Hollings Building at Manchester Metropolitan University

Includes: Hollings Building at Manchester Metropolitan University OLD HALL LANE. Educational building ‑ formerly Hollings College. Built 1957‑60. Designed by Leonard C. Howitt. Concrete frame with brick infill to tower and restaurant block and glass curtain walling to the workshop block. Flat roofs. Seven storey range of classrooms with expressed hyperbolic paraboloid frame; semi‑circular restaurant block attached to the west and single storey workshop block abuts to the east. Classroom block decreases in width as it ascends, and the hyperbolic paraboloid frame is expressed on the walls and is open as it rises above the top storey (giving rise to the popular local name `The Toast‑rack'). Ground floor partly open. Original slim white‑painted window frames, single glazed. Brick spandrels below. To west the semi‑circular restaurant block is externally two‑storeyed with an expressed concrete frame of boomerang‑shaped members which rise up the walls, thickening towards the top, and curve over the roof. Replacement UPVC windows; brick horizontal strip spandrels. The centre has a recent extra storey (under construction in 1995). Workshop block has deep horizontal band of windows with original vertical slim‑sectioned white painted glazing bars; broad panelled upstand above and red brick plinth. The restaurant block was originally designed to serve meals made by the students at the college to the public while the curved space provided a cat‑walk for the products of the tailoring workshop. A distinctive and memorable building which demonstrates this architect's love of structural gymnastics in a dramatic way. It epitomises the popular values of the Festival of Britain, as disseminated into regional architecture.