Salford Uni’s new MediaCityUK building opens next week
THE University of Salford will open its new 103,000 sq ft MediaCityUK facility to 1,500 students next week, with director Jon Corner arguing that some of the facilities on offer are “as good, if not better” than at Peel Group’s studio complex next door.
The university has spent more than £30m on the fit-out of the building, and a Freedom of Information request from community newspaper The Salford star recently revealed that it is paying just over £20 per sq ft for the space.
On entering the building, it is easy to see where the money has gone. The first two floors alone contain two HDTV studios with galleries, a digital media and performance lab, two radio broadcast studios with additional interview room, and a research facility featuring a bank of ultra-high resolution screens in a research facility known as The Egg.
Studio A is a 21,000 sq ft purpose-built studio, which is of the same size and style as studio 5 in MediaCityUK that the BBC uses to film CBeebies, says Corner.
The full-height Studio B next door is a 500 sq ft facility which has been set up with greenscreen and motion capture facilities.
“The kit in here is first-class,” said Corner. “The studios at the university are equal in terms of set up to those at Media City.”
Rachel Withey, interior designer at architecture practice Fairhursts, said the high-level specification of the products was part of the design brief provided by the university.
“We’re providing the type of facilities for our students to become broadcast engineers,” said Corner. “The students here are not preparing for industry, they’re actually entering it. MediaCity needs the kind of talent we’ll be developing here.”
The ground floor also contains the 3,000 sq ft digital media and performance lab space, which Corner said has been designed as a versatile space that could be used for anything from digital art exhibitions or an orchestra sound mixing space through to displaying games content in high definition or an iMax cinema.
The Egg can be used either by students, commercial partners or even by BBC or ITV executives to display video content controlled via touch-screen tables in a cafe area.
A central staircase runs through the core up all four floors. Lower floors are more open spaces containing some of the more high-tech kit.
Upper floors contain more traditional teaching space, but also have a training studio for news journalists (right), three specialist editing suites and an audio dubbing facility for sound engineering which
h Corner said is the only one available within the MediaCityUK complex.
There is also a dedicated teaching and reception area for students of a digital MBA course.
“It will be a very different type of student who comes here,” he said.
“They’ll be much more motivated. If I were coming here I wouldn’t want to go home.”
The fit-out of the building was undertaken by Overbury and project managed by Buro Four.
