Imperial War Museum North

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The main entrance of the Imperial War Museum North, with the air shard tower.

The Imperial War Museum North is a war museum in Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. It opened on the 5th July 2002 and was designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind and constructed at a cost of £28 million by Sir Robert McAlpine with engineering by Arup. The building has a highly complex geometry with sloping floors and ceilings and few perpendicular surfaces, designed to induce disorientation reminiscent of that caused by war. The large tower is known as the 'Air Shard' and has a viewing/observation platform at the top, accessed by a lift, with a good view of The Lowry and Salford Quays.

The museum features an exhibit called The Big Picture; once an hour, the lights in the main exhibition hall are lowered, photographs and quotations from scenes of war are projected onto all of the walls, and recordings of events echo around the hall. This exhibit completes the unnerving feeling the museum is designed to create.

Admission is free and the museum is open between 10.00am and 5.00pm daily.

The Imperial War Museum North won the 2003 British Construction Industry Building Award.

It is cited as an example of Deconstructivist Architecture.

The east face of the museum highlighting the aluminium cladding.

[edit] Architectural Concept

Libeskinds' concept for the museum was a globe, shattered by conflict and then reassembled on the site. The 3 elements of the building, the air shard, the earth shard and the water shard represent the arenas where conflicts are fought.

Canal entrance	Interior looking up into the air shard tower	Close up detail of aluminium panel detailing	Water shard cafe
The big picture	The space frame interior of the air shard tower