The Lowry is triangular in shape, to fit with its site at the end of Pier 8. In area it is the size of 5 football pitches. The building stands on 803 concrete piles sunk down into the bedrock; it was made from 48,000 tons of concrete, 2,466 tons of steel and 5,263 sq metres of glass.

From the outside, it has a ship-like appearance, especially when viewed from across the canal. This maritime feeling transmits through to the interior as well. Standing just outside the Lyric Theatre, you can see the porthole windows in the Tower and the stairways and landings that look like ships' gangways.

The Lowry comprises a sequence of geometrical shapes - hexagon, circle, triangle and rectangle. The promenade runs all the way round building is intended to give leisurely access to all parts of the building. The spaces are designed in layers like an onion and decorated with the bright colours that are typical of Michael Wilford's architecture. First is the cool glass and stainless steel skin around the outside to reflect the sky and water; then comes the blue terrazzo floor of the foyer, with silver lines that are reminiscent of the longitude and latitude lines on a nautical map.

Background to the building and the architect

Extract from Making The Lowry, Jeremy Myerson, Lowry Press, 2000

The renaissance of Salford Quays which The Lowry symbolises has been achieved in the face of considerable scepticism. Who would have thought that a major national arts centre, one of Britain's 12 flagship millennium projects, innovatively funded by several different parties at a cost of £64.3 million, could be achieved in a place of such uncompromising economic hardship? Who would have thought the arts could take such a prominent role in a local community fighting longterm social deprivation?

When the first masterplan for The Lowry by architects James Stirling and Michael Wilford was unveiled in 1992, the Guardian architectural critic Deyan Sudjic wrote: "If it gets built, it will be as if a transport cafe has, by some unexpected miracle, been given three Michelin stars but kept its original clientele."

Architectural appointment

An architectural competition was held to appoint "a top European architect" to carry out the commission. This was supported by Janet Roberts, a member of Tony Struthers' team who had worked on the Salford Quays development since 1986. Roberts, a town planner by training, became coordinator of The Salford Centre in 1989 and worked with Pieda on the feasability study. "We saw it as very important to build on the quality of the urban design, to make a serious statement about it," said Roberts. "So we needed to search for an architect of international repute with masterplanning experience to create a plan for the Pier 8 site."

Armed with advice from the Royal Institute of British Architects, Roberts wrote to 35 different European practices inviting expressions of interest in the scheme. The replies were assessed by the project's steering group, which at that time comprised representatives from the City Council, the project's consulting engineers Ove Arup and Pieda, as well as Peter Hunter. A shortlist of four was drawn up. Two were British architects (James Stirling Michael Wilford & Associates and Arup Asociates) and two were Spanish (Ricardo Bofill and Garcia Parades). These firms were invited to visit the Salford Quays site. Janet Roberts and Roger Hindle, Salford's head of engineering, subsequently visited European cities to inspect their built works and interview their previous clients.

After much soul-searching, Salford reached its decision. In 1991, the practice of Stirling and Wilford was appointed as masterplanner for the site. Sir James Stirling, the son of a Mersey harbour pilot, and Michael Wilford were the impressive architects of a number of high-profile schemes including the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and No 1 The Poultry in the City of London. Janet Roberts admitted that the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart was a defining factor in the decision. "It was so intriguing, such a lovely building, and Stuttgart has some similarities to Manchester in that it is primarily seen as a commercial centre and not a cultural centre. We looked at studies of the project and the Staatsgalerie did succeed in creating economic improvements and raising the profile of the city, in the way we want The Lowry to do for Salford."

Early sketch ideas

Hunter was excited by how the scheme was being developed: "I loved the first sketches by Jim Stirling. All that geometic complexity and excitement. It looked like a large ship steaming into the docks." He also recalled that at the first presentation of Stirling Wilford's ideas on the masterplan, Salford's chief executive Roger Rees looked at the massing of the proposed building and exclaimed: "It looks like Heysham Power Station." To which James Stirling replied dryly: "Well, you've got the scale then."

According to Michael Wilford, "right out the outset there was a sense of the chemistry that might develop between the parties involved." The masterplan demonstrated how the Pier 8 site might be developed, showing an "opera house" in relation to a public plaza, hotel, car parking, a transportation building and a future commercial development. Guardian architectural critic Deyan Sudjic reviewed the plan favourably. Although he described Salford Quays as "a location as plausible as the middle of the Sahara desert" (old metropolitan prejudices evidently died hard despite the strenuous improvements to the docks), he praised the project as "a rediscovery by a local authority of serious architecture" and for making "no apologies for cutting across so many conventional expectations". Looked at today, Stirling's first thoughts on The Lowry are elegant and powerful, capturing a spirit for the project that would later be effectively developed through design and construction.

