Stephenson Bell Projects

The first major monograph about Stephenson Bell Architects, the genuinely innovative, award-winning, Manchester-based practice. Ken Powell, the respected architectural critic and writer, explores their career and design philosophy in an introductory essay supported by a project-by-project full colour photographic section. Each project contains a description of the building, the brief, the design challenge and the solution. Stephenson Bell Projects is the first major monograph about Stephenson Bell Architects, the genuinely innovative, highly distinctive, Manchester-based practice. Their work has set the trend in the transformation of Manchester from a neglected post-industrial backwater into a young, vibrant city of international standing. Stephenson Bell's work is clean, beautifully detailed, and subtly modulated to its context. Theirs is what Paul Finch in his foreword describes as 'an architecture of synthesis', reflecting an attitude of respect and admiration for the historical, physical and psychological context of the city, working with rather than against what exists to create sympathetic contemporary designs. New offices such as Trinity Court and Eastgate and loft conversions such as the Smithfield Buildings have marked Stephenson Bell out as one the leading practitioners of regeneration architecture. They have won countless awards, most recently an RIBA Award for Deansgate Quay, which also won a 2001 Housing Design Award along with two other Stephenson Bell schemes. Also in 2001, Roger Stephenson has been awarded an OBE for services to architecture. Written by Kenneth Powell, the respected architectural critic and writer, this book explores Roger Stephenson's and Jeff Bell's careers and design philosophy and is supported by a project-by-project full colour photographic section. Each project contains a description of the building, the brief, the design challenge and the solution, and will be of interest to practising architects, students and the general public.