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Tag : architecture

26 Oct 2015
Gun Street Ancoats at dawn

GUN STREET, ANCOATS 6.32AM

GUN STREET, ANCOATS 6.32AM Today the clocks were turned back. Rain lingered like a truculent teenager, smearing the cobbled streets of Ancoats with a Brylcreem sheen. The area is a work in progress. Old buildings, like patients screened off in a hospital ward, are surrounded by scaffolding, as the heart of the world’s first industrial city is given a new life by Manchester’s pacemakers. Original brickwork and Victorian grandeur have been retained where possible, causing streets which until recently were […]

18 Oct 2015
MANGLE STREET BACK PICCADILLY

MANGLE STREET, NQ, 7.04AM

MANGLE STREET, NORTHERN QUARTER 7.04AM Back Piccadilly forms the city centre boundary to this current project. It’s a curious street, like a redundant spine, that more or less runs the length of the Northern Quarter. Around its liason with Oldham Street people perform a peculiar dance as they avoid bumping into one another on the narrow pavement, and vans and lorries block it whilst grumpy men unload goods into the bars, supermarkets and shops that face out onto Piccadilly. Away […]

06 Oct 2015

RUSTICA, TIB STREET, 7.03AM

RUSTICA, TIB STREET, 7.03AM The day before had started chaotically, as my alarm didn’t go off, and a non-committal drizzle had doused the weekend warmth in streets that now seemed disjointed. An old fella in a tweed flat cap, walking slowly and unsteadily with a stick, had stood in the middle of the road and loudly denounced a driver going in the wrong direction up a one way street. There’d also been a small altercation with a young lad in […]

04 Oct 2015
Little Lever Street Manchester 6.50AM

LITTLE LEVER STREET, 6.50 AM

LITTLE LEVER STREET, 6.50 AM The buildings clustered around Little Lever Street allow very little of the dawn light to touch their walls. The street lamps stay on longer here, straining to fill shadowed doorways with some kind of light, and it feels as if the ghosts of old Mancunia blend with the scent of rubbish that drifts along back streets not yet deemed worthy by the gentrifiers of the Northern Quarter. Above could be seen the Travelodge on Great […]

03 Oct 2015

LITTLE LEVER STREET AT DAWN

LITTLE LEVER STREET 6.51AM A SLOW MOMENT FILM The area around Little Lever Street, just off Great Ancoats Street is still awaiting gentrification. The buildings are struggling to remain and the small, dark streets are pock marked by rubbish. At dawn most of us are in that state of sleep that allows dreams to fill our minds, and in these half lit streets can sense the ghosts of old Mancunia as the area awaits  its rescue. This film contains flickering. […]

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