Lean, efficient design at Manchester’s 28-storey Echo Street

iQ Chandos House (formerly referred to as Echo Street), iQ Student Accommodation’s new 1,224 room student residential scheme in Manchester, is setting a precedent for lean and efficient design as it takes shape on the city’s skyline.

We are civil and structural engineers on the project to create purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) across three towers comprising 16, 22 and 28 stories. 

Located on the edge of the Whitworth Street conservation area, the scheme is targeting strong sustainability and zero-carbon credentials, including BREEAM ‘Excellent’, and has a fully renewable energy and sustainable drainage systems (SuDs) strategy.

Dan Podesta, Associate Director in our Manchester studio and lead for Echo Street, shares how considerate engineering is contributing to the project’s overall success and excellent sustainability credentials. 

“When it comes to tall buildings, pragmatic and efficient design is crucial to the success and viability of the project. As engineers, we are constantly advocating the importance of sensible engineering to drive sustainable, responsible and low carbon construction. By adopting a sensible structural arrangement free from complex engineering gymnastics, we can easily minimise embodied carbon, simplify construction and by extension risk, and improve the chances of project viability.  

“At iQ Chandos House, the complex site involved the reuse of extensive piled foundations constructed as part of a legacy development in 2020. Our role included utilising these piled foundations as part of the main works. 

“We started with an extensive review of previous construction information to justify their reuse for our new reinforced concrete frame. This required us to interrogate design information and construction records to satisfy ourselves that not only was there sufficient design capacity, but we had confidence that what had been designed had also been constructed. This exercise also included pile load testing to provide further confidence. This exercise allowed for the reuse of over 400 existing piles in the ground and the installation of only seven new permanent piles to accommodate an additional staircase for fire escape.

“To support this further and increase the chances of reuse, our initial work started with a search for opportunities to simplify the design. This included adjusting columns grids to remove complicated transfers i.e. a change of column grid on different levels without impacting the space, which in turn reduced construction risk, concrete volumes and improved the robustness of the building. We also  worked with specialist wind tunnel consultants to more accurately predict wind forces and building response accelerations which allowed a significant reduction in concrete volumes within cores and their foundations. 

“The culmination of this sensible and conscientious approach to engineering allowed the removal of over 350 cubic metres of concrete from the design, which would have contributed to additional embodied carbon of more than 300 tonnes.

“Having now completed the project, our team have reassessed the structural embodied carbon within the reinforced concrete frame. Our ‘As Designed’ embodied carbon figures estimate the total embodied carbon to be comfortably within RIBA and LETI 2020 design targets for residential buildings and within five per cent of 2030 targets. This contributed significantly to our clients' ambitions for low carbon design.

“Innovative and considerate engineering has never been more important. The Government’s agenda to deliver new homes and development means there is huge demand for densification of housing. This naturally promotes the construction of tall buildings, particularly in cities, amongst others. At the same time the Building Safety Act, although absolutely necessary in the interest of public safety, has a significant impact on these types of development.

“Our ability to support and help our clients and collaborators navigate through these come from a deep-down understanding of structure, creative problem solving and collaboration with the wider team.

“As collaborators with architects, engineers respond to architecture. However, in the design of taller buildings, architecture dictating structure can often lead to inefficiency. It is therefore crucial that from feasibility, engineers are engaged to explore ideas early to identify challenges and opportunities for improvement before it’s too late. In these scenarios the engineering decisions are paramount to success and should contribute to fundamental decisions on the building.

“This can not only lock in opportunities for carbon mitigation, but improve design quality, which in turn helps to creates spaces, homes, places of work and cities that have a positive impact on people and place.

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) recently reported that almost half (45 per cent) of new building Gateway 2 applications in the UK have been refused between October 2023 and March 2025. This should prompt us all to step back and think about how we can help improve this. Whilst institutional improvements are required within the BSR, the starting point for the construction industry should be to strive for pragmatism in our approach to design, whilst still maintaining design quality, to reduce the burden on the BSR.

“Engineering is key to unlocking tall developments and making them future-fit. There is so much we can add to projects of this scale with simple tweaks based around the fundamentals of maths and physics, alongside our day to day creative thinking. Ultimately this comes down to compromise without sacrifice.”

iQ Chandos House is designed by Sheppard Robson, and we are working alongside main contractor Bowmer + Kirkland, to deliver the project. The wider project team includes Turley as planning consultant, Cumming Group as project manager and quantity surveyor, Waterman as M&E consultant, and Planit as landscape architect.