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MediaCity on Monday: Award for development called into doubt
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 17, 2011
Start the week catching up with the news and views from Salford's MediaCityUK
News that Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce has awarded the 2011 Greater Manchester Building of the Year Award to MediaCityUK has once again ignited the debate about the development.
Readers of this blog will remember that the development was voted Britain's ugliest building earlier this year.
It was a view that voters on our poll disagreed with - 56.6 % saying it should be seen as a thing of beauty.
Having this reverse in fortunes would seem to be a welcome break from the constant criticism. Or is it?
Now questions have been raised about the validity of the award, which was handed out last week at a black-tie dinner for more than "400 of the key business people involved in property, building and construction".
In an opinion piece, ManchesterConfidential spelt out the issue:
"Amusing that Sir Howard who gave out the gong at the awards campaigned so hard to get the BBC to move to the First Street site in the city centre. And lost.
"All water under the Ship Canal bridge no doubt but - sweet little irony aside - the decision is plain odd for another reason.
"This building award has been given to a collection of buildings not a building.
"It's a Development of the Year award. This is playing hard and fast with definitions."
So was the latest award actually anything to do with architecture - or could it more accurately be described as an acknowledgement of importance of what the development represents to the local economy?
Contributor Mister Tumble thinks so: "One can only presume, seeing as the word 'architecture' is never mentioned and the award is presented by the Chamber of Commerce, that this award is for a building that has had what they consider the most economic impact and is not on any architectural merit."
What do you think? Does it matter if the award doesn't reflect architectural merit? Or that it has been applied to a group of buildings? Perhaps there's a building you think should be considered for reward? Please do feel free to have your say below.
Other mediacity news
* The Express claims actors and senior technical staff working on EastEnders have challenged the show's bosses to rule out a switch of their beloved Albert Square set MediaCityUK.
* Five Live Breakfast presenter Nicky Campbell is the latest celebrity to discover that jokes don't work on Twitter after some people took too seriously his tweet, of a picture of a Michaelangelo-style ceiling, with the caption: "Our new Salford studio. Check out the brilliant mural."
* Economic Voice thinks it has identified a boost for Welsh music as an unexpected byproduct of BBC sport's move. "How else do you explain the decision to disregard the fifth commandment of football broadcasting ('Kasabian shalt soundtrack everything') and choose North Walian surf-rockers Y Niwl for the credits of this season's show instead?" it asks.
* The Salford Advertiser marked the changeover from BBC Radio Manchester from Oxford Road to the new with this audio clip.
Presenter Andy Crane hosted the first programme from the new base at 6am on Saturday morning, saying: "Good morning, this is BBC Radio Manchester, now live from MediaCityUK in Salford."
* The Mirror reports that Gary Lineker is to continue presenting Match of the Day when it moves to Salford. The former England player, 50, will make the weekly 450-mile round trip from his Surrey home to the new studios.
* Property companies are claiming a boost to the rental sector prompted by the development. Jen and Rob Wildblood receive, who own Montrose Properties in Didsbury told the MEN:"At one point we were showing a guy from Newsround, someone from Five Live and a researcher – all on the same day at the same house."
* The Lowry Outlet Mall has confirmed another three signings - Media City Physio, Yankee Candles Outlet and The Harvester Restaurant.
* HowDo reports how MediaCityUK is part of an art installation with passers-by becoming performers when the Scottish collective Sans Façon uses it as the backdrop to its Limelight project.
We'll be bringing you regular updates from MediaCity (Subscribe to RSS here) so if you have any news or views to share please feel free to mention it via the comments below or contact me on Twitter or email
MediaCityUK wins a building prize
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 14, 2011
Manchester's MediaCityUK may be unpopular with certain BBC staff required to travel "up north", but the city takes great pride in the place.
Last night the Salford Quays complex was awarded building-of-the-year prize by Greater Manchester chamber of commerce.
That will be more welcome than the trophy it picked up last month, the Carbuncle Cup, which was awarded by the magazine Building Design.
