The 30-year-old building, which had lain empty for nearly a decade, was flattened to make way for the major redevelopment of the area backed by the university, Salford City Council and the English City Fund (ECF).

The university confirmed to the AJ that the block had been pulled down ‘in line with the demolition approval’ as the plans for the plot north of the Farmer Norton car park were lodged.

The Hodder building was completed in 1995 and was described as a ‘dynamic, modern and sophisticated exercise in steel, glass and concrete’ when it won the first RIBA Stirling Prize the following year. It was originally designed to be the School of Electrical Engineering before a change of use, during construction, to the Faculty of Art and Design Technology.

Despite efforts from environmental campaigners and a failed attempt by heritage group The Twentieth Century Society to get the landmark listed, the council signed off the university and ECF’s ‘prior approval’ application for demolition just before Christmas last year.

Buttress’s proposal, known as Old Adelphi, sits within the proposed wider Adelphi Village residential community of around 800 homes east of the River Irwell. It is one of the zones that make up the £2.5 billion, 240-acre Crescent Salford masterplan, which aims to provide more than 3,000 homes in total.

The scheme features a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom apartments and duplexes across tgree buildings, rising to five and six storeys, opposite the Willohaus – 100 Passivhaus apartments currently under construction.

Massing of the Buttress Old Adelphi scheme

Lawrence Myatt, senior project manager at ECF, said: ‘Through Crescent Salford, we’re creating communities that are built to last, and this next stage of Adelphi Village will deliver a diverse mix of homes to meet the needs of people in Salford.’

Myatt said the proposed homes, on the now cleared site had been ‘designed with sustainability, wellbeing, inclusivity and community in mind’.

Hodder Associates founder Stephen Hodder said that it was ‘very disappointing’ that the Centenary hadn’t been adapted and repurposed for the community.

Speaking to the AJ when plans to demolish the block first emerged last November, Hodder said he had received the news with ‘great dismay’.

He said: ‘This is not borne out of nostalgia, it being the inaugural RIBA Stirling Prize winner, nor indeed the importance of the building to the development of our practice, but as an original signatory to Architects Declare and past chair of the Construction Industry Council’s Climate Change Committee, I simply cannot support the demolition of a building that is only 30 years old.

‘For a university that promotes its sustainability credentials, the intention to demolish surely undermines the credibility of its policy.’

If Buttress’s Old Adelphi is handed consent by Salford City Council, work is due to begin in spring next year.

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