Reframing Resilience in Manchester

This spring, as we marked 5 years of Heyne Tillett Steel in Manchester, we kicked off a new series of insightful discussions at our Manchester office.

Building on the success of our past sustainability talks, the new series focuses on ‘Reframing Resilience’ at different scales, exploring the opportunities and challenges involved in moving beyond sustainable design and envisaging what a resilient future could look like for UK cities, with particular focus on the North West.

Our second session, in April, homed in on materials. Looking beyond the circular economy to system thinking, this session explored the latest developments in responsible material sourcing; from maximising reuse to optimising the use of low-carbon technologies and supply chain analysis.

Juliana Calabria-Holley, Senior Lecturer at Bath University, began the evening by introducing RENEW – the Centre for Regenerative Design & Engineering for a Net-Positive World, whose mission is to provide global research leadership in regenerative design and engineering. RENEW’s manifesto, launched earlier this year, provides a definition, principles and framework to enable regenerative design and engineering solutions to be widely adopted by professionals in engineering, architecture, and other disciplines as well as by government and industry decision makers.

Ben Gardner, Associate Materials Scientist working within Heyne Tillett Steel’s self-funded research initiative, HTS+, discussed the idea of a resilience hierarchy and the possibilities for reuse and retrofit through structural modification, with particular focus on reusing some of the most abundant materials in today’s built environment: concrete and steel.

Closing out our Materials session, Roy Fishwick, Managing Director of Cleveland Steel & Tubes, shared insights from his 35-year career in steel supply and reuse. Roy outlined the practical considerations of reclaiming and reusing steel sections, providing examples of successful steel reuse projects and tools that simplify the process, like the HTS Stockmatcher.

Concluding this initial trio of events, our May session focused on all things places, looking at how we build for the future, designing places that not only withstand climate change impacts but evolve with communities and generate positive outcomes.

We began this session hearing from Planit’s Senior Urban Designer, Eleanor Lygo, and Director and Landscape Architect, Kevin Redhead, who outlined the practice’s approach of ‘designing for all life to thrive in balance’. They introduced the Regenerative Design Tool: a ‘whole-system’ framework that sees relationships, patterns and feedback loops across ecological, social and economic domains, and illustrated its application in Manchester at Albert Square.

Anthony Benson, Director at Allies and Morrison, spoke on the theme of ‘community resilience’, with a case study of their blueprint for Marsden, West Yorkshire. The design team worked in partnership with the local community to develop a new masterplan that celebrates the post-industrial town’s past, present and future, concluding that community resilience is key to creating resilient places.

Finally, Sonny Dhand, Head of Highways and Transport at Heyne Tillett Steel, spoke of our ongoing work in the regeneration of Earlestown Market Place, St Helens, following decades of underinvestment which eroded civic pride, footfall and economic activity in the area. Focusing on the transport and highways aspect of our role in the project, Sonny demonstrated how integrated engineering can add value beyond traditional infrastructure delivery.