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The Blade
A visual emblem of a rapidly evolving Manchester skyline, The Blade residential skyscraper cuts a striking silhouette across a gateway cluster of tall buildings on the southern approach to the city’s center.
With its 2:1 width-to-depth ratio, The Blade is the slenderest tower in the New Jackson development, tapering to a sharp edge and designed with long, curved elevations. This shape presented our structural engineering team with a familiar challenge, which we met with a specialized hybrid, precast concrete and steel structure design to ensure structural stability. The internal structure features precast concrete "blade columns," with steel used for other structural components, like delta beams.
| Client | Renaker |
|---|---|
| Architect: | SimpsonHaugh |
| Size | 51 Stories | 450,000 SF (42,000 SM) | 503 Feet (153 M) tall | 414 Units |
| Office: | Hebden Bridge |
| Completion: | 2023 |
To counteract torsional forces from the wind, we elongated the building's core and reinforced it with additional walls on certain floors. Though very slender, The Blade incorporates wing walls on its lower levels for added stability.
The first tower in the Crown Street cluster designed with exposed external concrete columns, The Blades’ triple-height, oval-shaped columns over the first three levels align with the exposed cylindrical columns of its nearby sister tower, known as Three60, to create a visually harmonious streetscape. The two towers share a podium.
With different cladding on its street-facing side, it’s the only tower in the cluster to feature a variety of façade treatments for a dynamically contrasting aesthetic identity.
As the first building in the second phase of the developer’s Crown Street scheme, The Blade, with commercial units at the street level, signaled the next wave of transformation for this this vibrant community.
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