Renold Building, UMIST, W.A. Gibbons

Where does the time go? I've been an admirer of this building for so long and only this weekend did I get around to photographing it. That staircase in the centre of the frame is what first caught my eye. It still manages to feel futuristic five decades after its completion. I first saw it from the train on the way into Manchester on the elevated line that runs through the city and provides so many of its best views.

Another striking feature of the building is the concertina-shape of the glazing at this end, which was designed to meet the acoustic needs of the lecture theatres inside.

At the time the complex was built it was called the Manchester College of Science and Technology (later UMIST) and it is regarded as having embodied Harold Wilson's white-heat-of-technology vision. In fact I can't help speculating that it might have inspired those words, given that it is undeniably very white and that in the early '60s everything around it was soot-blackened.

Up close, the block on the left, above, has enough layers of paint on its metalwork that it begins to take on the appearance of woodwork in Victorian houses. It is a strange feeling to watch the future recede into the past.