BDP To Transform Manchester Town Hall

BDP’s environmental engineers and lighting designers have been appointed to design a major overhaul of the Grade II* Manchester’s Town Hall Extension and Central Library buildings to bring it up to modern environmental standards.

The project will replace, upgrade and provide safe, resilient, flexible and adaptable building services and electrical systems installations throughout the two buildings, enabling Manchester City Council to deliver its visionary Town Hall Complex Transformation Programme.

Councillor Nigel Murphy, assistant executive member for the environment for Manchester City Council, said: "Manchester has an ambitious plan to reduce the city's carbon emissions by 41% by 2020 and putting energy efficiency at the heart of our own buildings underlines the Council's determination to lead by example. Along with providing state-of-the-art, accessible services to residents and visitors, one of the guiding principles of our transformation programme is improving the environmental performance of these historic gems."

The scheme will see a team, led by BDP's environmental engineering director Michael Whitehurst, work on the refurbishment. It will involve the replacement and upgrading of systems across both sites to make them more energy efficient and improve efficiency and teamwork among staff who are employed there.

Michael said; “These listed buildings are one of the focal points of the city and have a unique character that we are striving to preserve. From our experience, we understand that sensitive integration of modern technologies is an important part in any refurbishment project.  Some of the buildings’ internal engineering has reached the end of its useful life and the project will require both very careful planning and delicate execution.”

“It is a complex task to try and bring such historic infrastructure into the 21st century and make it genuinely sustainable, Our vision is that this project will change the misconception that this is too difficult to achieve, and set the standard for environmental performance and carbon emissions in historic buildings.”

Construction work is due to commence in 2011 with the entire Town Hall Transformation Programme being complete in 2014.