Barnes Wallis Building

The Barnes Wallis Building/Wright Robinson Hall is a university building in central Manchester. It forms part of the campus of the former University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, which merged in 2004 with the nearby Victoria University of Manchester.

It is unusual in that the two parts of the building have different names and different uses, despite the fact that the building is a single structure, purpose built by a single architect. It was built in 1963/4 and the architect was W.A.Gibbon of Cruikshank & Seward. The building faces across a green space at the centre of campus towards the Renold Building, which was designed by the same architect and constructed the previous year. According to the Pevsner Architectural Guides: "Its scale and form was designed to relate to the earlier building. It is all white concrete. The vertical stabbing funnel on the roof is designed to light the stairs."

The low-rise part facing onto the green space at the centre of the campus is the Barnes Wallis Building, named after the pioneering aircraft designer Sir Barnes Wallis. This houses the main campus refectory and until 2004 it also was home to the UMIST Student Union. It is now used by the merged University of Manchester Students' Union. The building has therefore for decades been a central part of student life.

The naming of internal parts of the building was for many years a good indicator of the current political balance of the UMIST Student Union. The Large Assembly Hall was at times called the Lenin Assembly Hall. Conversely, the Small Assembly Hall was at other times named the Sharansky Assembly Hall, after Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky.

The 15 storey high-rise part of the structure is called Wright Robinson Hall, and is a student hall of residence.

References

*"Pevsner Architectural Guides — Manchester", Clare Hartwell, ISBN 0-14-071131-7

External links

* [http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=9077 Wright Robinson Hall entry on Skyscraperpage website.]