Advertising Agency Offices, Oldham Road, Manchester 2 Part 1 Project 2004 Jamie Wallace Manchester School of Architecture Manchester | UK The buildings and spaces that touch Oldham road have been forced into an evolutionary existence. To retain any value they must mutate with the people and vehicles that use the road. A church becomes a nail-salon; a factory becomes a school. Typologies are meaningless.By organising the programme in relation to its level of flux, spaces are created that allow and encourage fluid programmes to take place.Four strips form the scheme, each with different levels of malleability, each drawn from existing, proven typologies and each wrapped in a common language. The un-missable and unavoidable language of the street. How much is space worth? This question framed a study exploring how urban, architectural and brand value is defined, generated and perceived. Top Trumps analysis of comparative urban value initiated a design approach that embraces excess and the void, massive and ephemeral, corporate and frugal, glitzy and minimal. Amplifying the Oldham Road context of permanent instability and banal economically driven construction, and using analysis of Approved Documents, total site coverage (6400m2) is achieved whilst conforming to a restrictive programme of office accommodation (1000m2). Through maximising existing site conditions a new form of office emerges; flexible, rigid, anti-hierachical, and status loaded.