But before Stirling Wilford could build on the positive early reaction, the practice was shaken to the core by Sir James Stirling's sudden and unexpected death. On 25 June 1992, the day ironically scheduled for a presentation by the architects to The Salford Centre project group, Stirling died suddenly in hospital following a routine operation that went tragically wrong. He was 68 and had been given a knighthood only weeks before. According to his biographer Mark Girouard, Stirling was "cut off at the height of his powers". His physical and creative presence at the heart of the Stirling Wilford practice had been immense, and in the immediate aftermath of his death his partner Michael Wilford was left holding the ring. At Salford City Council, there were deep misgivings about what would happen. "When Jim Stirling died, we did wonder if the practice would be able to handle it," said Tony Struthers.

During a sensitive and critical time, however, Michael Wilford rose to the challenge. The next month, in July, he successfully presented the masterplan to a meeting of arts organisations (from the BBC to Rambert Dance) invited to Salford to give feedback and express support. More than 100 representatives of local, national and regional companies turned up. According to Janet Roberts, "The response of these organisations was so positive and helpful that we were given the confidence to really push on with the project. That led to a new round of work."

The highly functional design of the building was not due simply to Wilford's own modernist inclinations but also to the fierce logic of The Lowry Centre Trust in driving the project forward by questioning every decision. As Wilford himself has written: "Architecture, as a pragmatic art, cannot be about style. The battle of style arises substantially from a deep suspicion of change." Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the architectural design is that multi-functional requirements of the building are wrapped in a sculptural collage that retains its artistic flair despite all the changing demands placed upon it. As Richard Carr wrote in Building Design: "The complex looks like an architectural collage, jumbled and fragmented, but exciting and challenging."

One can make direct comparisons with other Stirling Wilford buildings, with other arts projects which are anchors for urban regeneration, or simply with other examples of innovative modern architecture. There is, for example, a familiar play on interlocking geometric shapes in Wilford's design for the new British Embassy in Berlin; a pronounced prow to the shiplike triangular form of the practice's scheme for Number One Poultry in the City of London; an emphasis on the relationship between plaza, promenade and parkland in Stirling Wilford's Temasek Polytechnic in Singapore, completed in 1995. Ideas that surface in other projects are honed to a shine by Wilford at The Lowry.

Beyond the Stirling Wilford portfolio, one can see architectural solutions for new arts complexes in rundown urban districts in other parts of the world which are not dissimilar in form or spirit or outlook to The Lowry at Salford Quays. The public promenade is prominent and rythmical in architect Christian de Portzamparc's east wing of the Cite de La Music on the famous La Villette site in industrial Paris. Kiyonori Kikutake's Tokyo Edo Museum, meanwhile, hovers on four giant stilts over a regenerated district of the city as part of a design which involved reinserting historic canals to connect to Tokyo's Sukida River. Antoine Predock's Civic Arts Plaza at Thousand Oaks in California, with its tower, massing and cascade of terraces, gives civic focus to a drab stretch of brushland next to a busy freeway north of Los Angeles. Architectural strategies for regeneration are often shared internationally but made special by their local context.

Then there are the signature modern buildings to which Wilford's Lowry project relates: Frank Gehry's reflective Guggenheim Museum on the water in Bilbao; Kisho Kurakawa's Ehime Museum of Science in Japan, a seemingly random collage of geometric shapes at the foot of the mountains on Shikoku Island; Sir Richard Rogers' European Court of Human Rights, expressing the idea of transparency and openness in its form. But such comparisons only take you so far. In the end, The Lowry's architectural design is very much of itself; the building stands very much on its own terms against the tough, history-scarred landscape from which it clearly draws such inspiration.

Salford City Council submitted a bid to The National Lottery. The success of the bid was announced in February 1996. Lord Gowrie, then Chairman of the Arts Council, described it as 'A magnet to attract artists and audiences from far and wide'. In the local press the headlines read 'Salford's Greatest Day'.

The colours grow warmer towards the centre, moving from the purple exterior wall and orange balconies to the blue interior of the Lyric Theatre and the red interior of the Quays Theatre. At night, the building really comes into its own. The Tower and the canopy at the front are clad in perforated steel, and when these are illuminated from inside, the whole building glows.