A couple of miles from the centre of Manchester, on the bank of the Ship Canal, the Imperial War Museum North stands - all bright in gleaming aluminium. A new pedestrian bridge crosses to it from the Lowry Centre's agglomeration of theatres, galleries, shops, restaurants and bars. Old Trafford, the Manchester United football ground, is a few hundred yards away. On the tram ride out you pass building sites and the gaunt trusses of an overgrown railway bridge. Although the museum that Studio Libeskind have designed is no longer the newest, and was never the toughest or largest piece of architecture in sight, it has an authority the others cannot match. The Lowry Centre glistening on the other side of the canal - it, too, is clad in silver - looks, by comparison, a muddle.

LRB 17 October 2002 | PDF Download