Constructed from reinforced concrete and designed by architects Cruikshank and Seward, it has fifteen stories and an overall height of 50 metres (160 ft), making it the tallest building on the former UMIST campus.

Unlike many examples of Brutalist architecture on university campuses of that period, the building deviates from a purely cuboid outline with decorative towers at either end (now used as convenient locations for mobile phone antennae) and the floors up to the 10th being larger, which also breaks up the outline.

A two-floor annex to the MSS building connected to the ground floor houses tiered lecture theatres.

It was built on the site of cramped terraced housing that accommodated factory workers that was studied by Friedrich Engels in his book The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844.

The new, merged University of Manchester announced in June 2007 that it plans to sell the Mathematics and Social Sciences Building.