Phil Cusack, chairman of the chamber's property and construction committee, said the development was "of national economic significance."
He added: "MediaCity will contribute to the economic well-being of Salford, Manchester and the region for generations to come. This award recognises its importance in terms of the immense contribution it is already making."
Source: TheBusinessDesk
Our churches are filled with hidden beauty | Jonathan Jones
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 13, 2011
Despite the ravages of the Reformation, Britain's churches are still full of glorious medieval art. What are the best examples in your area?
I missed some fine misericords last weekend, by all accounts. I was in Beverley in the East Riding to give a talk, and was struck by the beauty of the medieval market town's church and minster. I was told they have excellent carvings inside them, but to be honest, I was tired from talking about Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and I staggered to the train station instead.
My loss. Britain's churches are full of glorious art. It is well known that our medieval heritage of religious art was badly damaged, in many cases obliterated, by the Reformation. Perhaps it is too well known, because it is a half-truth. Before Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, their cloisters were richly decorated, and even parish churches had murals, painted rood screens, sculpted portraits and exquisite wood carvings. Even the violent attacks and systematic destruction inflicted on these buildings in the 16th and 17th centuries could not utterly efface such abundance. Relics of medieval art survive in parish churches as well as cathedrals all over Britain.
This art has been rediscovered by historians in recent decades. The large section of photographs in Eamon Duffy's influential book The Stripping of the Altars is a treasure trove of forgotten British art. Diarmaid MacCulloch's book Reformation begins with a discussion of a 14th-century figure carved into the stonework of Preston Bissett church in Buckinghamshire.
Visual evidence has now become integral to historical research, and these broken figures are windows on to how people in Britain thought and felt about the world 600 years ago and earlier. But they are also magical works of art. How wonderful is it to see a face grinning and gurning in a carving chiselled by a nameless artisan who lived at the time of Chaucer?
The parish church where my grandparents prayed has a lovely stained glass window. Local lore told of it being carefully buried to save it from 17th-century iconoclasts. What about churches in your area? Do they have ancient stained glass (rare) or traces of wall paintings? This is a kind of Time Team investigation we can all do, without a spade. Nude peasants, brave knights and the devil himself are all to be found in the churches of Britain.
Bramley baths campaigners prepare to make takeover bid
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 10, 2011
Russian steam room will be run by people power if Leeds city council accepts local residents' business plan
The campaign to save Bramley's historic but cosy public baths in Leeds, complete with their exotic Russian steam room, has moved up another step.
John reported tirelessly on this in the days of Guardian Leeds and we swam together at a Tweet-in memorable for the excellence of the cake supplied by supporters.
I am very biased on this issue because I learned to swim at Bramley, helped by the strange diet of Wagon Wheel biscuits and Horlicks tablets served up in the mid-1950s by Leeds Corporation. But there is a problem in the gap between delight in the interest and pleasure of both the building and the baths, and the actual number of people who use the place.
Now a band of Bramlegians and local groups have got together under the umbrella of the Friends of Bramley Baths to prepare a business plan for a local management takeover. This takes up Leeds city council's request earlier this year for expressions of interest in such a 'community asset transfer' for the baths, whose opening hours were cut earlier this year from 80 hours a week to 49.
The Friends believe their plan has the makings of a new regime which would "restore the Baths into a thriving centre for health, socialising and fitness", presenting the case to the council before the end of the year and taking over management during 2012 if all goes well. There will be a public meeting with a film about the baths and a contribution from the local West Leeds MP Rachel Reeves from 6-30 – 7.30pm on 20 October at Bramley St Peter's Primary School in Hough Lane.
John Battle, Reeves' predecessor and chair of the Friends who want to restore full opening times and have national support from the Victorian Society, says Put your cozzies where your campaigning is:
We are asking people in Leeds who use or love this beautiful place, to support our efforts by continuing to use it as much as possible in the coming months. We are delighted that Leeds City Council has accepted our initial plan and is supporting us to prepare a full proposal that will show how this asset could be successfully run by a community group as a socially-minded enterprise. Bramley Baths is important to local residents; it is also an architectural gem of wider interest and historical significance. We are not seeking simply to save a building, but to ensure that Bramley Baths serves its local community well; an affordable place where young children can continue to take their first strokes and a place for relaxation, health, fitness and fun for young and old alike.
