This project is aimed at providing people with a different way to enjoy the history in Manchester city centre. More specifically, it is to create an open museum of heritage buildings in Northern Quarter and Ancoats, where a large number of historic buildings can be seen. This is firstly because Northern Quarter and Ancoats have great historic values. It is said in the Morning Chronicle (1849) that Ancoats is to Manchester what Manchester is to England, to show great importance of Ancoats to the whole city. Besides, Ancoats is called ‘the world's first industrial suburb’ with some old mills preserved till now, and has a unique status in the history of both global industrialization and urbanization. As for Northern Quarter, it is the area that has witnessed over two and a half centuries of changes, which means architectures of various styles can be seen there, including brick-built Georgian artisans’ houses, steel-framed Edwardian textile warehouses and Victorian pubs. However, the historic values of Ancoats and Northern Quarter are underestimated, especially Ancoats’s. Changes are encouraged nowadays to these places but this is not to say that the history stories behind heritages could be forgotten, since the historic integrity is very vital to create the characters of these two areas. Therefore, this project is developed to remind people to pay more attention to these historic treasures that are just around them in daily lives, by producing distances from people to see these heritages better, and providing information related for people to know about the history more directly.
