Eye On Manchester blog by Aidan O’Rourke Tutor Photographer

Personal & professional diary on photography, languages, Français, Deutsch, local interest, art, music, travel and more

The German-sounding name of this apartment development is just one of the things that makes it unique. I used to teach German just up the road at South Trafford College, so this might have been a good location for me.

View of Budenberg Haus Projekte from Manchester Rd bridge

The apartments, just visible along the Bridgewater Canal from the A56 Chester Road, are like nothing like anything else around, except perhaps, at Cammell Laird Shipyards in years gone by: The flats look like ships under construction, their prows leaning over the water of the canal as if about to be launched.

Budenberg Haus Projekte is the first apartment development in the Manchester area to be designed by the legendary Foster and Partners. The name comes from the Budenberg gauge factory, the adjacent but separate apartment development.

I viewed a one-bedroomed show apartment on the ground floor. The fittings were both groovy and minimalist. There wasn’t a huge amount of space, but the floor to ceiling windows allowed lots of light to enter.

This apartment faced out onto part of the construction site and didn’t give a good impression of how it will be when completed. A return visit would be needed to see some of the larger and more expensive apartments overlooking the canal. They were still under construction at the time of my visit.

Altrincham has the reputation of being a ‘leafy’ place, but not this part of Altrincham, a former industrial location.

Personally I love post-industrlai environments – so do Urban Splash – and if you’re happy to live in that context, then the Budenberg Haus Projekte is in an ideal location.

It’s perhaps not the most ideal location in terms of accessibility. Navigation Road Metrolink station is at least a 10 minute walk, and you’ll have to cross the busy A56 Manchester Road. Motorway access is either north to the M60 or south to the M56, three miles in either direction, often in heavy traffic. Underground parking is available for purchase at an extra charge.

Verdict: Groundbreaking design in a suburband though less than leafy setting, appealing, well designed contemporary minimalist apartments, not quite what you would call a convenient location.

Full details at the Urban Splash website www.urbansplash.co.uk.

Greetings from Manchester UK on New Year’s Day 2006. New Year celebrations got into gear late on New Year’s Eve, as crowds of people converged on pubs and clubs in the centre. On Upper Brook Street I saw leggy girls in waist-level skirts and black bodices step out of a taxi and walk on high heels to the cash machine. Celebrations climaxed as the clock counted down to midnight Manchester time, and continued into the early hours. At 4am there were still people on the streets making their way home, many unsteady on their feet.

New Year’s Day in Manchester was overcast and comparatively mild after the cold snap. Later the sun shone through the clouds, and there was a spectacular dusk sky.

Downtown Manchester was quiet, though some shops were open, including the recently-opened Next store. The Manchester Wheel was in operation, carrying visitors high above the city. Trains, trams and buses ran a limited service. Cinemas and theatres were closed.

City centre construction sites were eerily deserted. The Beetham Hilton Tower dominates the city, a silent monolith clad waist-high with blue-green glass. Later in 2006 it will be receiving its first guests and occupants. In the Spinningfields district the most impressive sight is the steel framework of the Civil Justice Centre, with its jutting end floors like the open drawers of a giant filing cabinet.

Local news media had little to report today, apart from a serious incident in New Mills involving a man and a knife. On Teletext, local news websites and even on the radio news, there were no details of the New Year celebrations in the city centre. It seems we can find out what was happening in Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York, but not our own city. One piece of news came to EOM via text message from the Friends of Victoria Baths: Sunny Lowry, first woman to swim the Channel, now in her nineties, and campaigner for the Victoria Baths, has been awarded a CBE.

EOM says local news media ought to offer a continuous 24 hour city-based news service. In the meantime there’s the Manchester Blog, which aims to summarise concisely the most salient news items of the day, take the pulse of the city from street level, and generally keep an eye on Manchester.

That was first edition of the Manchester Blog. The next edition won’t appear until the launch of the new Manchester website some time in the coming weeks or months. I’ll also be revealing what ‘EOM’ stands for.

Here are the answers to the Manchester Architecture Picture Quiz. If you’ve not done the quiz yet, go to Page One, try the questions and find out the answers here. And no cheating please! Now scroll down this page to view the pictures and text.

1) Ah yes, it’s the Town Hall, Albert Square Manchester, and the ball represents the sun, which shines on all places where Manchester has trade!

2) The zig zag windows belong to City Tower, also known by its old name, the Sunley Tower, which has recently been renovated.

3) It’s the Bridgewater Hall! You may not have seen it from this angle before, but this is the view from the Beetham Tower.

4) Urbis, Manchester’s museum of the city, looks different in snow. It could have been the railway station at Manchester Airport, but it isn’t!

5) The City of Manchester Stadium is supported by a set of poles and wires. Did you think it was the Calatrava or Trinity Bridge? I thought not!

6) The Urban Splash sales office – a daring vision of an idealised hi-tech fantasy, or a giant fig roll on stilts, depending on your point of view. It stands next to Egerton St, the A57 at the west end of the Mancunian Way.

7) Hexagon House, buiilt in 1971, has also been known by the names of the companies who have occupied it, including ICI who built it, and most recently Avecia. It’s in Blackley north Manchester.

The wind turbine is on the roof of the Green Building. There’s another similar turbine in the Northern Quarter. This is the view from Wakefield St below Oxford Rd station off Oxford St.

9) The Manchester United Old Trafford stadium, one of Manchester’s most famous buildings. The imposing high tech northern facade appeared in the late 1990s and retains the statue of Matt Busby which was on the earlier structure.

10) It’s the Edge Building in Salford, not Number One Deansgate, which is just a stone’s throw across the Irwell.

11) The gazebo-like rooftop feature is on the dome of the Corn Exchange, renamed the Triangle, built in the mid-1900s. It’s not the nearby Barton Arcade, and certainly not the Victoria Buildings which were destroyed in the 1940s.

12) You won’t see any clothes hanging up to dry on this structure as it’s the rooftop blade on the Beetham Tower, here still without the glass panes which have yet to be installed.

13) The tiles are covering the CIS Tower, and they’re solar tiles, part of the multi-million pound Solar Tower project.

14) The Fiery Lady is on the exterior of the Old Fire Station fronting London Rd opposite Piccadilly Station. She is one of a group of three maidens above and to the left of the entrance. Another three are to the right.

15) The sun is shining through the slats of the Air Shard, part of the Imperial War Museum in Trafford Park, aka Trafford Quays. The air shard is covered in metal slats with gaps in between, allowing light and air to pass through.

And that’s the end of the quiz. Well done if you got a high score. If not, maybe it’s time to go for a walk around Manchester and gaze up at all the amazing sights!

The quiz was originally commissioned by Henshaws Society for Blind People to use at their Manchester Minds event at Manchester Town Hall 29 March 2006. I’ve added in a few extra questions. Find out more about the work of Henshaws at the website www.hsbp.co.uk