City Gardens

City Gardens provides stylish city living accommodation within the DeTrafford Group’s Manchester Gardens masterplan creating a new district adjacent to the vibrant Castlefield area.

Date

2022

Client

DeTrafford Group

Value

£14m

The scheme consists of 109 one and two bedroom open-plan apartments and three-bedroom triplexes, with basement car and bike parking, communal roof garden and contemporary interiors on the city fringe. The scheme is part 11 storey and part 8 storey. The taller elevation addresses Chester Road – one of the main arterial routes into the heart of Manchester linking the city centre to Salford Quays and Cheshire. The building then steps down to 8 stories where the roof garden level is situated, adjacent to Spinners Way, the new shared surface street in the heart of the overall De Trafford Manchester Gardens neighbourhood located on the edge of the Castlefield Conservation Area.

The 8 luxury triplex apartments situated at the top of the building have access to private external terraces on the roof garden. The apartments to the north also have recessed balconies and all dwellings have large amounts of glazing in the facades creating light and airy accommodation. The site is bound by existing utilities with constraining easements on all 4 sides. The scheme design by OSA included a variety of architectural features, complex geometry and a broad materials pallet. It provides a wide range of accommodation types and varied internal and external private spaces appealing to a range of discerning customers seeking character and individuality.

jmarchitects were brought in at delivery stage and have provided architectural services from Stage 3 to completion, carrying out statutory compliance reviews and amendments, design development, coordination and technical output including bespoke detailing to execute the ambitious design on a very constrained site. jmarchitects provided BIM modelling in Revit, significantly aiding coordination with the light-weight steel frame designer, structural and MEP engineers.

Project gallery

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The Challenge

jmarchitects were asked to step into the architectural role for this scheme just a few weeks prior to the scheme starting on site with a brief to hit the ground running.

The Solution

This complex and intricate design inherited from the previous architects was created in a BIM environment using Revit within two weeks by a dedicated team at jmarchitects. This provided the construction team with the 3D information required for structural and M&E coordination.