A £242 million arts building that came in at more than twice its budget, and is nonetheless the most ambitious venue built in Britain this century.
Aviva Studios opened in October 2023 on the site of the old Granada Television studios, as the permanent home of Factory International — the organisation that runs the Manchester International Festival.
It is designed by OMA, Rem Koolhaas’s practice, and it consists of two spaces that can be joined: a 1,600-seat theatre and a vast, bare warehouse with a 21-metre ceiling that can hold 5,000 people standing. A moveable acoustic wall between them means the building can be one room or two.
The point is that almost nothing in Britain can accommodate the work it was built for — very large-scale, technically extreme, often unclassifiable pieces that are neither theatre nor concert nor exhibition.
The money
It was announced at £110 million and it opened at £242 million, of which around £100 million came from central government and most of the rest from Manchester City Council.
That is a lot of money in a city with acute housing pressure, and the overrun was examined by the National Audit Office and argued about extensively in the local press. Manchester also sold naming rights to an insurer, which is why a publicly funded arts building is called Aviva Studios and why a certain amount of teeth-grinding accompanies the name.
Whether it was worth it depends on what the programme delivers over twenty years, and it is far too early to say. What can be said is that the building does things no other building in the country can do, and that the cost control was poor.
The programme
Deliberately hard to summarise: large-scale commissions, immersive installations, gigs, dance, film, and the Manchester International Festival every other summer.
Recent seasons have included work by Danny Boyle, Yayoi Kusama, Marina Abramović and a lot of artists nobody outside the sector had heard of, which is more or less the intended mix.
Ticket prices are tiered aggressively and there is a Manchester residents’ scheme with substantial discounts.
Going
Check what is on well in advance — the building is dark between productions and there is no permanent display to see.
The bar and terrace face the Irwell and are open to the public without a ticket. The exterior, a stack of grey corrugated boxes with a glazed slot, has been called ugly by a great many people and is unquestionably the most argued-about new building in Manchester.
Castlefield is ten minutes’ walk south along the river.
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