Yesterday’s site walk at The Rylands Building brought together the key parties behind Manchester’s most ambitious restoration project.
Joined by our client AM Alpha, heritage consultant Stephen Levrant Heritage Architecture, lead designer Jeffrey Bell Architects, and a reporter from The Guardian, our project lead and Senior Project Manager, Gary Lewis, guided the close-knit stakeholder team through a building that’s rapidly waking up again.
You can read the building’s history in its bones. With Stephen Levrant’s insight, every inch of what was, became a footnote to what will be. From roof lighting returning the daylight that defined the original shopping floors and carefully restored brass balconies to stained glass glowing with renewed colour, every inch of The Ryland’s renewed heritage was on full display.
Throughout the tour, our client and project developer AM Alpha’s energy was unmistakable; a clear intent to make Rylands not just a careful restoration, but the next chapter in the city centre’s story to create a future crown jewel, crafted with patience and pride.
Step past the white veil of the construction curtain and the transformation accelerates. The new Rylands lettering signage has arrived in illuminated font, peering over the street below. Two concrete cores are rising at pace (climbing around three metres a day), setting the rhythm of the programme. Preparation for the glass atrium is underway, beginning a dramatic new addition to the building, while façade restoration continues through recrafted Portland stone and metalwork, detail by detail towards its original finesse.
With a bottoming-out celebration just around the corner, momentum is building in every sense. We’re proud to be delivering a project that treats Manchester’s heritage with the respect it deserves, while engineering the space and structure needed for the city’s next century of life inside Rylands.
From all of us at Domis: this is more than restoration. It’s Rylands, reimagined. And we can’t wait to show you more!
Photographer: Darren Robinson
