Toast Rack Manchester PopArc

This framed plaster relief is inspired by the Toast Rack — the Hollings Building in Fallowfield, Manchester, designed by City Architect Leonard Cecil Howitt and completed in 1960 as the city's Domestic and Trades College. Its twenty-three tapering concrete arches, curling over the roof like the hoops of a toast rack, make it one of the most recognisable buildings in the north of England. 

Read the full Toast Rack architecture guide

 

Manchester's concrete hoops, in three-dimensional relief

 

The Toast Rack is a building that is almost entirely silhouette. The row of arches, the floors stepping inward as they rise, the open hoops standing clear above the roof — that outline is the building, and it is what the PopArc shows.

This wall piece captures the famous west elevation:

• the full run of tapering concrete arches, evenly spaced and curving over at the top
• the stepped profile, widest at the ground and narrowest at the crest
• the horizontal bands of brick and window between the ribs

Cast in plaster and set against a coloured ground, the frame stands proud of the background in real relief, so the arches cast their own shadows as the light moves across the wall.

 

Why the Toast Rack works as a PopArc wall piece

 

The Toast Rack translates unusually well into wall-mounted form because its character is carried by:

• rhythm rather than decoration
• outline rather than surface — the building is a diagram of its own structure
• a shape that stays legible at any size

Reduced to a relief, it loses nothing. If anything, the coloured background does for the plaster what a clear Manchester sky does for the real thing: it turns a pale frame into a graphic.

 

Craft, framing, and finish

 

Each Toast Rack PopArc is cast in plaster from a mould taken from our master pattern and finished by hand in our Sussex studio, then set in a plaster frame of roughly A4 size with a felt back and hanging hole. The relief is left in a natural plaster finish so that depth and shadow, not colour, articulate the architecture.

Choose from six background colours. The warmer grounds suit the building's playful character; the blues and greens read as the park it faces.

The piece sits naturally in:

• hallways, landings and stairwells, where a single strong shape works best
• kitchens and dining rooms — a catering college on the wall of a kitchen is a quiet joke worth making
• studios and offices with an interest in postwar design

It appeals to Mancunians, former Hollings students and anyone who likes a building with a sense of humour.

 

A Manchester landmark as wall-mounted art

 

Built for a city rebuilding itself, the Toast Rack is Festival of Britain optimism in concrete: structure as spectacle, light rather than heavy, and cheerful where the Brutalism that followed it was severe. It was Grade II listed in 1998 and has stood empty since 2013, waiting for a new use. On the wall, it is the version of the building that never needed one — just the shape, which was always the point.

 

Product details

 

• Subject: Hollings Building ("the Toast Rack"), Old Hall Lane / Wilmslow Road, Fallowfield, Manchester
• Architect: Leonard Cecil Howitt, Manchester City Architect
• Architectural style: Postwar modernism; structural expressionism
• Completed: 1960
• Listed: Grade II, 1998
• Format: Framed PopArc wall relief, six background colours
• Designed and made by: Chisel & Mouse

 

Learn more about the Toast Rack

 

For the full story — why the arches taper, what the Fried Egg is, the college's history and the long wait for redevelopment — see our in-depth guide:

Toast Rack Manchester Architecture: L. C. Howitt's Concrete Hoops in Fallowfield

Address: Toast Rack, Old Hall Lane, Manchester, M14 6HQ, England

Penultimate photo by Mickey. Final photo by Cjc13.