Rebecca Whittington, 30 and a Friends member, says:
This issue has united a lot of people in the local area who are focused on keeping this useful and important place open. Bramley Baths is a place for people to get fit and stay healthy, but it's also a valuable community hub. We represent a group of people with a wide set of skills and experience, in running businesses, charities and community groups. With the support of the local community and schools, and the expertise of established organisations like Barca, Bramley Elderly Action and West Leeds Academy, we believe we can turn Bramley Baths around in the near future.
The baths opened 107 years ago and are one of only 13 Victorian and Edwardian examples still on the go - their plight has parallels elsewhere, including many more modern public baths which are targets of the public spending cuts.
Latest Beetham tower block administration leaves ‘£50 million debt’
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on October 6, 2011
What next for the cityscapes of northern England as the super-skyscraper era comes to an end?
There's an instructive piece in North West Business Insider about the mountain of borrowing which underlay those modern landmarks of the North, the Beetham property company's various towers. Rising proudly above Liverpool and Manchester they prove to have been built on the sort of credit which has slid away in the crunch, like sand.
Insider's correspondent David Casey has been reading a report from Baker Tilly who were appointed administrators when a winding-up petition was filed at the High Court in July for Regional Landmark Hotels, formerly called the Beetham Organisation.
This puts the amount owed at more than £50 million and follows previous administrations of other parts of the firm, which saw KPMG sell the iconic Beetham hotels in Manchester and Liverpool in March to Cypriot businessman Loucas Louca for an estimated £65-70 million. The full piece is here.
A similar fate befell Leeds' highest profile developer Kevin Linfoot, whose KW Linfoot firm had the vaulting ambition to design a 54-story glass-clad skyscraper with a 32-story twin called Lumiere. The launch scenes were extraordinary, even for the giddiest moments of the city's property boom, with the French designer Philippe Starck holding court amid stiltwalkers, chocolate-coated women and fireeaters.
Linfoot went into administration 19 months later, in February 2009, and the Lumiere handling company sought liquidation the following years. The site remains an undeveloped plot with plans for a temporary minipark being mulled.The skyscraper neededover £1 million just to pay for planning costs.
The elan of the schemes, built or not, was remarkable but many felt queasy at the scale of lending which inevitably had to underly such vaulting notions. It is hard now to recall an era which saw Leeds planners talking about an avenue of skyscrapers marching up the hill towards the university with 23 applications for towers averaging 35 storeys in the planning system in 2007.
What now? Modest development has survived or is restarting in all the major northern cities, but it will surely be a long time before we see ambition again on the scale of this century's first seven years. Where next for architects and property developers; what advice would you give? Can small be beautiful again?
Keep calm and carry on like Europeans
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 28, 2011
I could not detect even a whiff of panic about the euro's future on a recent visit to Florence. Maybe history has taught our continental comrades to have faith in economic unity
Europe. It has a lot of strengths, you know.
In one of the continent's most charismatic cities, Florence, the other day, there was not much obvious sign of panic about the supposed impending collapse of the euro. Anyway, euros were changing hands in large numbers at cafes, restaurants and museums. The Strozzi Palace, with its new exhibition on Medici money, loomed as grandly as it must have done when this most austerely opulent of all Florentine houses was completed in the early 1500s. The same sense of continuity and underlying calm breathed throughout the city's historic heart at the end of what looked to me like a far busier summer season than that of recession-shaken 2009 when I was last here.
Making any predictions right now about the economy would be dumb for an economist, let alone an art critic. So let's acknowledge straight off that things look dire. Catastrophe seems to be impending. And yet ... It has not actually impended yet, has it? The euro has been pronounced as toast by Eurosceptics – and many others – but some people have been saying that all summer, and so far, Europe seems just that little bit more resilient than it is supposed to be.
