Wide-angle view of the Express Building on Great Ancoats Street in Manchester city centre, England, UK. The former Daily Express headquarters

A wide-angle view of the Express Building on Great Ancoats Street in Manchester city centre, photographed in August 2025 during a period of bright summer weather. Clear blue skies and strong sunlight create striking reflections across the building’s glass curtain wall, producing changing patterns of light that emphasise its geometric design. Completed in the late 1930s as the northern headquarters of the Daily Express newspaper, the building is one of Manchester’s most distinctive examples of interwar modernist architecture, often described as having strong Art Deco influences. Its use of glass, steel and clean horizontal lines represented a confident, forward-looking image of mass media and modern communication during the pre-war period. Today, the Express Building has been repurposed as office accommodation, forming part of the wider regeneration of Great Ancoats Street and the eastern edge of Manchester city centre. The presence of pedestrians at street level highlights its continued role in everyday urban life, while the reflective façade mirrors the surrounding city, visually linking past and present. The image captures how historic modernist architecture responds dynamically to summer light, and how Manchester’s media heritage buildings have been adapted to contemporary use. It is well suited for editorial use covering architecture, urban regeneration, adaptive reuse, city-centre life, and the evolving relationship between light, material and the modern cityscape.