Kilburn Building

The Kilburn Building
The Kilburn Building seen from the Oxford Road in 2011
Former namesComputer Building
General information
Location53°27′50″N 2°13′51″W / 53.4639°N 2.2308°W / 53.4639; -2.2308
Construction started
1969
Completed
1972
Cost£1.5 million
OwnerUniversity of Manchester
Technical details
Size76 by 76 metres square
Design and construction
ArchitectBuilding Design Partnership
Website
www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/about/maps-and-travel/

The Kilburn Building is a building on Oxford Road in Manchester which is home to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. The building was designed by the Building Design Partnership and completed in 1972, with three storeys in a square shape, measuring 76 by 76 metres. The building was formerly known as the Computer Building changing its name in 2001 in honour of Tom Kilburn who died in the same year.

Architecture and history

The Pevsner Architectural Guide describes the Kilburn building as a "big aggressive box of brick pier and vertical window strips" which has also been likened in appearance to a giant brick central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU) heat sink. The second floor features an Auguste Perret style paved piazza which initially featured a fibreglass structure known as the floating point zero.

Up until its demolition in 2015, a pedestrian bridge connected the Kilburn Building to the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), via the Precinct Centre on North Side of the building over the Oxford Road. To the South, the building was connected by another pedestrian walkway (referred to as a dismal corridor in Pevsner) to the Mathematics Tower, Manchester which was demolished in 2005.

The pedestrian walkways initially formed part of a futuristic but ultimately unsuccessful vision of streets in the sky to link Manchester Oxford Road railway station and out to the Hulme Crescents in Hulme and also to Ardwick.

The building was extended on the east side by the information technology (IT) building which was officially opened by Anne Mountbatten-Windsor in 1988.

Some of the first computers housed in the building were the CDC 7600 and the 1906AICT 1900 series from International Computers Limited (ICL).

The cornbrook, a culverted river which drains the urban area South of the River Medlock, flows under the Kilburn building on its way from Gorton to the Manchester Ship Canal at the Pomona Docks.

Images of the Kilburn building can be seen in the gallery below:

References

  1. 1 2 3 Pullan, Brian; Abendstern, Michele (2000). A History of the University of Manchester 1951-73. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719056703. OCLC 59581673.
  2. ↑ Anon (2002). "The Kilburn Building". manchesterhistory.net. Archived from the original on 17 October 2018.
  3. ↑ Anon (2010). "Kilburn building floorplans". manchester.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 8 October 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Hartwell, Clare (2001). Manchester: Pevsner Architectural Guides. London: Yale University Press. ISBN 9780140711318. OCLC 47232929.
  5. ↑ Anon (2023). "How to find us". cs.manchester.ac.uk.
  6. ↑ Wilkes, Maurice; Kahn, Hilary J. (2003). "Tom Kilburn CBE FREng. 11 August 1921 – 17 January 2001". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 49: 283–297. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2003.0016. S2CID 71234844.
  7. ↑ Anon (2010). "Kilburn Building Stock Photos and Images". alamy.com. Alamy. Archived from the original on 4 February 2026.
  8. ↑ Anon (2015) Precinct Bridge Demolition: University of Manchester on YouTube
  9. ↑ Williams, Jennifer (2015). "Revealed: The utopian 1960s vision for Manchester that never took off". manchestereveningnews.co.uk. Manchester: Manchester Evening News. Archived from the original on 9 April 2016.
  10. ↑ Lavington, Simon (1998). A History of Manchester Computers (2nd ed.). British Computer Society. ISBN 9781902505015. OCLC 156380308.
  11. ↑ Anon (2022). "The culverted Cornbrook river". hidden-manchester.org.uk. Archived from the original on 23 July 2021.
  12. ↑ Anon (2019). "Cornbrook Manchester - Rebooted". 28dayslater.co.uk. Archived from the original on 21 February 2020.
  13. ↑ Anon (2008). "Cornbrook Drain". substormflow.com. Archived from the original on 31 May 2015.