So here are some – cultural – reasons to wonder if Europe really rests on the edge of an abyss, or if it is, in fact, sitting on a vast historical jackpot of democracy and stability that will see it through.
Most continental Europeans (unlike the British and Americans) have a heritage of military occupation that smoulders under the rebuilt hearts of ancient cities. The second world war saw Nazi rule across the continent. This may not seem such a benign cultural heritage. But it is one reason why many Europeans will always see the value of a big, united, democratic Europe without border controls and – yes – with the fiscal pillars of nationalism submerged in a single currency.
You can find the traces of that history even in beautiful Florence. Visitors might momentarily wonder why, in such a well-preserved city centre, one big patch of modern buildings surrounds the Ponte Vecchio. It is the result of the second world war battle for the city, captured in Rossellini's film Paisà. Of course, Italy, Germany and France have reasons to be glad they are part of an economic union that makes a return to such days unimaginable.
Britain's very different wartime experience of isolated island heroism has made us at once more obsessed with the 1940s and less aware of what they really meant.
But Europe was reborn after 1945 and laid claim to its incredible cultural achievements. Art galleries and architecture, urban planning and modern welfare states all combine to make European cities such as Florence and their surrounding countrysides far better places to live than, say, most American cities – it is continental Europe that regularly tops "quality of life" surveys. Then there is production and economic creativity where Italian designer flair stands out even as its economy gets a bad press. Is the EU really all busted and banged up and ready for the final curtain?
I wonder.
When Europe’s single currency worked – the 1480s
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 22, 2011
A new exhibition in Florence explores money, sin and the birth of capitalism in a city where status and religion battled to prevail
Money – there just isn't any left. But in medieval Europe an abundance of cash appeared as if from nowhere, in new currencies cast in gold. One of these new currencies, the Florin, became the most desired and respected medium of exchange in the Europe that made the Renaissance – the dollar of its day. In Money and Beauty, an exhibition that has just opened at the Strozzi Palace in Florence, yellow Florins twinkle in glass cases, exhibited both as historical evidence and works of monetary art.
The Florin was the currency of one city, Florence, yet it succeeded where the Euro seems to be failing: it gave Europe a "single" currency accepted on all markets. Inventing a pure gold currency of universally accepted value was just one of the ingenuities of the Florentine economic Renaissance. Through contracts and letters, leather money bags and model merchant ships, Money and Beauty tells the dramatic story of the bankers and merchants of Florence and their invention of many basic features of modern capitalism. As the system shudders, it is wondrous to contemplate its fairytale origins in the Medici bank, which devised ways to provide international credit and play the foreign exchanges without falling foul of medieval usury laws. Well, not too far foul.
The sin of usury is richly shown in the exhibition: fragments of a medieval fresco show usurers – those who loan at interest and so make, according to Christian ethics 600 years ago, an immoral profit – in hell. Yet the heroes here are the money men who defied tradition and created modern commerce – heroes such as Francesco di Marco Datini, the Merchant of Prato, who gets a room of his own illuminating his wealth and his attempts to reconcile it with faith. We see him on pilgrimage, as well as in his counting house.
This exhibition – co-curated by British writer Tim Parks and heavily spiced with ebullient interpretative texts in Italian and English – has an ambitious argument to unfold. The plutocrats of Renaissance Florence, claims this exhibition, were tortured by guilt and emotional ambivalence. They craved luxury – even their money chests are works of rare art – but tried at the same time to buy off hell, by lavishing their wealth on religious art.
Cosimo de' Medici, the richest Florentine of all, was the most dedicated in his holy works. The funds he put into building the monastery of San Marco and its library helped to sustain the humanist revival of learning, not to mention the art of Fra Angelico. As it turned out, this Medici monastery also harboured the seeds of nemesis. By the late 15th century, the voice of San Marco was a visionary friar named Savonarola who denounced wealth and luxury. In 1494, he became the charismatic guru of a revolution that cast out the Medici.
