Landmark to Living Campus
For several decades now, Exchange Quay has been a bold and unmistakable presence in Manchester’s workplace landscape. Its mirrored façades reflect both the city’s evolving skyline and the dynamic businesses housed within, totalling 472,000ft² of Grade A office space across seven striking, medium-rise towers. A defining feature of the campus has always been its large-scale, wayfinding totems. Originally a uniform, monochromatic orange derived from the campus’s feature brand colours, the totems have now been transformed into a vibrant, evolving environmental branding experience, where colour, angle, and light interact to reflect the fluid interchange of people, work, and ideas.
The original orange treatment was bold, powerful, and direct, making a strong marketing statement at the time. Yet over time, its uniformity meant the totems became predictable – visible but somehow invisible – their presence lost in repetition.
The campus has since matured, its garden spaces flourishing, layered with planting, flowers, and nature, while workplace culture has evolved: agile, flexible, and seeking experiences rather than mere functional office space. The totems have now been reimagined to mirror this transformation.
Sector | Workplace
Completion | 2025
Client | Till AM
Sustainability
Ever-Evolving, Always Relevant: A key advantage of the totem redesign lies in its adaptability. By painting each face in a different colour, maintenance can be carried out in small, precise interventions, rather than wholesale recoating of the structure. This shift transforms upkeep into an economical, low-impact process, extending the lifespan of the totems while keeping them fresh, current and responsive to change. Like the city, the businesses and the people who use it, the installation can continually evolve. The result is a design that remains relevant as trends and taste alters, while requiring less paint, less energy and less carbon. This concept aims to reduce obsolescence by being forever interesting and looking good.
Shaping Place Through Form and Colour
This new, place-making evolution links the interiors of the seven landmark buildings with the surrounding landscaped gardens, creating a connected, dynamic sense of place. More than a visual update, it reshapes how the campus is experienced: movement, light, perspective, and colour interact to form subtle cues that guide perception, encouraging people to slow down and engage with their surroundings more mindfully.
Each face of the totems now carries a different, thoughtfully curated colour, offering a series of unfolding experiences. From above, below, or while moving through the campus, they appear to shift and transform, revealing new details at every turn. Walking beneath, around, or past them, visitors encounter a playful, meditative rhythm that turns functional wayfinding into sculptural engagement. They are no longer merely markers but immersive elements of the landscape, offering pause and reflection as part of the workday.
A Journey Through Colour and Perspective
The steel totems now feature a sophisticated spectrum of tertiary colours, with varied hues and tonalities on every face. Colour studies informed the palette, ranging from intense acid yellow to desaturated terracotta and deep cobalt blue, creating an experience that is simultaneously surprising and harmonious. The interiors of each building had existing palettes – strong reds and blues linked to tenants – so a muted uniform approach would not suffice. Instead, each totem was treated as a unique sculptural identity, linked to both its building and the wider campus, using contrasting and complementary palettes inspired by both the landscaping and the architecture.
Each totem is context-specific, reflecting its building’s character while remaining part of the collective campus identity. Like the people working within Exchange Quay, each totem is distinct yet connected, reinforcing collaboration within the broader community. The experience of the totems evolves as one moves through the campus: colours emerge and recede depending on angle, light, and movement, creating a dynamic interplay that transforms perception over time. What was once a loud, static gesture has become subtle, playful, calm, and continually engaging, in harmony with the modern approach to work – agile, adaptable, and rooted in the present moment.
A Place to Work, Connect, and Reflect
Beyond wayfinding, the redesign extended to the podium level, where four former smoking shelters were repurposed into inviting outdoor meeting and social spaces. Situated near the café kitchen, post office, and a lower-level coffee shop, these shelters, now clad in hunter and forest greens, provide weather-protected retreats for work or relaxation, reinforcing Exchange Quay’s identity as a locus for both professional activity and community connection. This move reclaimed previously anti-social spaces, repositioning them as engaging, accessible areas looked down upon from the upper floors or passed on the way to shared facilities, turning overlooked corners into meaningful, humanised elements of the campus.
Behind the Scenes
