Co-op Live, Manchester

The Challenge

Sustainability is a founding principle for the project, and achieving a BREEAM Excellence rating is a primary goal. The venue is 100% electric and carbon neutral, harvests rainwater, uses plant-friendly, locally sourced food, has pledged to be plastic free and send no waste to landfill.

To meet these ambitious targets for minimal waste and reduced embodied carbon during construction, the Co-operative Group needed a team of local suppliers who shared the same commitment to the environment and offered products and services that could positively contribute to the cause. It also demanded more from its building’s envelope than any project of its kind. The wall panels needed to be extremely robust, able to hold a heavy mesh rainscreen and LED screens. As the building is 65m high, there were also severe wind loads to address.

The team at Euroclad worked closely with the project team to ensure the right products were selected to give the highest possible performance with the lowest environmental impact.

The Project

The £365m Co-op Live is the UK’s largest entertainment arena, and aims to be the country’s most socially responsible venue. This unique and ambitious project in Manchester has set a new standard for the entertainment industry, with a focus on social responsibility and protecting the environment.

Co-op Live is a partnership founded on the Co-operative Group values and principles, which centre around serving its members and their communities. This ambition to make a positive impact developed into the concept behind the venue - ‘Gigs that give back’. As a result, the venue will donate each year to the Co-op Foundation to help it deliver on its new youth-led strategy.

The 23,500-seat arena has thirty-two bars and restaurants and aims to be a thriving hub, bringing the people of Manchester together.

Lindner Prater Ltd was appointed as the roofing and façade contractor, who in turn appointed Euroclad for the supply of wall cladding.

The Actions

Euroclad spent four years working with the project teams to assess panel spans and façade connections in differing areas, and at varying heights to ensure minimal tolerance movement and maximum protection.

To support the rainscreen, Euroclad supplied 20,000m² of Rainspan external wall sandwich panels in 175mm thickness for the building exterior. Rainspan sandwich panels use a 115kg/m³ density stone wool core, manufactured by Knauf Insulation to provide fire, thermal and acoustic performance.

The panels allow a wide variety of rainscreens to be mechanically fixed to the exposed face, allowing for any number of colours, textures and materials to be used. This gave the Co-op team greater architectural expression and freedom to create something visually stunning for the city.

The team at Euroclad also supplied 1,500m² of Rockspan Extra panels, a through-fixed external wall solution, also with a stone wool core made by Knauf Insulation, which uses fixed joint details to enable faster construction. Rockspan panels are suitable for rainscreen construction both for their buildability and for fire performance, with a Euroclass A2-s1, d0 classification for Reaction to Fire when tested and classified to BS EN 13501-1:2018.

“Our longstanding partnership with Euroclad allows us to bring products to market that use high-performance materials and are designed with buildability in mind,” explained Luke Davies, Rock Mineral Wool Product Manager at Knauf Insulation, “Using stone wool manufactured in the UK helps to reduce the embodied carbon of the rainscreen and sandwich panels and realise Co-op Live’s ambitious sustainability goals.”

Rainspan and Rockspan Extra panels are manufactured in the UK using local steel, further adding to the project’s green credentials. Both panels also offer thermal and acoustic performance, helping to ensure the energy efficiency of the venue and minimising noise pollution.

It was vital that Euroclad’s products were used exactly as designed and tested to meet performance requirements, so Euroclad’s site services team made regular visits to site to oversee and advise during the crucial installation. To line up the LED screens on different bands of the building, the vertical lines of the panel had to be exact, so this was also an important part of installation that very carefully monitored by the Euroclad team.