The Foundry

The Foundry transforms a 1920s iron-casting workshop in Manchester's Ancoats into a 2,800 sqm co-working campus. The project was conceived as a direct response to the homogenisation of the flexible workspace market — a place that draws its identity from the industrial heritage of the city rather than the generic playbook of the global co-working brands.

The original cast-iron columns and roof trusses have been cleaned and expressed, forming the structural armature around which the new programme is organised. A series of inserted volumes — meeting pods, phone booths, quiet rooms — are finished in a darker, contrasting palette that reads clearly as additions rather than replacements.

The ground floor operates as a gradient from public to private, with a street-facing café and events space giving way to open-plan working areas and then enclosed studios. A central atrium, formed by removing a section of the original roof and replacing it with a saw-tooth glazed lantern, provides the social heart of the scheme.

Acoustic performance was a primary concern throughout the design. Recycled rubber flooring in the open-plan areas, fabric-lined ceiling panels, and heavy wool curtains to the glazed meeting rooms ensure that the building works as productively as it looks.