That tale is told here through portraits and other relics of Savonarola, and above all by the works of Sandro Botticelli. This one artist embodies both extremes of Renaissance Florence – the rich culture of the Medici plutocrats, and the violent reaction against it. In the 1480s, Botticelli painted his celebrated classical works in the Uffizi Gallery, for the circle of the Medici. But in the 1490s and 1500s, he was a Savonarolan zealot, who saw the opulence and even the style of Renaissance art as a sin.
The exhibition includes one of his most compelling works, the Calumny. This eerie image, based on classical descriptions of a lost work, suggests a nightmare version of Florence itself. Statues in niches, like the ones that decorate the heart of this city, seem to come to life and listen as an innocent man is dragged by the hair before rich, stupid plutocratic King Midas.
Here is a problem with the exhibition. Midas in Greek myth was, it is true, an image of greed – he is the man who asked the god Dionysius to turn everything he touched to gold. So the curators link him to the wealth of the Medici. But this is a different story of Midas. It is a bit strained, and in fact, the curators struggle to find killer visual links between art and commerce. Everything here is fascinating, but where are the Florentine paintings that manifestly explore the imagery and anxieties of wealth?
Still, it is a provocative, stimulating introduction to Florence that will add a bit of historical muscle to any visitor's encounter with the city this autumn. Money and Beauty is a welcome attempt to shake up staid views of the Renaissance. Everyone knows that Florence is a city of staggering artistic beauty. This exhibition reminds us it is also the birthplace of the modern world.
Are Hollywood and high art still compatible?
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 20, 2011
Tinseltown has majestic monuments of the silent era, reminding us of a time when American film and art co-existed. Is that golden age gone forever?
The detritus of artistic ambition lies all over Hollywood like a wreckage of broken dreams. Grauman's Egyptian theatre on Hollywood Boulevard may sound like just another tourist stop, between the Walk of Fame and Universal City, but it is so much stranger than that. The Egyptian opened in 1922 as a temple of imagination and aspiration. Meticulously restored and now used to show independent films by the American Cinematheque, it oozes a serious attitude to cinema.
The Egyptian theatre defies all the cliches of Hollywood vulgarity. Yes, it is over the top – very – but not in the crass, tawdry way beloved by European stereotypes of American culture. On the contrary: it speaks of passion, idealism, and sincerity. Like the Neoclassicists of the 18th century, Sid Grauman built his cinema in meticulous homage to an ancient Egyptian temple. In its forecourt, convincing mythological scenes and hieroglyphs are painted on massive blocks of yellow stone. The portico is supported by bulbous columns that seem copied from Napoleon's epic Description of Egypt. All this demands from filmgoers an attitude of awe and reverence: the religious architecture tells you the film showing inside must have the sublimity of some divine revelation.
Meanwhile, near Sunset Boulevard a half-timbered Tudor facade has survived among the motels, drive-ins and health clubs. Who, in the early years of the 20th century, sought to remember or flaunt his British origins by decorating his studio like an Elizabethan manor house? Charlie Chaplin, that's who. Today his studio is owned, and its historic exterior maintained, by the Jim Henson company, and on the roof stands Kermit the Frog dressed as Charlie.
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This was once a temple to art: in films from The Immigrant to The Gold Rush, Chaplin built on his balletic slapstick genius to create realistic, poetic visions of the modern world that fascinated the European avant garde as much as they delighted the box office. For his art film Ballet Mécanique, the painter Fernand Leger created a dancing Cubist "Charlot" puppet. By 1929, Dali and Bunuel would transfigure the language of film comedy in their surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou.
The eerie monuments of the silent era that still linger in Hollywood are reminders of an age when American film and high art seemed to be compatible. Is that golden age gone forever? It looks that way, when you notice hoardings around Hollywood for new releases like a prequel to the remake of The Thing – one previewer doesn't even appear to know the John Carpenter version was derived from a 1950s original.
