About Barnes Wallis Building
The Barnes Wallis Building /Wright Robinson Hall is a university building in central Manchester. It forms part of the campus of the former University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, which merged in 2004 with the nearby Victoria University of Manchester. It is unusual in that the two parts of the building have different names and different uses, though the building is a single structure, purpose-built by a single architect. It was built in 1963–66 and the architect was W. A. Gibbon of Cruikshank & Seward. The building faces across a green space at the centre of campus towards the Renold Building, which was designed by the same architect and constructed the previous year. According to the Pevsner Architectural Guides: "Its scale and form was designed to relate to the earlier building. It is all white concrete. The vertical stabbing funnel on the roof is designed to light the stairs. "The low-rise structure facing onto the green space at the centre of the campus is the Barnes Wallis Building, named after the pioneering aircraft designer Sir Barnes Wallis who opened the building in 1967. This once housed the main campus refectory (closed June 2009), and until 2004 it was also home to UMIST Students' Association. For a number of years it was used by the merged University of Manchester Students' Union with a print shop, bar and shop. The building was for decades a central part of student social life. It is now largely given over to computer clusters and student workspaces, mostly used by the students of the engineering schools still resident in the former UMIST campus.
Barnes Wallis Building Description
The Barnes Wallis Building /Wright Robinson Hall is a university building in central Manchester. It forms part of the campus of the former University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, which merged in 2004 with the nearby Victoria University of Manchester. It is unusual in that the two parts of the building have different names and different uses, though the building is a single structure, purpose-built by a single architect. It was built in 1963–66 and the architect was W. A. Gibbon of Cruikshank & Seward. The building faces across a green space at the centre of campus towards the Renold Building, which was designed by the same architect and constructed the previous year. According to the Pevsner Architectural Guides: "Its scale and form was designed to relate to the earlier building. It is all white concrete. The vertical stabbing funnel on the roof is designed to light the stairs. "The low-rise structure facing onto the green space at the centre of the campus is the Barnes Wallis Building, named after the pioneering aircraft designer Sir Barnes Wallis who opened the building in 1967. This once housed the main campus refectory (closed June 2009), and until 2004 it was also home to UMIST Students' Association. For a number of years it was used by the merged University of Manchester Students' Union with a print shop, bar and shop. The building was for decades a central part of student social life. It is now largely given over to computer clusters and student workspaces, mostly used by the students of the engineering schools still resident in the former UMIST campus.