The Factory must be an experience: a place which, through its unencumbered design, can accommodate the most technically challenging events just as well as intimate performances. Creators and spectators alike must feel at home at the pulsing heart of the city’s avant-garde scene, experiencing performances and art in a state-of-the-art facility.
Mecanoo’s competition design of the building works from the inside out. The backstage areas have equal importance to the front-of-house, allowing the creation of art to be a performance in itself. The variety of artistic productions and presentations that The Factory will host requires an ultra-flexible building that runs efficiently with high volumes of visitors, while remaining easy to operate and maintain.
Mecanoo collaborated with Anton Corbijn to bring different forms of art and design together. Embedded within Manchester’s music scene, Anton’s input draws upon the successes of the past to establish a future vision for The Factory.
Limited by the proportions of the site’s footprint, a series of stacked volumes lifts the building’s main functions to the upper floors. By placing the gallery and rehearsal spaces at the top of the building, an open and malleable space is created so to not inhibit users’ creativity and vision.
Beneath, the Lyric Theatre and Warehouse are placed on the same floor, sharing a single stage area which can also be used as circulation space or back-of-house staging. This move offers maximum flexibility without using expensive techniques and can allow for two large-scale events to take place simultaneously.
The ground floor, with its bars, restaurants, and service spaces, is accessible from all sides of the site allowing patrons and visitors to naturally gravitate toward the building. The landscaped public space to the west of the building gently rises up and into the Warehouse, fostering an inside/outside festival atmosphere.