Yet on the plane home, the films included The Tree of Life. In its extreme visual beauty and emotional grandeur, Terrence Malick's film resembles some legendary "artistic" effort of the silent age, with the addition of gorgeous colour. As he gets older, Malick seems less and less interested in dialogue, reducing his actors' speeches more than ever to tortuous inner voices, while the visual richness tells us all we need to know.
American film has always existed on the borderland of art and trash, and it has its geniuses today just as in the days when expectant crowds filed reverently into the Egyptian to worship the flickering gods of light.
The wild and beautiful Lake District’s ‘serenely sane, practical and rational homes’
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 19, 2011
The Northerner's arts ambassador Alan Sykes pads round an exhibition about two architects who dreaded what Victorian furniture would do to their austerely lovely work.
Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott and Charles Voysey were leading followers of Philip Webb as arts & crafts architect-designers in late Victorian and Edwardian times. Both men designed houses near Lake Windermere in the Lake District. In Baillie Scott's case, Blackwell has been restored to its former glory by the Lakeland Arts Trust (the people who run Kendal's Abbot Hall Art Gallery) and now stands proudly above the eastern side of the lake, boasting an impressive series of temporary exhibitions, including this one. The Yorkshireman Voysey's Broad Leys, a couple of miles up the lake, is now the home of the Windermere Motor Boat Racing Club, and can also be used as a luxury guest house.
Baillie Scott said, in a phrase which would probably irk some of the more extravagant contemporary architects, "the claims of commonsense are paramount".
Broad Leys shows its L shape and its great windows open to the west over Windermere, and also the meticulous attention to the finest detail that marked both architects – there is even a cast iron ventilation grille which somebody has adapted to use as a trivet. The normally curmudgeonly Pevsner was clearly a fan, describing it as Voysey's masterpiece and adding that it is "overlooking Windermere, with … three distinct large curved bay windows stretching from the ground to the first floor, providing magnificent views over the lake."
Blackwell reminds us how lucky the Lakeland Arts Trust was with how much of the original interior survived its period as a girls' school and as offices – we can even see the original keys and coat-hooks. The quality of the building and its setting have long been acknowledged – the German architect Hermann Muthesius described Blackwell as '…one of the most attractive creations that the new movement in house-building has produced' and credited Baillie Scott with the 'new idea of the interior as an autonomous work of art...each room is an individual creation."
Both architects were keen that their vision would not stop with the physical structure of their buildings, but would go down to the smallest details of fittings and furnishings – as Baillie Scott put it: "every architect who loves his work must have his enthusiasm dampened by a prophetic vision of the hideous furniture with which his client will fill his rooms." He and Voysey got round this by having "formed styles of their own in room decoration, designing everything necessary, from chairs and tables to carpets, wall-papers and window-curtains" – they even designed inkwells and clocks - and both men hated extravagant ornamentation: as Voysey put it, in a domestic interior "we cannot be too simple." His near contemporary Lutyens said: "No detail was too small for Voysey's volatile brain, and it was not so much his originality – though original he was – as his consistency that proved a source of such delight"
The mediaevalism of the arts and crafts movement influenced the size of the rooms: at Blackwell the great entrance hall even includes a minstrels' gallery – although the huge copper light fittings which would have hung over a billiards table do not strike a very Tudor note.
Baillie Scott, a few years younger than Voysey, was clearly an admirer and influenced by his work. In a generous tribute in "The Studio" magazine in 1907, he wrote "If one were asked to sum up in a few words the scope and purposes of Mr. Voysey's work, one might say that it consists mainly in the application of serenely sane, practical and rational ideas to home making… And this beauty … is a beauty of which we will never tire and which is above the changing whims of fashion. Our modern public buildings, which are designed merely to impress the vulgar with histrionic and meaningless architectural features, fail to achieve even this unworthy aim."
Seeing the breadth and vision of the two architects, especially seeing it within the context of the masterpiece of one of them, makes one realize quite how narrow and shoddy most "design and build" contemporary architecture is.
