Sun-dappled car fortress in the Northern Quarter, Manchester, 2025

A red brick multi-storey car park stands on a street corner under a clear blue sky. Several yellow P parking signs are mounted on the building. A person walks past the entrance, and sunlight casts strong shadows on the walls.
A brick building with three floors, each featuring rectangular, open window spaces without glass. The lower level has barred windows and graffiti on the right. The façade is sunlit with shadows, and the roof has black lamps. Sky above is clear and blue.

This doesn’t qualify as modernist, or even really as a delight, but it made me laugh how something so thoroughly modern and utilitarian masquerades itself amongst the Northern Quarter’s Victorian mills and factories with the use of red brick. A concept long forgotten in Manchester’s development-mania, of course, with everything now built out of steel, concrete, glass, and cladding.

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#car fortress #manchester #northern quarter #not modernist not a delight