From Yayoi Kusama’s exhibitions to Danny Boyle’s musicals, this new cultural complex—set in the heart of one of the UK’s buzziest cities—has a lot to offer
The highlight of Aviva Studios for Ellen van Loon is the bathroom. “I’m going to take you to the toilets first. I know it’s weird, but we’re going to go there anyway,” she says on the official opening day, as she begins a guided tour of the building. Van Loon, a partner at Rem Koolhaas’s international architectural firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), has spent the past eight years working as the lead architect on Manchester’s latest and largest cultural complex, where Free Your Mind, a new musical by award-winning director Danny Boyle, was premiering.
Aviva Studios is a 13,350 sq m complex composed of three parts: a theatre, known as the hall; a warehouse; and two towers. Van Loon describes it as a “collage of former industrial buildings that Manchester is famous for. We basically just assembled them.” It is home to Factory International, a company that organises, produces and curates performing and visual art shows, and also runs the biennial Manchester International Festival (MIF). Tatler was in the city in October to meet with Van Loon and Low Kee Hong, Factory International’s creative director.
“There was a party in here last night, with a DJ set and everything,” Low says excitedly as the group walks into the massive, high-ceilinged, unisex bathroom. With warm lighting, mirrors and red brick walls, it is actually a perfect party venue. “I guess it’s keeping in line with the city’s history,” he says, alluding to Manchester’s music and rave scene in the Eighties and Nineties.
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The building is filled with both physical signs and memories of its own past and that of the city: architects retained the viaducts of the old brick railway, which composed the arched, high ceilings of much of the lobby and bathrooms. The site once housed the famous independent label Factory Records, which was founded in 1978 and responsible for producing albums by bands including Joy Division and New Order. “It was quite a controversial label: it released music that many people hated—except the rebellious youth, which included me,” recalls Van Loon. “It’s also another example of this underground energy and group of people in Manchester who really were pushing to do new things.”
It’s this energy, and the willingness of the community and its leaders to try new things, that Van Loon and Low hope to tap into in their own ways with Aviva Studios and Factory International. Low, who founded the Singapore Biennale and went on to become head of theatre and performing arts at West Kowloon Cultural District, joined Factory International in the spring of 2022. He was particularly impressed by how synchronous the entire process was. “I’ve never encountered a situation where the city, the politicians, artists, curators, creative directors and architects were all on the same page and solution-focused. Usually there are many competing agendas.”
“The best thing about Manchester is that it’s not a capital. The most interesting projects are done in second-tier cities,” Van Loon says. “They’re hustling more than the capital most of the time, so everybody is much more on board to get things to work.”
This adaptability and flexibility informed the architects’ design approach, which had two basic tenets. The first was a requirement to cater to artists’ needs and see through their eyes in terms of navigating the space. This led, for example, to OMA making small changes to traditional theatre formats, such as including windows in the green room and creating pleasant, carefully planned rest areas. “We went into the mind of a performer and imagined what they would think when they saw that space. What ideas would they come up with? What are the options? What are the possibilities?” Van Loon says.