Not far from Manchester's cathedral and Victoria Station, on an area that once was the confluence of the Irwell and Irk rivers (today underground canals), Chetham's School of Music is a campus with several very ancient buildings, such as a medieval manor house fortified and a 15th century library.
The firm of Roger Stephenson Architects has completed the radical restructuring and extension of the campus, a project worth 36 million pounds sterling: the Manchester firm has created a new modern music teaching and academic complex, providing a cutting-edge environment for students. The new building comprises a concert hall seating 350 people, an acting room seating 100 people and an academic school with over one hundred specific environments for teaching and rehearsals.

For the interiors have been placed about three thousand square meters of New Stone slabs of Ceramiche Piemme: fine porcelain stoneware with colored mixture that incorporates the aesthetic characteristics of natural materials with superior mechanical performance of strength and durability. New Stone is in line with the most current rules in the "green building" field, given that the body of the slabs is made up of a variable percentage of recycled raw materials "pre-consumer" and these are produced with zero impact technologies.

Inside the Campus, the perfectly restored 15th-cent. cloister represents a reference point for all the guests of the new school. Chetham’s roots have been sculpted for centuries in its old buildings; with the creation of a new component and the recovery of the old one, the Roger Stephenson Architects project will accompany the history of the school for centuries to come.

Architect: Roger Stephenson Architects – Customer: Chetham’s School of Music – Series: New Stone