Glass towers and two sculptural cultural buildings ring the old dock basins, with Imperial War Museum North playing a fictional research lab in the BBC drama Paradox.
What Salford Quays looks like
Erie, Ontario and Huron are the three dock basins that still hold open water where cargo ships once docked, edged by paved quaysides rather than a conventional street grid. Glass fronted apartment towers rise directly off the water on most sides, their curtain walls broken by balconies and the occasional crane still finishing a new block.
stands on its own triangular pier at the end of Pier 8, its stainless steel and glass walls folded around a perforated aerofoil canopy over the entrance. Across the water on Trafford Wharf Road, is built from three interlocking metal clad shards that catch the light differently through the day.
A 91 metre pedestrian lift bridge crosses the water between the two buildings, rising on steel towers to let vessels through underneath. The tallest of the residential towers is , a 29 storey block on Anchorage Quay completed in 2023, though most of the waterfront's landmark buildings opened between 2000 and 2023.
A Metrolink tram line runs along Anchorage Quay on its own platform, serving office blocks built in the 1980s and 1990s during the first wave of redevelopment. 's studio complex and its BBC signage sit on the water's northern edge, a short walk from the hotels and car parks that serve it.
Shot in Salford Quays
Imperial War Museum North's own exterior stood in for a fictional workplace in the BBC drama Paradox, the astrophysicist Dr Christian King's employer rather than the museum itself. The five part series shot around Greater Manchester over thirteen weeks in the summer of 2009.
Paradox, 2009
Imperial War Museum North
Played Prometheus Labs, present day
The museum's aluminium clad exterior was the workplace of Dr Christian King, an astrophysicist, identified onscreen as Prometheus Labs. It is the building's own exterior on screen, not a set built to resemble it. Street View
Cardiff Bay went through the same conversion from working docks to waterside apartments and a landmark cultural building, with the copper clad Wales Millennium Centre standing in for the role the Lowry plays here. The scale is close too, mostly towers under thirty storeys around a retained dock basin rather than a dense high rise cluster. Cardiff Bay's apartment blocks sit lower and closer to the water than Salford's newest towers, so a wide shot with less sky in it reads more convincingly as one place standing for the other. Try searching waterside apartment blocks now.
South Quay in London, England
South Quay's glass towers rise straight off a retained dock basin with pedestrian bridges crossing the water, the same combination that defines Salford's waterfront. A production wanting corporate London without the cost of shooting there could use either. Canary Wharf's central towers run far taller than anything at Salford Quays, so keep the frame low and tight on the water to avoid the skyline giving it away. Try searching glass tower dock basin now.
HafenCity in Hamburg, Germany
HafenCity is the same kind of place, a former harbour rebuilt with contemporary apartment blocks and one sculptural landmark building set apart from the rest, the same combination as the Lowry and the war museum here. Hamburg's older warehouse quarter next door is a different, redder brick than anything at Salford Quays. Keep the older brick warehouse fabric out of frame, since Salford Quays has nothing from that period and a wide shot would give the difference away. Try searching contemporary harbour apartment blocks now.
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