Telephone House

This characteristically bold post-war telephone exchange was transformed into student residences in 2015. When it was completed it was Sheffield’s third tallest building. The assemblage of distinct volumes is finished in a mixture of glass curtain walling, brick stair tower and tile-clad sections. Its overriding brown-ness smacks of 1970s tonal palettes and the various serrated and rebated aspects of the facades give a pleasing modernist texture to the whole. A multi-storey car park is incorporated as a podium upon which the tower sits with a gentle cantilever to the Charter Row elevation. It once presided over one of Sheffields sunken pedestrian plazas amidst a post-war road junction. This has been filled in and the road remodelled for the contemporary city. Oxley and Bussey also designed St. Peter’s Church in the city.