The Whitworth project continuesapace as the new glass extensionthat will host the ‘café in thetrees’ now looms over the site’s hoardings.

orks are on schedule and the 125-year-old Whitworth’s transformationinto a 21st century gallery in the park

will be complete for the official re-opening to thepublic on Saturday 25 October. (See UniLife)

The £15 million re-development, by architectsMUMA, will double public space and createstate-of- the-art new facilities including expandedgallery spaces, a learning studio, study centre anda collections access zone.

At the heart of the design is the creation of anelegant glass, stainless steel and brickextension, which will see two wings extend intoWhitworth Park from the back of the existing19th century building.

Drawing on the Whitworth’s heritage as the firstEnglish gallery in a park, the new wings createan art garden between them and will beconnected by a glass promenade gallery

overlooking the surrounding landscape. Thelandscape gallery wing will provide exhibitionspace for the display of landscape works andlarge scale sculptures. Across the promenade, abeautiful linear café extends into the trees inWhitworth Park. A large window in the centre ofthe existing building will reveal a sight line intothe main exhibition space, connecting the galleryto the surrounding park beyond.

A new environmentally sustainable collectionstorage area will be created in the lower groundfloor. Extensive refurbishment of the existinggallery building will include restoring the volumeof the three 19th century barrel-vault exhibitiongallery ceilings to enable the display of major,large scale shows. Visitors will also be able toaccess the reinstated Grand Hall on the first floorthrough Edwardian staircases returned to publicuse for the first time in over 50 years.

Outside, the Art Garden and Orchard Gardenhave been designed by Chelsea gold medallistSarah Price, who co-designed the 2012 OlympicPark gardens.

An additional £1.8m from the Arts CouncilEngland will complete the refurbishment,providing an improved entrance to the gallery onOxford Road and Sculpture Terrace.

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WHITWORTH ARTGALLERY AND PARKTAKING SHAPE

ince 2012 when the University announced its £1 billion pound ten-year investment to create aworld-class campus, significant progress hasbeen made in bringing this vision a step closer.

The Campus Masterplan will bring the Universitytogether on a single campus and provide some of theworld’s most modern facilities for teaching andresearch. A number of projects, which have now beencompleted or are at an advanced stage, are featured inthis Update.

Projects due for completion this year are The WhitworthArt Gallery which is set to re-open in October followingextensive refurbishment and the creation of a stunningglass extension to the rear. The Manchester CancerResearch Centre next to the Christie Hospital is due tocomplete this autumn, a topping out ceremony was heldlast November and internal fit-out work is underway.

Smaller-scale but equally significant projects such as thenew lecture theatres in the Simon Building basementand the fit-out of the fifth floor of the A V Hill buildinghave been successfully completed, the latter underbudget and ahead of schedule.

This newsletter is due to be published quarterly and willprovide further updates on current projects and keymilestones.

Diana Hampson

A MESSAGE FROMTHE DIRECTOR OF ESTATES ANDFACILITIES

Campus Masterplanupdate

Issue 1

April 2014

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COUPLAND 3he redevelopment of Coupland 3 will create an exciting newhome for a number of Departments and Schools. The Victorianbuilding will be transformed to create new modern

accommodation including offices, labs and meeting areas.

A new entrance will be installed improving access to the building and thevaulted ceiling will be exposed after being hidden for many years tocreate a light and bright interior.

Upon completion, scheduled for 2016, the School of Law, theDirectorate of the Student Experience, Faculty of HumanitiesAdministration and the Post Graduate Hub will move into the building.

The building will also provide new accommodation for the Legal AdviceCentre which will move from the University Precinct Centre bringing itunder one roof with the School of Law which will move from theWilliamson Building.

Work is due to begin soon with staff who work there relocating totemporary accommodation near the Arthur Lewis building. Staff fromManchester University Press will move to the Sackville Street Building.

The project will also incorporate the Schunk building and Burlington Rooms.

Demolition of some external buildings used for storage will take place inMay and work on stripping out the interior of the building will continueto the end of the year.

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MANCHESTER CANCER RESEARCH CENTREhe new £38m Manchester CancerResearch Centre (MCRC) building is apartnership between The University

of Manchester, Cancer Research UK and TheChristie NHS Foundation Trust. It will providestate-of-the-art facilities for the expansion ofcancer research activities; accommodatingscientists alongside clinical trials support staff.

The MCRC’s integrated partnership approachis essential to turn research findings in thelaboratory into better treatments for cancerpatients and brings together world-classresearch into cancer biology, drug discoveryand clinical trials on one site.

Due to open in autumn 2014, the newbuilding will be home to 250 staff including150 scientists whose research will focus onunderstanding how cancer starts, developsand progresses. Working alongside theseresearchers, The Christie will relocate 100clinical trials support staff to the second floorof the building.

