As pressures mount on the availability and cost of land, and as demand for office and residential space soars, the rollout of tall buildings across the United Kingdom has inevitably increased in recent years.
Traditionally, London has been home to the tallest buildings in the UK. The NatWest Tower, now called Tower 42, was the country’s tallest on its completion in 1980, rising 183 meters above the streets of the capital’s financial district.
Superseded in 1990 by One Canada Square (235 meters) in neighboring Canary Wharf—which was itself overtaken by the 309.6-meter-tall Shard, on the south side of the River Thames in 2012—Tower 42 has also been dwarfed by an array of imposing office developments built across the Square Mile. These include the 278-meter-tall 22 Bishopsgate and the Cheesegrater (aka the Leadenhall Building; 225 meters).
The pace of development of such buildings is set to continue. Still more office skyscrapers are planned in the city between now and 2030, while over in Canary Wharf new apartment towers proliferate, though none are likely to reach the heights of the area’s Landmark Pinnacle, which, at 233 meters, is Europe’s tallest residential building.
For lovers of high-rise living and working, London has it in spades. Yet the capital’s dominance in tall buildings is being challenged by a city some 200 miles to the north.
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Over the past decade the delivery of several high-rise schemes in Manchester has put it firmly on the map in terms of ambitious developments. These have played a role in the city’s recent growth, signaling its ambition as an alternative living and working destination to London.
What has prompted this surge of activity? And is the proliferation of towers in the city a good thing?
Boom Time
With a population of nearly 3 million and regularly competing with Birmingham to be the UK’s second largest city, Manchester is growing—and growing rapidly.
Observers note that Manchester’s economy is expected to post annual average growth of 2.2% between 2024 and 2027, outpacing the UK’s national growth rate of 1.9%. Jobs across the city are also on the rise, with numbers forecast to rise by 1.7% per year over the period, the UK’s second-fastest rate of such growth.
Evidence of this boom is reflected in the number of tall buildings, particularly residential, springing up across the city. Manchester is where you’ll find the largest concentration of very tall buildings outside London. Approximately 20 towers more than 100 meters in height now pepper the city’s skyline, and several more are in the pipeline, in planning or undergoing construction.
The first notable tall building in Manchester was the Beetham Tower, an apartment block consisting of 47 stories and just shy of 169 meters in height, which was completed in 2006 at a cost of £150 million ($192 million). Designed by Ian Simpson of SimpsonHaugh, it features nearly 300 hotel rooms, more than 200 apartments and several floors of workspace.
Other towers have followed, as developers and the local authorities recognize the potential offered via city-center living, complete with a range of interconnected amenities. Salboy, a developer based in the Warrington area of Manchester, has delivered a number of tower schemes across the city, including the 26-story Obsidian residential building.
The firm is working on the Viadux tower complex, currently under construction in the city, and another SimpsonHaugh design. Once completed, the scheme’s second phase will be Manchester’s tallest building at 230 meters and 76 stories.
Small Firm, Big Ambitions
Currently holding the record for Manchester’s tallest tower—and the tallest outside London—is the South Tower at the SimpsonHaugh-designed Deansgate Square development, a scheme featuring four towers ranging up to 65 stories. The South Tower, which features those 65 floors, is 201 meters high.
Developer Renaker teamed up with a structural engineering firm based in the small West Yorkshire town of Hebden Bridge called DP Squared, now owned by US structural engineers DeSimone Consulting Engineering, to hammer out the details of what were to become the tallest towers in the city.
Founded by Darren Paine together with his wife and business partner Deborah, DP Squared had already worked on a number of tower schemes in Manchester, including the One Greengate project, where one of the towers of that project came in at 32 stories. But the Deansgate development was a step up.
“You’re in a different league from that when you’re designing a building of that scale,” Darren said. “You’re moving away from focusing mostly on making it strong enough to stand up, and instead moving more toward making it work in a way that people using the building don’t feel uncomfortable. That’s a more abstract challenge to deal with.”
Towers, Darren said, are like bridges. “There are considerations that go beyond the weight of the structure. There are other criteria that have to be considered, such as how does the wind move around the building? How does the building respond to that same wind?”
Being structural engineers for the tallest building outside of London, as well as the tallest building in Manchester, generated considerable excitement for Darren, Deborah and their small team.
That said, Darren recognised DP Squared was entering the unknown. “We’d never worked on a tower as tall as 65 stories,” he said, “and we didn’t have anybody we could turn to for counsel. All the research we needed to do in designing and constructing tall buildings we did ourselves.”
With their firm founded 20 years ago, Darren, Deborah and the team at DP Squared take the expanding work on Manchester’s tall towers in stride.
It was a risk at the time, but the client nevertheless placed a lot of trust in the firm, notes Darren, and it has paid off. “They knew we could respond to how they build better than other consultants could. That’s why we’ve been collaborating with them for so long.”
Growth Risk?
Such has been the growth in the number of towers across the city and its effect on the local skyline that it has led some to label the place “Manc-hattan.”
But there are concerns that the proliferation of such buildings could, if unchecked, cause longer-term harm to the fabric of the city’s older structures.
A report by campaign group SAVE Britain’s Heritage titled “Boom not Bust: How Greater Manchester can build the future without destroying its past,” argues that while the economic boom currently underway across the city heralds an exciting time, “such rapid growth comes with a risk of its remarkable built heritage being swept away, when it could be harnessed and reused as a vital part of a sustainable 21st century city.”
SAVE’s report also alludes to the danger of allowing economic inequality to take hold in a city the size of Manchester. “At the same time, the boom has not reached the region’s outer boroughs, many of whose historic buildings face decay or demolition,” its report says.
Such concerns may be legitimate, and they will no doubt be considered by the city planning authorities.
However, the lure of the commercial opportunities on offer, and the demand for space for both Manchester’s residents and office workers, are likely to drive the march of tower development across the city for some time to come.
