Imperial War Museum North

Really impressive

It’s an important, and pretty moving place. As someone else has mentioned, it’s got a pretty impressive ‘full immersion’ audio/visual exhibit that takes over the whole interior every 30 minutes…

However, the building is the real star. Manchester has got some fantastic Victorian architecture, some pretty shitty 70’s buildings and lately (post 2000), some truly awful ‘architect-less’ residential buildings by opportunist property developers.

So it’s fantastic that we’ve got a real modern classic – the interior treatment is as interesting as the external…get and see it.

For what it’s worth, I think the Lowry centre opposite is appalling, but it’s got a fabulous, chidlike interior (clashing purples and oranges, stairs popping out of walls etc.

The building) designed by Daniel Libeskind is amazing and 1 of a kind – supposed to represent the earth shattered into shards – air, land and sea – by conflict. The exhibit is really interesting and well done – war since the beginning of the 20th century wirh a decidedly English perspective. They have something called the Big Picture which runs every so often where the entire exhibit hall goes dark and a short film is projected on all the walls. Moving, interesting – worth a visit.