Riba to open national architecture centre in Liverpool

Mann Island, which will house the centre, won a RIBA North West award in 2015

A "national architecture centre in the North" is to be opened by The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

Liverpool's Riba North will have conference facilities and a gallery "at its heart", a spokeswoman said.

The institute's president Jane Duncan said it would "explore the enormous impact that architecture and design has on our lives".

It will open in August with an exhibition of designs for Liverpool that were never built.

The centre, which will be housed in the Broadway Malyan-designed Mann Island on the city's waterfront, "will offer a magnificent opportunity to display Riba's historic collections, telling hundreds of years of the UK's extraordinary architectural history", Duncan said.

The "prominent high-footfall location" for the privately-funded venue had been chosen to "help us to reach a wide audience", she added.

The opening show will "celebrate Liverpool's long, often maverick, history of architectural ambition [and] its willingness to take risks and be open to transformation", the spokeswoman said.

It will include Sir Charles Nicholson and Philip Webb's proposals for the city's Anglican Cathedral, a 1959 scheme by Sir Denys Lasdun for the Catholic Cathedral site and Graeme Shankland's "bold vision for a new skyline" from the 1960s.