The Maths and Social Sciences Building is a high-rise tower in
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...
, England. It was part of the
University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology
The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 Oct ...
(UMIST) until that university merged with the
Victoria University of Manchester
The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. Afte ...
, to form the
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...
, in 2004. It was vacated by the university in 2010 but is currently in use by the School of Materials while waiting for a new building to be constructed.
The MSS Building was built in 1969, as part of the UMIST campus. Constructed from reinforced
concrete
Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wid ...
and designed by architects Cruikshank and Seward, it has fifteen stories and an overall height of , making it the tallest building on the former UMIST campus. Unlike many examples of
Brutalist
Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by Minimalism (art), minimalist constructions th ...
architecture on university campuses of that period, the building deviates from a purely cuboid outline with decorative towers at either end (now used as convenient locations for mobile phone antennae) and the floors up to the 10th being larger, which also breaks up the outline. The building was used largely for staff offices, with some teaching rooms. The 10th to 14th floors (called floors M–Q) accommodated the Department of Mathematics. The University of Manchester Regional Computer Centre (UMRCC) was based on J floor. The "Social Sciences" in the building's name indicates that the building once housed the Management Department, but in recent years the Department of Computation occupied the lower floors of the building. They were to become the School of Informatics in the new university and have since been split between the Schools of Computer Science and Manchester Business School. A two-floor annex to the MSS building connected to the ground floor houses tiered lecture theatres.
It was built on the site of cramped terraced housing that accommodated factory workers that was studied by
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The university owns and operates majo ...
announced in June 2007 that it plans to sell the Mathematics and Social Sciences Building. In July 2007, School of Mathematics relocated from MSS as well from the Ferranti building and the temporary buildings Newman and Lamb, to the new purpose-designed
Alan Turing Building
The Alan Turing Building, named after the mathematician and founder of computer science Alan Turing, is a building at the University of Manchester, in Manchester, England. It houses the School of Mathematics, the Photon Science Institute and ...
. Later in 2007, the staff of the former School of Informatics relocated, some of them to the Lamb building vacated by the mathematicians.
As of 2015, the building houses the Materials Science department, recently relocated from the old Materials Science Building, awaiting demolition.