Skinner Street, Leeds

Leviat’s Ancon MDC bespoke brickwork support chosen for challenging curved brickwork façades at Leeds’ award-winning 31-story skyscraper BTR development. 

Reshaping the city skyline in Leeds’ busy western gateway, Ridgeback’s landmark 31-storey residential tower will provide 399 Build-To-Rent 1, 2 and 3-bedroom apartments, helping to address the long-term shortage of high quality housing in the heart of the UK’s fastest growing city. 

The building, on a previously vacant high profile site between Westgate and Cropper Gate, is characterised not only by its imposing 93 metre height, but by its award-winning innovative design, with sweeping curved façades, offset sections and unexpected central void that breaks the uniformity of the tower and reinforces its unique identity. 

The challenges 

Architects, LeachRhodesWalker, chose a bold brickwork façade, punctuated by a regular pattern of floor to ceiling windows, to harmonise the building with the city’s existing Victorian and industrial architecture and provide a durable exterior that would age gracefully in the exposed conditions of the high profile site.  

The complex design of the building, however, with flowing curves that varied around the structure, a concrete cast-in situ structural frame, thin 200mm floor slabs and an SFS infill wall that, in places, protruded into the wall cavity, created significant challenges in supporting the heavy brickwork. 

Main Contractor, Keady Construction, engaged specialists from Leviat’s masonry products team in the early design stages of the project, to provide a solution. Working closely with Keady, the team identified a number of key issues that would need to be addressed, including significant variations in the radius of the structural curves (meaning channel would not be a suitable fixing solution in all instances), and floor voids to accommodate pipework in the bathroom areas which were close to the slab edge and would prevent the use of traditional support fixings. In addition, there were potential problems with SFS encroachment into the wall cavity and issues with square corners abutting the central core structures. Lastly, there was a lack of structure at critical corner locations, with no column available to accommodate the stronger fixings required for the cantilever slab due to the increased design load. 

The Solution 

As a result of Leviat’s early involvement, the internal designs were adjusted to reposition the bathrooms, relocating the pipe voids away from the slab edge. After assessing the feasibility of the design from a thin slab, a lintel-free option was also proposed, supporting the whole of the façade from projecting brickwork support angles over window heads.  

The team developed a complete bespoke brickwork support solution for the project based on their market-leading Ancon MDC Stainless Steel Brick Support System in conjunction with the Ancon 25/14 Channel Restraint System restraint ties and Ancon WP2 Windposts for additional lateral support to the brickwork panels.  

The decision to go lintel-free overcame the issue of lintel load shed, allowing virtually uninterrupted scope for bracket placement, with brickwork reveals supported using traditional support plates, which further reduced cost and removed the need for bespoke curved lintel sections.  

To achieve the varying degrees of curve, the Ancon MDC bracket was installed in continuous form using shorter angle lengths and, in some cases, individual cleats, to facet the support as needed. Supported from Ancon Channel, cast into the slab edge in most instances, the brackets were designed to allow adjustment in every direction to enable perfect alignment across the slab. Where SFS infill reduced the available cavity width, brackets were specially notched and spacings closed to compensate for the reduced bearing depth and to support the loading.   

To accommodate the cantilevered loading at corners and intersections with the core walls, where no columns existed, Leviat worked closely with the design team to introduce isolated upstands to increase the bearing area, rather than the traditional top-cleat solution which could have impacted the layout of the SFS framing system.   

The outcome 

To achieve the architect’s unique aesthetic across this award winning skyscraper, Brickwork Contractor, Brickstone Construction Ltd, installed almost 6,000 linear metres of Ancon MDC, as well as large volumes of Ancon 25/14 Channel Restraint and Ancon WP2 Windposts. 

Leviat’s early involvement and close working relationship with both Keady and Brickstone throughout the project were a major contributor to the success of this outstanding project, described as a ‘tour de force of brickwork’ by judges who voted it ‘Project of the Year’ in the prestigious 2026 Association of Brickwork Contractors annual awards. Feedback from both companies has been extremely positive: