‘A nightclub on a massive scale’: touring Populous’ £365m Co-op Live arena

Coop live 1

Soon to be the UK’s biggest indoor music venue when it opens in April, the 23,500-seat Manchester behemoth is an impressive site. Tom Lowe has a look around

The unofficial brief given to Populous when it was commissioned to design Co-op Live was to create a “sweaty nightclub on a grand scale”.

This might not be the first thing you would associate with the Co-op Group, the firm best known for its medium-sized supermarkets, but the cavernous £365m arena looks like it should be up to the job. 

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