The Manchester College (TMC)

The Manchester College is a new 5 storey building in the heart of the city that will support higher and further education students in the Creative and Performing Arts sectors. The new building is designed to serve Manchester College and UCEN Manchester, which provides university level teaching to students.

The new building will replace a car park that was previously the site of Boddingtons Brewery. The architects ensured that the façade of the new building reflects the heritage of the industrial area. The Manchester College is part of an integrated education group called the LTE Group, which comprises five key organisations. Their plan is to consolidate their existing 14 locations down to 5 main campuses, to achieve savings on space and offer more focused teaching.

Project Description

Hambleton Steel were asked to project manage the design, fabrication and erection of all structural steel elements of The Manchester College. We provided the design and build input for the structural steelwork, PC stairs, terrace units and the lifts, Glulam rafters, edge protection, thermal breaks and acoustic separation.

Challenges l Solutions

Our team recognised early on during the design stage that stability was unique to each and every building and this was a key factor with any engineering solutions. In addition, a fully acoustically isolated theatre, built inside the main atrium, was part of the scheme so any structure would need to support acoustic requirements.

To overcome this, our design team worked with the consultant engineer at an early stage, ensuring columns experiencing largest uplifts were correctly anchored to the foundations.

The theatre was acoustically isolated from the rest of the structure with the help of products from Christie and Grey inserted into various beam / column splices.