Manchester, Part II

Of course, I'm not really standing in Manchester's 'Millennium Quarter', I'm sitting in front of a PC writing about it, and you're quite aware of that fact. So I'll stop using the present tense now, because - let's face it - neither of us are buying it.

Urbis is one of the city's newest and most interesting developments. At a distance, and before I had any idea what it housed, my eyes were drawn to the building. With two outer walls of glass, there's barely any hint of internal structure when seen from the outside. It is like a six-storey blunt glass wedge poised to be driven into the city, and the sheer individuality of its appearance is strengthened by its steeply angled roof. From no angle is this building's profile even remotely pedestrian - it is a visually stunning piece of architecture.

(Images: 1, 2 - all Manchester photos from Eyewitness in Manchester)

Urbis, it turns out, is a museum. It's been open for only a matter of weeks, and it's full of cutting-edge interactive exhibits.

The subject of this museum is the cities of the world - why they exist, what their defining characteristics are, and what it's like to live in them. Emphasis was placed on a few key cities - Paris, Los Angeles, Sao Paolo, Tokyo, Singapore and, not unexpectedly, Manchester itself. The museum's range is broad - dealing with not only the geography and history of cities, but the sociology, psychology, politics, economics and sciences in equal measure.

The experience begins with an elevator ride to the top of the building - worth a special mention because of the nature of the elevator - a rounded, glass-walled construction that travels diagonally. The glass walls of both the carriage and the building reveal to the passengers a view of Manchester's city centre that gradually becomes more expansive as the lift ascends. This is apparently Europe's only 45-degree elevator, though it felt a bit similar to a funicular railway I once rode on. With better air-conditioning.

The museum is spread through several floors of the building and, after the short elevator ride, visitors wend their way back down to the ground floor via the open staircases. Each floor is ostensibly themed and focused on some broad aspect of cities, although the theming is very loose and I didn't really get any sense of transition between the exhibits on different floors.

The exhibits themselves, however, are incredibly engaging, and range from interactive screens of all sizes to strange pillars with projected, almost life-sized images of people talking about their experiences of life in their home cities. The latter were interesting; it's somehow far more engaging to watch a projected recording of an entire person talking in front of you than it is to see the same person's head talking on a TV screen. It's something about the illusion of being face-to-face, I suppose. It obviously helped that the subjects they chose were outgoing and eloquent.

This was just one example of the museum's extensive use of audiovisuals. One of the few sections of the museum that all visitors had to go through (immediately after the elevator) was a short, noninteractive movie featuring a rapid montage of city scenes. This show created some feeling of sensory overload from the outset, because aside from two screens in front of you, there are also moving pictures projected onto the ceiling, and onto the back wall. Each one is showing something different. The sensory overload continues through the entire museum - there's really far too much to experience in a single visit. I regard this as a good thing.

One of the more unusual elements was a short movie playing in a loop in a room midway through the museum. Through clever editing and atmospheric sounds and visuals it depicted a whole series of terrible events happening in Manchester - violence, vandalism, an assault, bioterrorism, an earthquake... I'm still unsure what the point of this film was, because it had no coda, but the effect in this case was to make me completely paranoid. Certainly, a conventional museum experience this is not. My paranoia was only heightened by what came after the movie, but I can say no more... go there and see for yourself.

Urbis was a genuinely engrossing experience, and defied my expectations of a museum. Here is an attraction that challenges its visitors in many different ways. In that respect and in others, it was an eye-opener. Unfortunately, it was a little busy on a Saturday to get a chance to play with all of the interactive exhibits. Also, admission isn't free, but it was well worth the admission fee.

As for Manchester, I hope I get the chance to go back there soon. There's still so much there that I haven't seen and done. And I discovered that it's far nicer in reality than it looks on TV.