Aviva Studios Opens in Manchester

Our team was absolutely thrilled to be part of the highly anticipated opening of Aviva Studios on 18 October, 2023. We celebrated the new venue alongside our friends on the design team led by the visionary architects OMA, taking in incredible performance of Free Your Mind. It was a thrill to see the team at Factory International begin exploring the limitless possibilities of the radically flexible Aviva Studios.

In 2015, we had the honour of winning the competition to provide theatre consultancy services for the new home for the Manchester International Festival. Now known as Factory International, the client’s vision aimed to create a venue that would provide unconstrained artistic and technical freedom to its artists. From the very beginning, the collaborative efforts of architects OMA, led by Ellen Van Loon, and Charcoalblue were pivotal in bringing this inspiring vision to life, resulting in a groundbreaking new theatre typology: an arts warehouse.

The design features two key spaces: the Hall, a versatile 1,600-seat theatre, and the Warehouse, a 5,000-standing capacity space for festivals. Utlising card models and virtual reality for design and sightline analysis, Charcoalblue developed a flexible concept to dramatically change the format of the Hall with an innovative moveable seating system made up of a series of retractable seating units that can transform from flat floor to seating rake in place and can be moved to other parts of the venue to augment seating according to the requirements of a particular production.

Charcoalblue led the design of all the performance technical systems, which have all been designed to be ultra-flexible. Visit the Aviva Studios project page to learn more about the groundbreaking technical systems designed by our team, including a rigging system that can hold more than what’s rigged at the Eurovision contest, and technical infrastructure solutions for audiovisual and stagelighting systems that address the challenges of the long distances involved in the large venue.

Factory International’s drive and ambition to create a space that centres artistic and technical freedom as a priority was an inspiring beginning to the journey of creating Aviva Studios, and their role and partnership in the project cannot be understated. These innovative performance spaces offer creative freedom for directors and designers, balancing the epic and the intimate while promoting connectivity between audiences and performers. Charcoalblue are honoured to have been part of the design team on this historic building.