New face to the world

As more than one million people descend on Manchester for the Commonwealth Games, the city famous for football, pop bands and gloomy terraced streets has reinvented itself - with cutting-edge architecture, a vibrant nightlife, a good transport system and the opening of the Libeskind-designed Imperial War Museum North. John Moran reports.

Walking around Manchester's city centre feels like a stroll in the park compared with the hustle and bustle of Dublin. There's a pleasant sense of space and a feeling of ease. Its pedestrianised streets and squares criss-crossed by trams mean you don't feel hemmed-in, as you can among the milling crowds and the grinding traffic that is our lot in Dublin. And there is a lesson here for Dublin planners in the way the city's many canalways and its river are used. Despite Manchester's reputation for rain, the city's waterside cafes and bars offer al fresco options that Dublin sorely lacks.

Manchester feels far less congested than Dublin; its population is more than 400,000, though this increases when you include satellite towns in the Greater Manchester conurbation, such as Oldham, Rochdale, Wigan, Bolton and Bury.

Manchester has been experiencing the phenomenon of younger people opting for city-centre apartment life. Many of the new apartments are in converted Victorian warehouses, mills and factories beside canals or by the River Irwell. And, while you can pay £1 million sterling for an apartment, in some rundown districts outside the city centre, redbrick Coronation Street-type houses go for around £3,000. Nobody wants to live in these areas because of gang culture and high crime rates.

Manchester has the largest student population in Britain; some 70,000. Scores of new bars, bistros, clubs and cafes have mushroomed to accommodate the demographic changes in areas such as Deansgate Locks, the Gay Village, Chinatown, and the Northern Quarter.

It is a strange irony, but in Manchester the received wisdom is that it was the IRA who provided the impetus for much of the city's regeneration. On a Saturday morning in June 1996, a massive explosion ripped the heart out of the city's shopping area. It was the largest bomb ever detonated by the IRA in Britain. Despite enormous structural damage, estimated at £750 million sterling, there was no loss of life. In the aftermath of the attack, a lord mayor's fund was established to aid stricken businesses and a competition was held for the best regeneration plans. Out of this, the reconstruction began.

But there are victims who have been stampeded in the rush to commercial development. One of the epicentres of dance culture in England, the Hacienda, is no more; it is being turned into apartments.

A series of major new building programmes has changed the architectural face of the city. These include: an extension and facelift for Manchester Art Gallery; the construction of the Lowry Centre in Salford for the visual and performing arts; the Imperial War Museum North and the Urbis building, which celebrates the style and lifestyles of residents of the world's great cities.

The extensive work carried out at Manchester Art Gallery, which cost £35 million, has doubled the exhibition space. Well-known for its pre-Raphaelite collection, the gallery was closed for the four years it took to carry out the work. A new atrium made of glass links the new wing to the original gallery, which itself has been completely refurbished. Many of the new wing's features mirror those of the old. For example, the stone used is from the same quarry as that used in the 19th century to build the original gallery. Artists from the 20th century are featured in the new wing including Francis Bacon, David Hockney and Bridget Reilly. Sculptor Lucien Freud's Girl with Beret is also on show.

One current exhibition, Coming Soon by Iraq-born artist Edward Hillel, illustrates the city's regeneration. Hillel's work tells the story of an area called Little Ireland. Once a huge mill site where 40,000 people lived, life was so harsh there it inspired Marx and Engels to write their angry critiques of capitalism. The area has now been converted into luxury apartments. Nearby, a huge derelict factory, which features in some of Hillel's work, is to be knocked down and the space developed.

The Lowry Centre, one of Manchester's first new purpose-built public spaces, sits like a gigantic, deconstructed silver steamship run aground at the side of the Manchester Ship Canal in the Quays district of Salford. An award-winning building with dramatic sweeping lines and shining, steel surfaces, it cost more than £100 million and opened in 2000. The Lowry houses two theatres which show plays and musicals, live bands, ballet and jazz, and a large collection of work by the Salford artist, L.S. Lowry.

Across from the Lowry Centre, on the other side of the Manchester Ship Canal, is the most recent addition to the architecture of Manchester: the Imperial War Museum North. Designed by architect Daniel Libeskind, who was also responsible for the Jewish Museum in Berlin, it cost £16 million. The museum, which opened earlier this month, brings home the impact of war on ordinary people. The aluminium-clad structure has the shape of a fractured aluminium globe, signifying a failed attempt to put the world back together again after war, with three shards protruding from the globe, representing war in the air, on land and at sea. The building's internal structure also tends towards discomfort, with awkward angles and the shards jutting disconcertingly back into the globe, creating a sense of general unease.

Drawing on the London Imperial War Museum's huge collection of photographs, films and audio material and artwork, the new museum explores events and underlying causes of wars from the early 19th century onwards. Also on display are a Harrier jump-jet and a Russian T-54 tank. The focus is on the pity of war rather than in praise of it.

Incidentally, while Irish conflicts such as the Rising, the Civil War and the Troubles all feature, the Dublin Fusiliers don't rate any mention in the Gallipoli segment (the matter is being looked into.)

Given Manchester's claim to be the world's first industrial city, it is appropriate that another new dramatic architectural feature examines the whole concept of cities. The museum, Urbis, which opened recently, cost £30 million.

IT HOUSES an eclectic display, which uses the latest interactive technology to illustrate the ways ordinary urbanites in some of the great cities of the world live. Here you can experience the sights and sounds of cities from São Paolo to Singapore. The Urbis building is another futuristic construction made of glass which soars 35 metres into the sky over Cathedral Gardens in the Millennium Quarter, bringing to mind a giant, glass ski-slope.

As well as the landmark buildings, the city has a new stadium (which cost £77 million), a new velodrome and an aquatic centre - all for the Commonwealth Games, which open on Thursday.

"It hasn't all been plain sailing though," says Paul Horrocks, editor of the Manchester Evening News. "There were those in the beginning who doubted we could do it, but they've all gone quiet now.

"What the games will do for Manchester is to focus the world's attention on the city. There's a marvellous opportunity for Manchester to showcase itself on television to more than one billion people - and close to one million spectators will actually attend the events. Right now, there's a tremendous feel-good factor in Manchester."