The Blade & Three60, New Jackson

What are The Blade and Three60?

These are two of the newest additions to the New Jackson skyline. The Blade is known for its distinctive sharp-edged profile, while Three60 is Manchester’s first cylindrical skyscraper, offering a unique circular perspective to the city’s high-rise architecture.

Together, the two towers form one of the most visually striking pairings in Greater Manchester’s modern skyline. Set within the emerging New Jackson neighbourhood — a major regeneration area between Deansgate and the River Irwell — they are surrounded by new public realm, landscaping and pedestrian routes that frame them against both the historic city centre and the newer Salford developments across the water.

Why Shoot Here?

• Geometric Contrasts: The sharp, angular lines of The Blade contrasted with the smooth, circular form of Three60 provide a fascinating study in geometric architectural photography.
• Glass Textures: Both towers feature high-quality glass cladding that creates intricate reflection patterns, especially during the “golden hour.”
• Innovative Design: Capture the cylindrical form of Three60 from various angles to show how it changes the perception of space in the district.
• Modern Streetscape: The area around these towers is being developed with high-end landscaping, providing clean and modern foreground elements for your shots.

Best Times to Shoot

• Golden hour (late afternoon, west-facing) — The glass cladding on both The Blade and Three60 faces multiple directions, but the west-facing sections turn amber and orange in the final 30 minutes before sunset. Three60’s cylindrical form is particularly interesting in warm evening light: as the sun drops, the lit arc of the cylinder migrates across the building’s circumference, creating a constantly shifting highlight pattern. Shoot from the eastern side of Owen Street for the best angle on this effect.
• Blue hour — Both towers illuminate from within as residents return in the evenings. The Blade’s sharper, angular edges and Three60’s smooth curve are both legible in blue-hour conditions, and the contrast between the two forms is most apparent at this time when artificial and ambient light are balanced. The new New Jackson public realm has good sightlines to both towers from the south.
• After rain — The polished stone and smooth concrete of the Owen Street public realm create high-quality puddle reflections after rain. Both towers reflect cleanly in larger puddles, and the distortion created by uneven pavement surfaces around the puddle edges adds a useful quality to the abstract reflection composition.
• Clear days with moving cloud — Three60’s circular glass facade reflects cloud movement dynamically as clouds cross the sky. The curved surface wraps the reflected clouds around the building’s circumference in a way that no flat-glazed building can. On a day with fast-moving cumulus, the reflection changes every few seconds and rewards patience with a sequence of different cloud-wrapped images.

Composition Ideas

• Both towers together from Owen Street — Find a position on Owen Street where both The Blade and Three60 are visible in the same frame with a 35–50 mm lens. The juxtaposition of The Blade’s hard-edged angular profile against Three60’s smooth curve is the primary subject; compose so neither building dominates and the contrast between the two forms is the explicit content of the image.
• Walking-around Three60 — Photograph Three60 from at least four compass points: each position reveals a different proportion of the curved surface and a different skyline or street context behind it. From some angles the building appears almost flat; from others, the curvature is extreme. A 35 mm lens from 20–30 metres gives the most natural, undistorted reading of the building’s form.
• Upward from the base of The Blade — Stand at the base of The Blade on the public realm and aim a 16–24 mm ultra-wide directly up the building’s facade. The angular cladding and the sharp corner geometry of the building create converging vertical lines that meet at the top of the frame; on a clear day the blue sky provides a clean backdrop.
• Public realm as compositional foreground — The landscaped ground plane around both towers includes clean-edged planting beds, flush-lit paving, and minimal street furniture. Use a 24–35 mm lens from a low angle — 50–60 cm — to include the paving pattern or planted bed in the foreground with the towers rising behind. The contrast between the human-scale design elements and the towers’ height is a consistent device for these New Jackson buildings.