Gateway House, adjacent Piccadilly Station, is often a visitor’s first impression of Manchester. Originally designed by Richard Seifert & Partners, the ‘lazy S’ was built as part of a greater improvement and refurbishment of Piccadilly Station in the 1960s.
Hodder+Partners won a competition for the redevelopment of the Gateway House and Station Approach in 2009. The mixed use project comprises the refurbishment and conversion of the icon into a 270 bedroom hotel above the existing ground level of retail, together with a new 40,000 sq ft Grade A office building over 8,000 sq ft of retail space facing Ducie Street. A new 3 storey gym is also proposed to the rear of Gateway House.
The strategy for the refurbishment of Gateway House was one of conservation rather than reconstruction. Thus the building is stripped back to its existing concrete structure and reloaded to meet current envelope requirements whilst retaining the horizontals and fine grain of the existing fenestration. Structurally glazed shop fronts refresh the engagement of the building with the approach to the station.
The office is served from the existing northern core of Gateway House by a series of link bridges which creates a dynamic, 8 storey high atrium linking the entrance to the upper most floor.
The gym offers a destination building, bringing 24 hour a day footfall to the rear of Gateway House as a strategy to activate a forgotten area of Manchester. The main treatment of the facade is opaque glass which will illuminate the building to create a beacon for the building’s activity.