Work on the new MCRC building began inNovember 2012 and, within twomonths of the first piece of ground beingexcavated on site, the access road had beencompleted and an on-site Visitor Centreopened, providing the local community and

visitors with the chance to find out moreabout the MCRC and the progress of theproject. Within four months, the structuralwalls of the new building emerged from thefoundations and during summer 2013 workfocussed on completing construction of thestructural steel frame and the installation ofthe concrete floors. Throughout the autumnand winter, work on the external façade androof continued, revealing the overall size anddesign of the new research centre. Currentlywork is ongoing to complete the installationof the external façade with work on theinternal fit-out underway.

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he fifth floor of the AV Hill building hasbeen fitted out to provide highly servicedlaboratory space and to maximise the office

and write up areas within this area.

The project was completed in November 2013ahead of schedule and under budget andresearchers from the University’s Nanomedicine Labare already occupying the new floor with othersfrom the Institute of Cardiovascular Studies currentlyin the process of moving in.

This additional accommodation forms part of theUniversity’s World Leading Minds recruitment driveto attract leading academics from around the world

across science, humanities, engineering, life sciencesand medicine and provide them with the world-classfacilities and resources to conduct their research.

Areas of floors 1-4 have also been re-modelled toprovide additional office and write-up areas onthese floors.

Completed in 2008, the AV Hill Building is a state ofthe art facility dedicated to high-level research. Atcompletion the fifth floor of the building washanded over as empty ‘shell’ space for futureUniversity requirements.

ork continues as planned on the£61m National Graphene Institute (NGI),set to open in early 2015.

The 7,800 square feet building will see academicsand industrial partners working side by side toproduce the graphene applications of the future.

Built over five storeys, the NGI’s exterior features aformula wrapped around the building. This is acomplex set of equations that featured in grapheneresearch papers around the time it was first isolatedin 2004.

The building has been funded by £38m from the UKGovernment, via the Engineering and PhysicalSciences Research Council (EPSRC), and £23m fromthe European Regional Development Fund.

It is expected that a number of companies willpartner with the University and use the state-of-the-art facilities at the NGI to realise the vast potential ofthe 21st century wonder material.

Sir Kostya Novoselov, who along with Sir AndreGeim first demonstrated the extraordinary potentialof graphene, has been heavily involved in the design

process for the new building and has personallyapproved much of the interior layout.

Construction began on the NGI in July last year andit is now halfway through. The main concrete frameis complete and work is underway on the externalenvelope and cladding works to the glass-frontedbuilding, the internal blockwork, partition walls andinstallation of mechanical and electrical services. Thefit-out of the cleanrooms will begin in mid-April andequipment is due to be moved into the buildingfrom the end of this year.

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TA V HILL BUILDING

design team has now been appointedfor this £11 million project which willsee re-modelling and refurbishment

of the Main Library to accommodate therelocation of the Joule Library from the NorthCampus and to provide enhanced and modernlibrary facilities.

The investment in the Main Library gives theUniversity the opportunity to rethink its use oflibrary space in a way that hasn’t been possiblesince the 1980s as well as addressing long termmaintenance needs. All work will be carried outwhile the library remains in use withconstruction works due to start in 2015/16 andcompletion expected in 2018.

UNIVERSITYLIBRARY

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HALFWAYMARK FORNATIONALGRAPHENEINSTITUTE

M1051 03.14 The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL Royal Charter Number RC000797

Cert no. SGS-COC-3059

CAMPUSMASTERPLANGUIDE

fold-out leaflet featuring a map of thecampus and the projects which makeup the Campus Masterplan is currently

being produced. It will show the location of theprojects and a brief outline of each one coveringboth Phase 1 and Phase 2. Further details will becirculated once these are available.

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VAUGHAN HOUSEhis listed building built in 1875 is beingsubstantially repaired and refurbished toprovide a home for the Manchester-based

hub of the Health eResearch Centre for North England.

This is being funded from the Medical ResearchCouncil and nine other Government and charityfunders. The new Centre will act as a hub providingspecialist research and teaching facilities as part of aconsortium led by The University of Manchester, inconjunction with the universities of Liverpool,Lancaster and York.

It will be one of four such Health Informaticsresearch hubs in the UK and will make use ofpatient data sets available through NHS sources,undertake cutting edge research that links e-healthrecords with other forms of research and routinelycollected data, which will lead to patient and publicbenefit and ensuring the UK remains at theforefront of global medical research. Completion isdue in May 2014.

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he first phase of the Simon Buildng projecthas completed with modern lecturetheatres having been created in the

basement of the building,which once housedlaboratory space.

This was a significant structural engineering projectwith columns being moved from underneath thebuilding to provide the required space andunobstructed sight lines.

Further work is now underway on the second phasewhich includes refurbishment works to adjacentcorridor and welfare facilities and the constructionof a new staircase allowing improved movementaround the building and easier access and exit.

The project will provide new accommodation for thestaff association UMSA and Wellbeing. Completionis scheduled for early 2016.

SIMON BUILDING

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