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Text-only version of these pages for regular e-updates and ticket booking |
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   Click an image to see larger view Facts and figures A rare and visionary gesture Construction Plant tower Artworks Organ Exterior Interiors |
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| Auditorium The Bridgewater Hall auditorium is surprisingly warm and intimate for a hall seating nearly 2400 people. Nothing quite like it has ever been attempted before; a unique synthesis of two well-established designs, the 'shoebox' and the 'vineyard'. Shoebox halls are rectangular, flat-sided and acoustically marvellous, represented in this Hall by the rows of slender columns supporting a flat, coffered ceiling. Vineyard halls place the audience in smaller, friendly groups close to the musicians, and in The Bridgewater Hall the seating is carefully tiered to draw everyone as closely as possible around and into the performance. Within the auditorium, every aspect of its design has been informed by the acoustic requirements of the space; the balcony fronts, the specially designed seats, the undulations of wall and floor. The colours are delicate at the lower levels - ochre, buff and silver-white - but rich and subtly modulated above, shifting from deep aubergine behind the Gallery to terracotta above the orchestra platform. The gleaming bronze handrails and door edgings bring a precious, jewel-like quality to the atmospheric and expectant silence. The roof above the auditorium is an epic architectural statement, with the breathtaking engineering work of its cast iron roof structure a homage to Manchester's industrial past. Woven between the rigid struts of the steel roof structure, a galaxy of chandeliers create a wave of light which cascades down to the platform from a point high above the uppermost seating tier. |
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