Glass Cantilever and Victorian Clock Tower, Manchester

3 October 2019 · Manchester

A cantilevered glass tower pushes out over angled steel columns in central Manchester, its curtain wall grid filling the frame. Behind it, a Victorian clock tower holds its ground — stone and ornament against structural glass and exposed steel. The overcast sky flattens the light evenly across both, which is exactly what lets the contrast between the two read so clearly: the same grey morning, two entirely different ideas about what a building is for.