CIS Tower

The tower is situated on Miller Street, which forms the Manchester Inner Ring Road, and stands adjacent to New Century House, a high-rise office building also designed by Gordon Tait and G. S. Hay and constructed concurrently for the CIS's parent company, the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS). The plot on which the building stands had been heavily bombed during World War II and subsequently cleared. The site chosen for CIS Tower and New Century House was one of two areas of land offered by the local authority; the other site was in Piccadilly, but this came with the condition that any development scheme had to include shops and a hotel. Not wishing to compromise their autonomy, the CIS board chose the Miller Street site. More than 6,500 people work in the neighbourhood. ==Architecture==

Form The office tower building rises above a five-storey podium block. Each of the podium floors is , providing of floor space per storey. Each office floor in the tower is , creating of floor space per storey. The tower element consists of the steel-framed main office building and a windowless reinforced concrete service tower. The service tower rises higher than the main office block and houses lifts and stairwells. The building has a symmetrical plan, with the main tower rising up from the north-eastern end of the podium block and projecting at the front over the first two floors and the main entrance. with clear open spaces on the office floors. Façade Both the office tower and podium feature glass curtain walls with metal window frames. Black vitreous enamel panels demarcate the floor levels. The building materials, glass, enamelled steel and aluminium, were chosen so that the building could remain clean in the polluted Manchester atmosphere. The tower's concrete service shaft, which rises above the office tower, has two bands of vents at the top and was clad in a mosaic made up of 14 million centimetre-square grey tesserae. designed to shimmer and sparkle. Interior A green bronze-like, abstract mural sculpted by William Mitchell made from fibreglass covers the entrance hall's rear wall. Interiors were designed by Misha Black of the Design Research Unit. The executive areas are delineated by the use of teak and cherry wood veneers. ==History==

Development Planning The CIS board of directors decided that a new headquarters was needed to accommodate its 2,500 staff, who were dispersed in 10 different buildings across Manchester. In January 1953, CIS General Manager Robert Dinnage told his board to begin planning a new head office and that year entered into initial discussions with Manchester Corporation (now Manchester City Council). The design brief for the building, devised by Dinnage, was threefold: to convey the prestige of the CIS and the co-operative movement; to improve the appearance of Manchester in which the Society was one of the largest financial organisations; and to provide first-class accommodation for the staff. The tower's design was influenced by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Inland Steel Building in Chicago after a visit by the architects in 1958. Having viewed the Inland Steel Building, the project team decided to aim for clear unbroken floors unobstructed by lift shafts and toilets to provide maximum flexibility. In 1958 the company proposed building an office tower block, designed by G. S. Hay, chief architect of the CWS with Gordon Tait of Sir John Burnet, Tait and Partners. Construction Construction began in September 1959 and was completed in 1962 at a cost of £3.98 million (equivalent to approximately £86.8 million in 2020). The main contractors for the CIS Tower were John Laing Construction Ltd, with A. E. Beer as the structural engineering consultant, and O. Castick, Chief Engineer of CWS as the engineering services consultant. Renovation Within six months of construction, some of the mosaic tiles on the service tower became detached owing to cement failure and lack of expansion joints in the concrete. Although the tower was granted listed building status in 1995, falling tiles were an ongoing problem. English Heritage had to be consulted as alterations could change the building's appearance. In 2004 CIS consulted Solarcentury with a view to replacing the deteriorating mosaic with of blue building-integrated photovoltaic (PV) cells which would generate approximately of electricity per year. The work was completed by Arup and at that time was the largest commercial solar façade in Europe. The PV cells made by Sharp Electronics began feeding electricity to the National Grid in November 2005. The project, which cost £5.5 million, was partly funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency which granted £885,000 and the Energy Savings Trust at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) contributed £175,000. The planning application was submitted to Manchester City Council in late June and includes a restaurant spanning levels 25 and 26, alongside plans for a communal external terrace, a business lounge, and coworking space on level seven. ==Critical reception and listed status==

Upon its completion, the tower was praised by the architectural press and was awarded the bronze medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1962. was listed for its "discipline and consistency". ==See also==