Urbis

Urbis, a museum and exhibition centre intended to showcase inner-city life, opened on 27 June 2002 as a symbol of regeneration after the IRA's 1996 Manchester bombing. The project attracted £30 million funding from the Millennium Commission and £1 million from Manchester City Council towards the running costs. The exhibition space covered five floors and hosted temporary exhibitions running for between three and five months. The museum's first director, Elizabeth Usher, resigned in March 2003 amid criticism that Urbis was not appealing and the exhibits were too abstract. First-year visitor figures fell 58,000 short of its 200,000 target and the Millennium Commission, who provided £20m of…

.]] .]] Urbis is a building in Cathedral Gardens, designed by Simpson Haugh and Partners with consulting engineers Martin Stockley Associates. The building has six storeys and a distinctive sloping form. Visitors were intended to travel to the top floor, accessed by a lift, to admire the cityscape, then progress down a series of cascading mezzanine floors past exhibits about cities. The fully glazed facades consist of approximately 2,200 glass panes arranged in horizontal strips. The building has an adiabatic cooling system for use in summer and heat recovery system for use in winter increasing its energy efficiency.