Pods, hot rooms, preparation areas, hero suites and Christie tiles. It sounds like the blue print for a new spaceship being launched but no, this is what is making it’s way to the students of the University of Salford in September 2011.
Unfortunately for me I have just completed my three years of study here but it didn’t stop me from having a little poke around the rapidly finalising MediaCityUK on Thursday.
Until now the MediaCityUK was an area kind of near me that I’d been hearing about for three years, the main reason I ever chose to come to Salford to study and the thing that lecturers were always saying would be our big opportunity. It had never solidified itself in my mind that this really was going to be a hub of media creativity right on my doorstep.
But a ten minute taxi ride later I was starting to see just how within my grasp this really was. With four other Student Reps, two members of staff and the Vice President for the schools affected on board (pictured above, picture 2), we went on a tour of the University of Salford floors in a bid to get a better idea of the transformation of the Salford Quays taking place.
Taking us round were Andrew Cooper, Academic Director of MediaCityUK, Callum Macdonald, Site Manager for Overbury and newly appointed Operations Director for MediaCity Nick Horan.
Overbury are the refurbishment specialists in charge of making Andrew Cooper’s dream a reality. They were given the shell of the building, and an impressive shell it is too (pictured above, picture 4), and are basically interior designers en masse, boasting sites such as Canary Wharf before winning the bid for this project. With 236 builders working on our four floors alone, it’s easy to see how the building site we visited will be completed in 11 weeks ready for the handover on August 29th.
As we walked round each floor the areas in front of us were brought to life with a little imagination (which shouldn’t be hard with so much creativity flowing all around). For me personally I was obviously most interested in finding the journalism suites and I was not disappointed.
For those of you not familiar with the University of Salford I’m going to give you a little bit of background at this stage so that it puts the MediaCityUK area into perspective for you. The current building that houses the journalism courses used to be a factory several decades ago.
The most infamous thing about the Adelphi building is that it is a maze. For my first year of university I would walk through a door expecting to know where I was and find myself in an entirely different section of the building, I could never find the canteen two days in a row and the school office was an absolute mystery to me. After three years I can still be led to a brand new room that I never knew existed and not be able to find it a few hours later. For the journalism rooms you had to find your way to the basement. I know it sounds easy, just keep going down, but the basement is blocked off into various sections. The costume department for the performing arts students is apparently down there as well but being an old factory all the sections of the basement cannot be connected so they could be next to each other but you’d still have to go all the way upstairs and find a new set of stairs to lead you down there. And of course in the basement there is no natural light.
Contrast this to what I am about to tell you and you can understand why exactly I am awed by MediaCityUK to this extent. On the third floor, in a corner overlooking the MediaCity Studios there is a News Preparation Area, fully equipped newsroom which can connect to the TV and radio rooms in the other floors, a presentation space with adjoining control room with specially made state-of-the-art equipment that wouldn’t be out of place in the BBC and Sky studios and a huge newsroom, the biggest room on the floor (pictured above, picture 1). All of these have floor to ceiling windows, air conditioning and every software you could possibly want as a trainee journalist.
But don’t worry, if journalism isn’t your cup of tea the other floors have something for everyone, after all the four floors are going to be home to 39 Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses in a few short months. The third floor is also home to the video editing suites, the ground floor has three black-walled studios which can be used for vocal recordings, filming, theatre productions and so much more.
By the entrance to this magnificent building is one of the most exciting aspects of the move- the Egg. The Egg is an oval stage in the centre of the ground floor, unmissable and therefore the perfect place for displays and performances. What makes it so exciting is that a wall can be built in the centre of this zone to make a room used for seminars or two stage areas. It is the wall that is most interesting because it is built out of Christie tiles, I fairly new invention that act as a projection screen. Films, Twitter feeds and much more can be projected onto the whole wall or onto one tile of it, making it part of the enticing technological developments within the complex.
And this development is not all about the students either. The staff at the University will benefit from magnificent views over the Quays, the 9,000 seating piazza and all the attractions of the area (pictured above, picture 3) as well as a transformation of the way they can work. Floors two and three are open plan areas, with pods for semi-private conversations and hot rooms for entirely private discussions.
Andrew Cooper said that the floors were designed as such because he wants “everyone, including staff, to feel they can move freely” and it certainly does give that impression. On the third floor there is a huge open space with the above ITV floors looking into it. This, Andrew Cooper says, is to help staff and students alike to “use this building as much as possible to display the talents” and who wouldn’t want to with such an important audience on their doorstep?
The original statement about the partnership between the University of Salford and the MediaCityUK was: “It will be an extension of the university’s main campus, acting both as a showcase for cutting-edge projects and exhibitions, and a hub for research and teaching activities.” and it certainly seems to have delivered so far.
Such a good investment, I am sorely tempted to return to education just for the perks of the building which, just with those four floors, is bigger than any other building on the Salford University campus. Watch this space!
No comments:
Post a Comment