Designs For mediacity:uk Released

Public space designers for the £400 million mediacity:uk have today released a series of new images detailing their ambitious work.

Gillespies will create a large-scale grand piazza with flexible performance spaces, an intimate media park and a bustling boulevard all set adjacent to the stunning waterfront location at Salford Quays. mediacity:uk is being created across 200 acres of Salford Quays and will the UK’s first purpose-built media city, a creative hub to rival other media cities emerging around the world.

The public piazza will be the focus of the development and from it will radiate a network of narrower streets and squares with shared surfaces and minimal traffic access. The majority of the public space will be created next to the water, but pocket parks will provide greenery throughout the development.

The piazza will hold up to 7,000 people for performance and promotional events and this will double as an outside broadcast arena, with a large screen being installed as a permanent feature. The space will provide a potential viewing venue for the 2012 Olympics. The piazza will include a stepped terrace leading down to the Manchester Ship Canal allowing the public better access to the water.

Manchester's metrolink tram will link with the city centre in minutes and deliver passengers to the piazza close to the waterfront at the heart of the development.

Media Park will be a green and pleasant space designed to be more intimate than the piazza. In particular, the park will contain a number of ‘media pods’ - temporary platforms for small scale gatherings of up to 10 people - a meeting space that can be added or removed easily to transform spots in the park into stage sets or temporary recording bases for use by schools and local educational establishments. The pods will be brought alive with lighting - perhaps projecting the results of the day’s recording or other activities into the night sky.

A curved tree-lined boulevard set immediately next to the mediacity:uk buildings and leading to the piazza will be a bustling thoroughfare with bars, eateries and retail. Market Street will link key buildings within the development with retail, restaurants and pocket parks along its length. All the public areas are designed for 24-hour use as there will be round the clock foot traffic from the media corporations but also from the residential, retail and office spaces.

Gillespies partner Jim Gibson says: “As one of the most significant regeneration projects in the North of England - and one where the public spaces play such a pivotal role - the practice is very excited at the way the project has progressed”.

Work is due to start on site within days. Completion of the key public spaces and some buildings is expected by 2010 with an overall completion date of 2011.

mediacity:uk has been developed by a partnership of Peel Holdings Ltd, Central Salford Urban Regeneration Company, the Northwest Regional Development Agency and Salford City Council.