Green light for revised Factory

Amended designs for The Factory, the £110m cultural venue within Allied London’s St John’s district, have been given final approval by Manchester City Council’s planning committee.

As the permanent home of the Manchester International Festival, the facility will be built as a flexible space expected to bring in 850,000 visitors a year.

The building has been designed by Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture and  will feature two main spaces: a 5,000-capacity warehouse and an auditorium for audiences of up to 2,000. The two spaces will have the ability to be combined, and also reduced in size, depending on the work being presented.

There will be public spaces inside and outside, including a new square and a riverside setting.

Designs approved in January 2017 show a different facade, as well as alternative lay-out internally

Laing O’Rourke is lined up as main contractor on the scheme, having been procured under the North West Construction Hub under a two-stage appointment in 2016. They are supposed to start on site imminently.

The project is due to complete in the first quarter of 2020 with a view to being launched in September 2020. Allied London is acting as development manager for the project, which has been supported by £78m from the Treasury and £7m of Lottery funding.

The professional team also includes Deloitte as planner; Buro Happold as structural and facades engineer; Gardiner & Theobald as project manager; BDP as services engineer; Charcoal Blue as theatre consultant; Level Acoustics and Vibration as acoustic engineer; Vectos as transport consultant; WSP as fire engineer; Deloitte as planner; and Planit IE as landscape architect.

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said: “Culture and creativity have a critical role to play in Manchester’s future success – not just by inspiring ideas and imaginations but through creating opportunities and jobs. The Factory will help take this to a whole new level and open up a new chapter in Manchester’s history of innovation.

“Not only will people no longer need to move to London for the best cultural and creative roles, it will give audiences from around the country and even the world another great reason to head here.”

MIF will operate and create the year-round artistic programme at the Factory. John McGrath, artistic director and chief executive, said: “The Factory will provide space for the greatest artists from around the world to create work of extraordinary ambition and scale, work they always dreamed of making.

“It builds on the city’s brilliant heritage as a centre for production, for radical ideas and for doing things a bit differently. It firmly underpins Manchester’s reputation as an internationally important city for culture, creativity and technology.”