Staff House
Staff House was the only campus building designed by Thomas Worthington and Sons, the architects responsible for the campus masterplan. It opened in 1960, providing dining and recreational facilities for the Senior Union (academic) staff. Claire Hartwell describes it as "an uncompromising frame of big squares, four storeys with a loggia on two sides and Perretesque piers."
Staff House was the only building designed by Thomas Worthington and Sons, the architects responsible for the campus masterplan. It opened in 1960, providing dining and recreational facilities for the Senior Union (academic staff).
Claire Hartwell describes it as "an uncompromising frame of big squares, four storeys with a loggia on two sides and Perretesque piers."
The Lecture Theatre building was the centrepiece of the new campus. Designed by W A Gibbon of Cruickshank and Sewards, it is six -storey tower block mounted on an extended two storey base. Shortly after completion in 1962, it was renamed the Renold building in honour of Sir Charles Renold, chair of the College’s Planning and Development Committee.
Renold provided state-of-the-art teaching facilities for the growing student population; it is believed to be the first purpose-built lecture building at a UK university. It housed a 500 seat lecture theatre and two 200 seat theatres on its lower storeys, with each of the six tower storeys having a 140 seat theatre and teaching rooms.
The Renold building was designed to enhance the collective experience of learning; the architect explained that its spacious vestibules were intended "to develop in students attending lectures a sense of increasing interest and occasion”. The larger theatres were also used for cultural and musical performances, as well as external conferences.
The building is faced with Portland stone with distinctive saw-edged window strips on the eastern side of the building to admit natural light to the lecture theatres. The parabolic shape of the roof plant room is a characteristic touch by the architect, W A Gibbon.
In 1967 a mural by Victor Pasmore, Metamorphosis, was installed in the ground floor vestibule of the Renold building. It was intended to symbolise the transformational nature of UMIST’s educational mission; as Pasmore explained the mural’s “’biological’ type image” was intended to complement “the geometric form of the architecture. “
The photograph shows Pasmore supervising the installation of the mural.
The Civil Engineering building was opened in 1963, and later renamed in honour of Sir Maurice Pariser, a city councillor and sometime chair of the UMIST Council.
Designed by Harry Fairhurst and Son, it is an eight-storey brick building with the uppermost levels faced in copper cladding. Pariser is very similar in appearance to other Fairhurst buildings on the main University campus, especially the Williamson and Simon buildings.
The building provided accommodation for the departments of civil engineering, building, municipal engineering and parts of mechanical engineering. Pariser was a clear reflection of the campus plan's philosophy that new buildings “must be designed primarily with their purposes in view… they must be designed from the inside outward”. [Planning and Development Committee minutes TGB/2/5/1]
Pariser provided personal working space for over 300 undergraduates. It included drawing offices, lecture theatres and an industrial design centre, and there was a weather station on the roof. The low-level hydraulics laboratories adjoined at a right -angle on its south-eastern side. The building was extended towards Sackville St in 1966/7 to provide extra laboratory/workshop accommodation.