HOME opens fully this weekend with the HOMEwarming Weekend (Thurs 21-Mon 25 May) - a long Bank Holiday weekend of celebrations, events, art, theatre, film and music curated by director Danny Boyle.
HOMEWarming Weekend - Five Things Not To Miss
The aesthetes, academics and art-lovers are already converging on the £25m Mecanoo-designed space
Here comes the splendid theatre, the generous cinemas, the wide galleries, the restaurants and the bars.
Confidential is already pleased about how the restaurant is working, and we're particularly happy that the merry eclecticism of audience of the Cornerhouse and Library Theatre, now merged at HOME, has started to patronise the new place in droves.
The aesthetes, academics and art-lovers are already converging on the Mecanoo-designed space and talking the hind legs off each other. It's all looking good as the pictures below show, although the hidden nature of HOME, externally black, behind the railway arches and overshadowed by a hotel and a car park is unfortunate. Basically this building is all about the interior - maybe a philosophical point of which the core audience would approve
We'll review the work in the new galleries next week and also the opening theatre production, Simon Stephens' The Funfair.
By the way, here's the stats: there's a 500-seat main theatre, a 150-seat flexible theatre space, a 500 square metre, four metre high gallery, five cinemas, digital production and broadcast facilities, a bar, a cafe bar, a cinema bar and a bookshop. The building cost £25m.
All of this is supposed to deliver 500,000 visitors per year. This seems a very large figure and would put it behind cultural facilities such as The Lowry, MOSI and Central Library, but around that of Manchester Art Gallery and ahead of many other main museums and galleries.
We'll see, but for now here's the finished thing...
