Welcome to brand Manchester

Flop off the Pendolino, dodge the weekend hen parties patrolling Piccadilly station – and you emerge into a giant marketing jamboree. That’s not unusual in a city centre, except that what visitors to Manchester are being sold is Manchester itself.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/04/welcome-to-brand-manchester

The Modernist

20th century modernist design and architecture in the NW of England, from Runcorn’s lost utopia to Blackpool Casino, from Forton Services to Manchester’s UMIST campus.

If you love the 20th century architecture and design of the NW, from Cheshire to Cumbria, Blackpool to Blackburn… Manchester, Liverpool, Preston and the rest, the modernist magazine is just the ticket, we regularly feature articles, interviews, news, reviews and travel.

We’ve handpicked a team of experts, and dilettantes alike, to bring you news, musings and delightful titbits about modernist architecture and design in the NW.

http://www.the-modernist-mag.co.uk/

Industrial Change in Manchester – an Aerial View

The story of how Britain’s industrial heartlands have been transformed, told on the basis of photographs secretly taken by the Luftwaffe in 1939 and images of 2008.

Britain from above – with Salford and Trafford Park in Manchester (on BBC iplayer)

snapshot: Salford

Manchester: More daytime & evening entertainment

Tips from a bouncer:

Sandbar

Marble Arch apparently the pub of a brewery. A bit away from “student mainland”, but maybe when you are around in the north, you might want to have a look…

Briton’s Protection just the name sounds worthwhile. A old school pub, it seems.

Micron @ Joshua Brooks a small club in the premises of Joshua Brooks. Seems decent and affordable.

It’s green up north: civil servants get preview of Manchester’s Whitehall

Three eco-friendly towers set in sculpture-lined grounds proposed for 5,000 civil servants moving from London

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/dec/08/manchester-northern-whitehall-plans

Urban exploration

A student pointed out this wonderful web page about contemporary urban explorations.

www.28dayslater.co.uk

There are excellent pictures of Manchester’s Second World War air raid shelters. They have been part of my urban myth since long but I had never seen picture before.  There are also picture of Mayfield station, a huge derelict railway station right in the centre of Manchester. It must be one of the last spots of undeveloped real estate in the city’s centre. Coincidently I saw news about a major investment scheme For Mayfield station today. Hurry if you wish to see it.

Other threads are also fascinating. I found hospitals particularly intriguing although for morbid reasons. Something nightmarish hangs in these rooms. Their walls, saturated with pain, are slowly releasing the sufferings of former inmates through decomposing material, flaky paint and rotten roofs.

Voila a book by Keith Warrender about Manchester’s underground:

A night out in Manchester with Peter Hook

Joy Division, New Order and Haçienda co-founder Peter Hook takes us on a tour of his home town, featuring DJ Luke Unabomber and indie band Delphic

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2009/oct/29/peter-hook-manchester-music-tour