> Also read: Mayfield, Manchester: a park for the people
John Rylands Library
The John Rylands Library, designed by Basil Champneys and opened in 1900, remains one of Manchester’s most celebrated landmarks. To mark its 125th anniversary, the grade I-listed building has undergone a £7.6m refurbishment led by Donald Insall Associates with exhibition design by Nissen Richards Studio.
Part of the University of Manchester Library’s Imagine2030 strategy, the work has reconfigured the entrance, created new exhibition areas, and introduced an imaging laboratory and teaching space. “Through these thoughtful interventions, we have sought to secure the building’s long-term sustainability, putting people first in the design,” says Rory Chisholm of Donald Insall Associates.
Havelock
Situated at 70 Great Bridgewater Street, the Havelock building, formerly known as Evershed House, has been transformed by OMI Architects into one of Manchester’s most advanced sustainable workplaces. Completed in 2024 for Credit Suisse, the £28m project takes a 1990s office block and turns it into a benchmark for deep retrofit in the city centre.
The scheme stripped the building back to its concrete frame, retaining 2,000 tonnes of embodied carbon, equivalent to planting more than 10,000 trees, while adding two extra floors and reconfiguring the entire internal layout. The result is 10,290sq m of accommodation across eight levels, an increase of 3,700sq m compared with the original.
A whole carbon options appraisal confirmed retrofit as the optimum strategy, helping the project to achieve BREEAM Outstanding at design stage, WiredScore Platinum and a NABERS 5* rating, the first retrofit in Manchester to reach that standard.
New facilities include cycle storage for more than 130 bikes, changing rooms, showers and a wellness studio. Outdoor terraces project from the corners of each floorplate, giving every level access to external space and views across the city.
Nick Berry of OMI says: “We’ve done a major deep retrofit. It looks like a new building now.”
For a city now often associated with new-build towers, Havelock demonstrates how OMI is helping to put retrofit at the heart of Manchester’s sustainability agenda. It has already been highlighted by the UK Green Building Council in its Building the Case for Net Zero: Retrofitting Office Buildings report, positioning the scheme as an exemplar for how existing commercial stock can be reimagined.
Other key players
Renaker
The city’s most prolific high-rise developer, Renaker combines developer and contractor roles to deliver clusters of towers such as Deansgate Square. Its unusual model has allowed it to weather viability challenges that stalled others.
Tim Groom Architects
Best known for contextually sensitive residential projects, including Blossom Street in Ancoats. The practice has developed a reputation for working within historic settings while adding contemporary layers.
Julie and Dave Roscoe
Head and deputy head of planning at Manchester City Council, Julie and Dave Roscoe have been central to shaping the city’s approach to regeneration for more than two decades. They have recently moved to reduced hours but remain closely involved in the city’s planning community, providing continuity and deep institutional knowledge as Manchester navigates its next phase of growth.
CIVIC and Stephen Malley
CIVIC, the engineering practice led by Stephen Malley, has become a key player in advancing low-carbon, design-led infrastructure across Manchester. Known for its collaborative ethos, the firm has helped embed sustainability and resilience into major regeneration projects, shaping a more environmentally responsive urban fabric.
Far East Consortium (FEC)
A joint venture partner with Manchester City Council on Victoria North, bringing international capital and expertise to one of the UK’s largest regeneration programmes.
Gary Neville
The former Manchester United and England footballer has emerged as one of the city’s most determined developers through his company Relentless. His £400m St Michael’s scheme, designed with SOM and Hodder and Partners, is finally on site after years of setbacks.
“I love developing, I love contracting, I love designing,” Neville has said, describing how he sat in on design team meetings “like a sponge” while still a footballer. For him, the project is about “raising standards” in Manchester’s hotels, offices and housing – part of a long-term commitment to developing in the city that he calls home.
Postscript
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