Library Walk
SimpsonHaugh and Partners has completed an extensive restoration and remodeling of Manchester Town Hall’s Grade II* listed Extension Building. The works include the addition of a finely crafted glazed pavilion in Library Walk to link the 1930s building with the adjacent Central Library.
The result is a transformation of Manchester City Council’s administrative headquarters into a welcoming and inspirational space, improving its interaction with customers and equipping the Extension building for the next 50 years or more. The remodeling replaced the largely cellular office space with a more open-plan environment for its 2000 plus staff, incorporating a range of settings to enable more flexible ways of working and greater opportunity for staff interaction. A new, ‘one-stop’ customer service centre was created in the heart of the building. A key element was the restoration of the ornate Rates Hall. This richly-decorated space, which had latterly been subdivided into cellular spaces, has been reinstated as the prime public concourse in the building. As a through route between Mount Street and St Peter’s Square, it runs alongside the crescent-shaped Library Walk to give access to both the customer service centre and a planned new café and media lounge fronting St Peter’s Square.
The Library Walk Link pavilion is a sensitive addition to the listed civic complex and provides a new entrance to the Extension Building. The new structure is designed to facilitate ground floor movement between the Extension and the recently refurbished Library. SimpsonHaugh aimed to create a delicate, minimal form that retains the transparency of Library Walk as a thoroughfare. The 175m2 pavilion uses 7.4m-high frameless, structural glass panels to support a 30- tonne, polished stainless steel roof structure. This has a distinctive, undulating form that responds to the arched windows of both the Extension and the library and was manually cut, welded and polished to give a tactile, hand-crafted quality. This structure provides the inspiration for new bronze gates designed by SimpsonHaugh for the Mount Street end of Library Walk. The floor of the Library Walk Link is a natural stone mosaic with a Lancashire Rose motif. This incorporates 18 red, cast glass lenses within the flowers, each inscribed with the name of a victim of the Peterloo Massacre, the 1819 incident that took place at a pro-democracy demonstration in nearby Peter Street.
