Manchester High-Rise Tower with LED Billboard, Deansgate

25 September 2019 · Manchester

A mixed-use tower at street level in central Manchester, its facade broken into vertical cladding stripes that compress and stretch against a heavy overcast sky. Embedded mid-rise, a large-format LED billboard runs a tourism ad — 'Unmissable days out in Manchester' — turning the building's skin into a live media surface. The graphic rhythm of the cladding does the compositional work; the billboard is the punctuation. To the left, a Victorian pub holds its ground on the corner, the two architectures making the argument the city is always having with itself.