Not only has Manchester City Football Club been a long-standing client, the Etihad Campus and East Manchester represents one of our most ambitious and multi-faceted projects.
As landscape architect for the National Cycling Centre (NCC), City Football Academy (CFA) and Beswick District Centre, our role was the lead consultant for all external works and we were responsible for the design, from inception through to site delivery.
Our work has stretched over a decade – from the creation of the National BMX Centre (as part of the NCC) to the Coop Live Arena. We are in the City Football Academy book; the CFA and East Manchester projects are in ours.
We were co-located with the design team for the duration of the CFA project and through that we were introduced to a new depth of collaborative working. With Populous as lead designer, we have produced Townscape and Visual Impact Assessments for both phases of their stadium expansion and the recently completed Coop Live Arena for Oak View Group (OVG).
Pubic Realm, Sports and Leisure, Residential, Education, Community
Ongoing
ASK, Buttress, Mikhail Riches,Raphael Vinoly Architects,
MCFC Limited, Manchester City Council, One Manchester,
60.3ha
2009 - Ongoing
East Manchester
£12m
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In the community, for an ever-changing community
The Etihad Campus operates as part of everyday life for the communities of East Manchester.
Life happens at a variety of paces here and from that the most excluded and marginalised citizens have the chance to improve their life chances, one step at a time.
When the big days come the place changes, and that wider infrastructure investment comes into its own. Car’s move as freely as they can; the bridges take locals and visitors quickly and safely from A to B and the energy picks up. External spaces are designed for activity; for watching local enthusiasts and world-class heroes. Coop Live has opened its doors and the 30-40 days a year of activity will become 200+. The infrastructure is ready to adapt once again.
In the community, for an ever-changing community
The Etihad Campus operates as part of everyday life for the communities of East Manchester.
Life happens at a variety of paces here and from that the most excluded and marginalised citizens have the chance to improve their life chances, one step at a time.
When the big days come the place changes, and that wider infrastructure investment comes into its own. Car’s move as freely as they can; the bridges take locals and visitors quickly and safely from A to B and the energy picks up. External spaces are designed for activity; for watching local enthusiasts and world-class heroes. Coop Live has opened its doors and the 30-40 days a year of activity will become 200+. The infrastructure is ready to adapt once again.
Masterplans have many parents
We have worked in true collaboration to transform this part of East Manchester into a world-class city campus. The public realm forms a common thread that draws this story together at a strategic scale, beginning with the creation of the Velopark in association with the new national BMX Centre; a new urban park with integrated ‘extreme sports’ addressing the Ashton Canal.
This project has had three Masterplan Architects, all working at different times and scales, with overlapping red lines. Our ‘green lines’ across the years, have ensured that when read as a whole they form a coherent neighbourhood for Manchester and its citizens.
Local Architects Ellis Williams led on the BMX and National Cycling Centre expansion, whilst Raphael Vinoly Architects (RVA) from New York led the City Football Academy (CFA). Most recently Populous have led both north and south stand extensions to the Etihad Stadium and the neighbouring Coop Live arena.
Our work alongside Prior and Partners sat in the middle – as the south stand was being built but before the north and the vision for the ‘Entertainment District’. Our Framework Plan set the vision and direction of travel for what we are seeing delivered today.
Our designs for the Manchester City Football Academy (CFA) helped establish this state-of-the-art facility that nurtures young talent, much from within the local area, whilst training existing teams and community facilities.
The Beswick Community Hub represented the next important piece of the wider masterplan. The scheme is an integrated piece of public realm and community focal point incorporating the Institute of Sports Science, community swimming pool, East Manchester Academy and Beswick Library in an uplifting environment with sports and education at its core.
Creating a landscape from waste
What was once wasteland adjacent to the National Cycling Centre is now the Manchester Velopark – a hub for wheeled sports and a flexible space for events throughout the year. The public realm balances hard and soft landscape areas, stepping down to meet the Ashton Canal. The pedestrian bridge across the canal is modelled on a wheel rim and enables a fully accessible route from the neighbourhoods to the north to the wider community facilities in the heart of Beswick.
Creating a landscape from waste
What was once wasteland adjacent to the National Cycling Centre is now the Manchester Velopark – a hub for wheeled sports and a flexible space for events throughout the year. The public realm balances hard and soft landscape areas, stepping down to meet the Ashton Canal. The pedestrian bridge across the canal is modelled on a wheel rim and enables a fully accessible route from the neighbourhoods to the north to the wider community facilities in the heart of Beswick.
At the CFA alone, there are 750 matures Pine trees and 600 linear metres of native hedging all planted within soils that were manufactured from site-won bio-remediated materials, in turn massively reducing both the carbon footprint of the landscape-led project and the disruption to neighbouring communities.
We have worked closely with City Football Club’s Director of Communities and Sustainability to put in place an apprenticeship programme, whereby the existing grounds staff (predominantly pitch experts) have grown the skills to manage and maintain the wider landscape, not just of the CFA facility, but the wider Etihad Campus and public spaces.
Have we helped change the way the place ‘works’?
If you take the buildings away you see the figure ground of a huge urban-greening project, with active travel and public transport at its heart. Running through the middle is a canal and a road of epic scale linking back into the city centre… familiar interfaces!
Whilst the campus buildings have evolved to become exemplars for their environmental performance (with the National Cycling Centre retrofitted twice and the stadium extended likewise), the growth of the landscape fabric has made this a more nature-friendly, human-centric district.
It is inconceivable that this transformational change has not had a profound effect on everyone who experience it – from those who call it home; the hundreds (soon to be thousands) who work here and the millions who visit across the sporting year. We have never asked Pep Guardiola or Sir Chris Hoy if the CFA, NCC and their surroundings have changed the way they train and compete, but if the results are anything to go by, they must have!
