Via The Architects’ Journal: “Chips is a new nine-storey block of 142 one, two and three-bedroom flats designed by Alsop Architects. The building must, for now, command the expanse before it. It must be a billboard for a future that will arrive at an unknown date. Fuelled by Alsop’s customary energy, Chips makes a good flagship. It is a big building, 100m long and 14m wide, comparable to the Victorian industrial structures that survive in this area. Giant silk-screened lettering, honouring the names of the region’s canals, is equal to the scale of the site, as is the bold division of the nine floors into bands of three, in yellowish, purplish and reddish hues. Shallow wiggles in each layer, misaligning with each other, animate the block. The middle band of the horizontal tricoleur, or “layer cake”, is the darkest of the three, and projects at each end into 9m cantilevers in a deliberate attempt to create a sense of heaviness, offset by jittering window rhythms and colourful recesses for balconies.”
“The purpose of Chips is not just to boost confidence in the New Islington project, and look good while it waits for further development to arrive. Chips is part of a masterplan, developed by Alsop after consultation with residents of the blighted Cardroom estate, which used to stand on this site. A local pub was re-opened for the consultation, having closed because, according to practice founder Will Alsop, “no landlord wanted to risk his life by running it”. It was made into a meeting place for professionals and residents, who he says were “a vociferous lot”. One of the stronger statements to emerge from residents was that “the sun may not shine much in Manchester, but it does sometimes, and when it does we want to sit by canals”.”
