The Renold Building is a university building in

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

. It was opened on 23 November 1962 for the Manchester College of Science and Technology (later UMIST) as part of a major expansion of its campus in the 1960s. The architect was W.A.Gibbon of the firm of Cruickshank and Seward. The foundation stone was laid on 24 June 1960 by Sir Charles Renold J.P. LL.D (1883–1967), Vice President of the college, and chairman of the planning and development committee, after whom it was named. The main contractor was J. Gerrard & Sons Ltd of Swinton.

Overview

The building, which is made of

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, consists of a two-storey base supporting a six-storey tower. There is a large glass-sided stair tower on the side. Inside is an entrance hall on two levels with a large mural titled ''Metamorphosis'', by

Victor Pasmore Edwin John Victor Pasmore, Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour, CH, CBE (3 December 190823 January 1998) was a British artist. He pioneered the development of abstract art in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. Early life Pasmore was bo ...

. The Renold Building contains a number of lecture halls of differing sizes, including a 500-seat theatre, two 300-seat theatres, and five 140-seat theatres. According to Pevsner's Architectural Guide, "The idea was to provide a central facility for rooms that would otherwise have been dispersed amongst separate departmental buildings. This was a new initiative in British academic planning at that time." The building also contains seminar rooms and exhibition spaces. It overlooks a green space in the centre of what was the UMIST Campus which was originally a bowling green. For this reason a bar in the Renold Building was named the Bowling Green Tavern. The building no longer has a bar, but instead has a cafe named Enigma. Although the building has attracted some criticism, in January 2008 it narrowly missed out on being awarded listed status. In January 2021 ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' listed the Renold Building as one of Britain's Brutalist buildings most at risk of demolition and development. It was included in ''Brutal North: Post-War Modernist Architecture in the North of England'', Simon Phipps's photographic study of Brutalist architecture.

Sources

* ''Pevsner Architectural Guides — Manchester'', Clare Hartwell,

References

{{University of Manchester Buildings at the University of Manchester University and college buildings completed in 1962 Brutalist architecture in England