Urbanism
Environment
Design

info@urbed.coop

The Hulme History Project is a collaborative project which aims to let as many people as possible view and access the URBED Hulme Archive via an interactive webiste hulmehistory.info. We celebrated our 40th anniversary in 2015 and to mark the occaision we arranged some events and debates in cities all over the UK looking at places we have worked and the different areas of our work. In September we hosted an event in Hulme to look back at the work David Rudlin and Charlie Baker carried out there. The activities and work done in Hulme ultimately evolved into the design practices and engagement processes URBED continue to use today.

URBED collaborated with Delphine Hollebeq, Kim Foale, Sylvia Koelling and Pheobe Queen to create an interactive website. You can browse URBED's extensive archive, view select documents from the archive, information from additional collections and learn about Hulme's regeneration story: hulmehistory.info. It also signposts you to other collections about Hulme. The site is still being developed and we welcome additional content so please get in touch if you would like to submit an item. We also worked with Archives+ at Central Library to allow the archive to be searched at Central Library as well.

Although Hulme was not strictly an URBED project. David Rudlin was the local planner for the area before joining URBED and, together with Charlie Baker and Helene Rudlin, set up the Homes for Change Housing Cooperative where URBED’s first Manchester office was based. David and Charlie also wrote the Hulme Guide to Development which coded the re-development of the area. Home for Change was one of the first developments to be built in Hulme and URBED later set up their Manchester office in the Works for Change building and used Hulme as a test bed for their work on the Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood.

The URBED’s Hulme archive is available for anyone to view at MMU Special Collections, 3rd floor, All Saints Library, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, M15 6BH. Admission is free and it is open to all. If you’re a Manchester Met student or member of staff, please remember to bring your ID card so that you can swipe into the entry gates, located just inside the Library. If you’re not a Manchester Met student or member of staff, please ask for assistance at the Library Helpdesk, located next to the entry gates. Please email the Special Collections teams for further enquiries: lib-spec-coll@mmu.ac.uk