William Hare’s recently completed project, The Factory, Manchester was awarded the ‘Public Projects Winner’ at the 2022 Tekla BIM Awards.

The Factory has been designed with flexibility in mind, and consists of two parts known as the warehouse and the theatre, both of which have moveable partitions and are acoustically-isolated, so they can be used individually or as one large area. The theatre has a 1,500 - 2,100 people capacity depending on its set up, and the warehouse will be able to accommodate 5,000 standing people.

Steel construction has come to the fore with the erection of interlinked trusses, mega-columns, and numerous long-span plate girders, all of which form a new cultural building on a constrained inner-city site in Manchester.

Judges comments:

"William Hare have made it look easy - the incredible work done with this seriously heavy and complex steel frame, something not usually common for a commercial structure. The level of detail that has gone into the fabrication and connections is truly impressive!"