Studying Controversies

How successful will New Islington be?

One of the modules of my final semester required me, working within a team to investigate a chosen architectural controversy. In a group 5, we delegated roles for ourselves and set about creating a website that explained, via a visual diagrammatic output how the controversy of New Islington Manchester developed over time. 

List of team members:

Jonathan Carter (Project coordinator)

Benjamin Hale (Webmaster)

Tim Stephenson (Reporter/investigator)

Edward Kilvert (Reporter/investigator)

Matt Parsons Brown (Statistician)

INTRODUCTION AND LINK TO WEBSITE >>>>> 

How successful will New Islington be?

In 1999 New East Manchester Ltd. was set up, joining together Manchester City Council, The Homes and Communities Agency and the North West Development Agency to spearhead the regeneration of a patch of land in East Manchester just outside Ancoats.  In 2000 Urban Splash were selected as the lead developer to carry out the plans drawn up by Will Alsop for New Islington, including a new canal and water park, over 1,700 new homes, office space, a school, a health clinic, shops, bars and restaurants.  New Islington was the name chosen by residents to help provide a fresh start for the council housing estate formerly known as the Cardroom Estate.  This is an example of the new ‘community led’ approach towards regeneration, instead of the tactic used in the 1960s slum clearances where thousands of families were moved to estates on the edges of cities away from their social networks and jobs.  

Following the success that Manchester experienced during the Industrial Revolution from the cotton industry, the depression in the 1930s led to a shift from manufacturing industry to services, such as education, finance and retail.  This resulted in a rise in working class unemployment as well as employees of booming service industries moving out of the city centre to the suburbs, leaving the centre of Manchester with a significantly decreased population.  This feeling of desolation is felt nowhere more than in East Manchester, ironically the site of Manchester’s economic boom.

Work began on New Islington in June 2003 and is set to continue until June 2014, leaving most of the area empty, apart from Alsop Architects’ Chips, a nine storey block of flats, FAT’s Woodward Place housing, and another terrace by de Metz Forbes Knight.  Chips and Woodward Place are both designed to lead the way for other projects in the area by using ‘boisterous’ features and colours.

The area badly needs a fresh start, but how successfully have the New East Manchester group undertaken the ‘new approach’ of urban regeneration?

TAKE ME TO 

NEW ISLINGTON CONTROVERSIES WEBSITE