UK studio Citizens Design Bureau has renovated and extended a heritage-listed synagogue to create a museum that "tells the stories of Jewish Mancunians".
Set between a builder's merchant and a self-storage company in the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester, the studio aimed to create a building that would complement the industrial surroundings, but also be intriguing.
Manchester Jewish Museum has a Corten extension
"We wanted the building to make people curious, to ask questions and most of all to make connections," said Citizens Design Bureau founder Katy Marks.
"It's essentially an industrial shed clad in corten steel, but delicately perforated so that it acts as an intriguing moment in a cluttered streetscape, sparking conversations in one of Manchester?s most culturally diverse communities," she told Dezeen. The extension's perforations were informed by the synagogue's architecture. Photo is by Joel Chester Fildes
Citizens Design Bureau renovated the synagogue, which was built in 1874 by Edward Solomons and is the oldest in the city, and added a weathering steel extension alongside it.
The colour of the Corten steel and a series of geometric perforations were designed to complement the synagogue and were directly informed by its Moorish architectural motifs.
The museum has a new entrance. Photo is by Joel Chester Fildes
"Our approach to the new building, therefore, takes a palette of rich, earthen colours and Moorish geometry in a...