According to the Pevsner Architectural Guides: "Its scale and form was designed to relate to the earlier building.

The low-rise structure facing onto the green space at the centre of the campus is the Barnes Wallis Building, named after the pioneering aircraft designer Sir Barnes Wallis who opened the building in 1967.

This once housed the main campus refectory (closed June 2009), and until 2004 it was also home to UMIST Students' Association.

Many major rock bands played there, including The Who, The Yardbirds, Chuck Berry, Traffic, Jimi Hendrix, Def Leppard, Dr Feelgood and Nazareth.

The naming of internal parts of the building was for many years a good indicator of the current political balance of the UMIST Student Union.