Fuksas beats off four teams to win North-West masterplanning job

Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas has won a major masterplanning job to regenerate Salford.

Fuksas, who is in a team with UK consultant Locum Destination Consulting, Canadian regeneration expert Joe Berridge and economist Professor Stuart Gulliver, beat off rival bids from teams led by Alsop, Arup and Dutch firms KCAP and S333 Architecture + Urbanism.

The Salford job is the first time Fuksas, renowned for his work in Continental Europe, has worked in the UK. He said he would need to spend more time getting to know Salford. He said: "To get results, not only do we have to get to know the local community, we also have to love the local people."

Locum Destination Consulting chairman Richard Tibbott said he was delighted work with Fuksas. He said: "He is one of the most exciting architects architects working today and will bring a genuinely unique and unconstrained vision to the process. Our team of will make sure that this vision can be realised and is not frozen forever on the drawing board."

The team said it was planning work over the winter and Spring of 2005 to create a regeneration framework for the city. The competition was run by urban regeneration company The Central Salford Shadow Board with English Partnerships and the Northwest Regional Development Agency.