MH Baillie Scott and CFA Voysey, the Lake District and beyond: Arts & Crafts Houses and Furnishings is on at Blackwell, Bowness-on-Windermere, until October 30th.
Campaign to save historic hospital building
Posted by The Sheet in Architecture News on September 19, 2011
After exhausting all other avenues, developer Urban Splash is seeking permission to demolish Ancoats dispensary
A derelict dispensary that has long been a part of the industrial fabric of Manchester and was immortalised on canvas by LS Lowry could be demolished despite a campaign to save it.
Ancoats Dispensary, which was built in the late 19th century to treat patients who did not qualify for the poor law hospitals but who couldn't afford medical bills, is the only remaining building on the Ancoats Hospital site in Manchester. It is Grade 2 listed and requires permission to be demolished.
Developers Urban Splash is asking Manchester city council if it can to demolish the building after exhausting all other possibilities. It will be discussed at a council meeting next month. The dispensary is in a poor state and would require up to £3m to bring it up to modern standards according to the company.
But campaigners launched on an online petition to save it that is supported by the Victorian Society. A Facebook group has also been launched and, so far, it has 100 likes.
The Northwest Development Agency had planned to put money in to save the building's facade, but it fell by the wayside after the NWDA was scrapped by the government.
Heritage Works, a charity which specialises in finding new ways to preserve old buildings, carried out a study to see if it could find interest in the building.
But despite a number of organisations coming forward, the cost of maintaining the dispensary has deterred them.
LS Lowry famously painted it in 1952 in his work Ancoats Hospital Outpatients' Hall. The painting remained in the city and is now at the Whitworth art gallery.
The hospital has long been a source of community pride. When its casualty department was closed in 1987, residents staged a sit-in. The hospital finally closed fully in 1996 and the dispensary is the only remaining building.
But Chris Costelloe, conservation adviser for the Victorian Society, said: "Ancoats Dispensary must be saved. This last remaining fragment of Ancoats' heritage is an impressive survivor in an area that has already lost most of its historic buildings. It must not become the victim of short-term economic concerns."
The Society believes there is insufficient justification for the destruction of the Grade 2-listed building and is urging Manchester city council to refuse consent. In the application Urban Splash focuses on the current development climate, rather than taking a medium term view as required by Government planning policy, and it considers the building in isolation and not as a relatively small part of a much larger development site.
Costelloe added: "The dispensary needs some investment to be made safe and watertight, but one day it could and should be the heart of a regenerated Ancoats. The case for demolition has not been made."
An Urban Splash spokeswoman said: "Urban Splash made the regrettable decision to make an application to demolish Ancoats Dispensary following an exhaustive three years search for a viable use to save the building. The application to demolish the building will be heard on the 27th October by Manchester's planning committee.
"Over the last three years we have looked at a variety of options including conversion to apartments, conversion to offices and even conversion into an art gallery. We have invested over £1 million in the building. Unfortunately the wider economic conditions have meant that none of these options has been commercially viable.
"The greatest chance of saving the building came in late 2009 with a grant of £1m from the Regional Development Agency and work was started under the terms of that contract. Following the abolition of the RDA by the incoming government, this was one of the many contracts that was axed in an effort by the coalition to save public money, even though the contract works were 8 weeks underway.
"This was the last straw for the building and the reason the application to demolish has been made in order to ensure public safety as the building continues to deteriorate.
"On 1st September, Urban Splash were served with a s77(2) notice of the Building Act 1984 which obliges the company to undertake emergency repairs as 'the building has significantly deteriorated and urgent remedial repairs are required'. These works include the taking down of the central tower and the removal of the top floor arched windows and supporting coping stones.
"These works will be undertaken this week and weekend and the materials will be photographed, catalogued and stored in accordance with the requirements and full co-operation of Manchester city council's conservation officer. This is absolutely not the start of the demolition of the building which cannot be commenced until (and if) consent is received on the 27th."
The developer says it continues to work closely and are in talks with Manchester city council to exhaust any avenues that may still remain open to us in an attempt to find a solution that will mean that the building will still be saved.