Models hold umbrellas as they rehearse prior to the 'Chanel Metiers d'art 2023-2024' fashion show, on Thomas Street, in Manchester, on Dec. 7, 2023.OLI SCARFF/Getty Images
On a Tuesday last fall, Manchester was on a collective high despite the subzero cold. Friends in the arty Northern Quarter were chattering about Chanel’s coming Metiers d’Art show, for which the label bought out an entire block of Thomas Street and enclosed it in orangery glass. Kate Moss, Kristen Stewart and a procession of British greats turned up for the multimillion-pound runway show and surrounding fanfare, including a sweaty afterparty at the city’s revitalized Victorian Bath.
Being a runway-ready destination has never defined Manchester. Textile pioneer, hotbed of post-punk, Mecca for football fans, it has long catered to working-class tastes. Yet a decade-long government initiative to establish a Northern Powerhouse in the flailing industrial heartland – and a commitment to “levelling up” the economy by luring business from London – has cast an incandescent glow over this once smoggy city.
The BBC has relocated thousands of creatives to MediaCity, a broadcasting centre by the historic Salford docks. Lofty stone museums were extended with glass. Old breweries became microbreweries. Football multimillionaires invested in five-star hotels – most notably the Stock Exchange, owned by former Manchester United players Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs.
Tickets are on sale for Olivia Rodrigo to the Pet Shop Boys at Co-op Live, the massive, solar-panelled arena opening this April with financing from Harry Styles. Kelly Bishop, a sommelier and founder of the new outfit Manchester Wine Tours, is feeling the buzz, too.
Michelin-starred chef Tom Barnes is slated to open the restaurant Skof in Manchester.Supplied
“With the Michelin ceremony here next year, Manchester’s restaurant scene is just on fire, and not just in the city centre. I’m thinking Örme, in Urmston. Where The Light Gets In, in Stockport. Stretford Canteen. And everyone’s talking about Tom Barnes opening Skof next year,” she said of the Michelin-starred chef. Bishop has clocked an uptick in visitors, “and that’s a good thing in my book. It’s quite an optimistic time for the city.”
Walking past the landmark buildings of Deansgate, the city’s historic high street/boulevard, the Italianate facades takes on a golden sheen from sunshine and careful restoration. New swish restaurants along Quay Street, such as the British-Asian concept Daina, have co-opted some of the professional lunch crowd.
The BBC has relocated thousands of creatives to MediaCity, a broadcasting centre by the historic Salford docks.Marketing Manchester
The windows in the Opera House advertises a packed schedule of new shows every week until July. The Full Monty, ELO and Elvis Costello are on the cards. And when it was announced recently that the English National Opera would be moving up here from London later this decade, it seemed obvious where they would eventually end up: Aviva Studios.
At the end of Quay Street, in a former parking lot on the River Irwell, Aviva is the country’s largest investment in culture since Tate Modern opened in 2000. The city expects the hub to add a billion pounds to the local economy, create jobs and draw hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. Manchester’s beloved mayor, Andy Burnham, whose council put millions of pounds into the site, said he believed the building “could help shift the U.K.’s cultural gravity.”
All around it remain vestiges of the Industrial Revolution: the world’s oldest passenger rail station, repurposed as the brilliant, time-travelling Science and Industry Museum; the Victorian-era Castlefield Viaduct, now an elevated park; a bonded warehouse restored as a co-working space; and a graceful, new weathered-steel railway bridge called the Ordsall Chord, designed to swoop and dip over the water.
In contrast, Aviva was designed from the ground up, by the Rotterdam studio OMA, founded by prolific architect and critic Rem Koolhaas. Their brief outlined a theatre for future generations: incorporating gender-neutral toilets and epic amounts of space that can be configured for an intimate salon, such as the scheduled reading by Armistead Maupin, or for a Cirque-style extravaganza, such as the opening-night show by Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle, which used every one of the venue’s 140,000 square feet. Two 36-foot sound-proof doors behind the stage can open completely to combine the intimate hall with the “warehouse,” a 250-foot performance hangar that will play host to electronic pioneers Underworld this spring.
Aviva was designed by Rotterdam studio OMA as a theatre with future generations in mind.Marco Cappelletti/Courtesy OMA and Factory International
For good measure, Ellen van Loon, the OMA partner on the project, sought counsel from some Manchester legends. Ben Kelly, who furnished the fabled Haçienda club in the 1980s in Memphis-style primary colours, brought in vibrant furnishings for the café. And she entrusted the signposting graphics to Peter Saville, who designed the cover art at Factory Records, the defunct label that brought local acts such as Joy Division to the world.
Factory went bust decades ago but the name was usurped by performance art producer Factory International, which puts on a biennale-style arts festival across the city every other year, the next being 2025. Aviva is now its home base; audience members standing in the warehouse can look up through big circular windows to the office and green room.
“It had to be a statement,” artistic director John McGrath said of the new space. “Factory International is not an organization that fits in.”
Critics, however, have voiced their disappointment with the “NASA lunar module” energy of their top-line project and its desolate public courtyard. Van Loon’s original scheme pictured an industrial-style corrugated façade set off by towering glass walls. But new residential towers by the river made all that glass impossible. To sound-proof the warehouse, van Loon shrouded it in concrete sheet piling so the thumping productions could stay in the city rather than move out of the centre. It was a big sacrifice.
Ellen van Loon’s original scheme pictured an industrial-style corrugated facade set off by towering glass walls. But new residential towers by the river made all that glass impossible.Marco Cappelletti/Courtesy OMA and Factory International
Mancunians also ridiculed the corporate name, changed after the insurance company, Aviva, bought naming rights to help shoulder £100-million in cost overruns.
It’s still early days, though. With a new Soho House due to emerge from behind scaffolding soon, and footfall along the river expected to multiply when the weather warms up, the area is poised for a resurgence. After all, Aviva means spring, renewal. And as they say in England: It does what it says on the tin.
Special to The Globe and Mail
The writer travelled as a guest of OMA and Factory International, which did not review or approve this article.