OMA have received approval from Manchester City Council for Factory, a centre of arts and culture for the city – the first major UK public building for the Dutch firm.
Located at the centre of the St John’s neighbourhood masterplan, the facility will offer audiences a broad range of art forms and cultural experiences and aims to provide a flagship cultural venue for the North of England.
Ellen van Loon – the partner in charge of the project – said the project provides “the ultimate versatile space in which art, theatre and music come together – a platform for a new cultural scene”.
Performance space is split between two contrasting blocks.
The Warehouse is a dominating rectangular box with a sweeping concave roof, which contains a flexible space that can be divided in many ways to allow the creation of the ideal environment for any piece or performance.
The precast concrete structure is punctured at either end by elongated bands of glazing, showcasing views of the ongoing development of St John’s.
A fixed traditional theatre is housed in an adjoining, irregularly faceted building – the shape of which is determined by the form of the seating within – and is enclosed with a white shrink-wrapped skin.
The 25-metre wide proscenium of the theatre can be opened, combining it with the flexible warehouse space to create an extra-long arrangement, ideal for dramatic opera performances.
Two towers behind the warehouse block house supporting spaces such as dressing rooms, offices, and workshops, while a core between accommodates technical equipment.
Below the theatre and warehouse, a sprawling ground floor entrance foyer encapsulates a series of grade II listed railway arches. OMA have integrated the listed structure into the design, with the vaulted spaces housing bathrooms, a café, and a shop. Grand staircases and stacks of escalators lead from the concourse into the theatre spaces above.
The Factory forms part of Manchester’s St John’s neighbourhood development – a masterplan for the district to the West of the city centre, which includes the formation of a new riverside park, the construction of 2400 new homes, and the creation of work and studio spaces aimed at creative industries and new startups.
Since the 1950s, the Factory site was home to Granada TV studios, where programmes including Coronation Street and University Challenge were filmed and The Beatles gave their first TV performance from the studios in 1962.
In 2014, the studios closed when ITV moved to the MediaCityUK Development in Salford, and the site became part of the wider St John’s Neighbourhood development scheme.
Founded in Rotterdam in the 1980s by Rem Koolhaas, OMA (The Office for Metropolitan Architecture) is an international architecture practice with well-known public buildings across the globe, including Central Library in Seattle, CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, and the recently completed Faena Forum in Miami Beach.
