Timber Wharf Housing
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Worsely Street, with its timber boardwalk fronting commercial duplexes
Rod Dorling (website) Download Original
The transformation of a dilapidated warehouse district alongside the Bridgewater Canal in the centre of Manchester, into a hybrid mixed-use development with live/work community facilities
Winner of Urban Splash's architecture competition for a primarily residential scheme, Timber Wharf is an imposing nine-storey building.
Crosswall concrete construction and continuous balconies with storey-height glazing set up a simple layered rhythm, interrupted by a full-height circulation core. The palette is simple, basic – fair-faced concrete, metal, glass, stone and wood.
There are nine types among the 182 units. On the ground and first floor are live/work duplexes, some taken by Urban Splash, some by retailers, some being considered for residential use. These units open directly from the front of the building; given a little privacy on Worsley Street by a deep margin of external decking along the face of the building.
Above these units there are five floors, each with an identical mix of one bed and two-to-three bed units facing either north or south.
Data
- Begun: Jun 2000
- Completed: Jul 2002
- Floor area: 25,650m2
- Sector: Residential
- Total cost: £14.8M
- Tender date: May 2000
- Procurement: Managment form of contract/work contract packages
- Address: Burton Place, Timber Wharf, Manchester, M15 4LD, United Kingdom
Professional Team 
- Architect: Glenn Howells Architects
- Project architects: Ben Parsons, Bob Ghosh, Darren Barbier, Giovanna Daldello, Glen Howells, Martin Pain, Naomi Fisher, Nicola Hopwood
- Client: Urban Splash
- Project manager: Urban Splash
- Main contractor: Urban Splash
- Structural engineer: Martin Stockley Associates
- Concept Structural Design: DTA Consultants
- Glass Design Engineer: Dewhurst Macfarlane and Partners
- Fire engineer: Buro Happold FEDRA
- Fire engineer: Faber Maunsell
- Facade engineer: Wintech
- Highways Consultant: WSP Development
- Landscape architect: Landscape Projects
- Landscape architect: Hyland Edgar Driver
- Structural engineer: Fulcrum Consulting/ WW
- Services engineer: Fulcrum Consulting/ WW
Suppliers
- Structural frame: Histon Concrete Products
- Glazing: Mag Hansen
- Timber Cladding: Carlton Smith Ltd
- Metalwork & Balustrading: Design and Fabricate
- Lighting : ERCO