Anthony Wilson picks two modern Mancunian buildings, one a triumph of architectural art, the other … er, you’d better read it yourself
My choices are both in my home town of Manchester. Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum North is fantastic. They cut his budget by 50% but instead of winging and wincing he got on with it. The outside is sculptured but so is the inside. For example, the Earth Shard – the central exhibition room – isn’t a box within a shaped piece of metal; the room itself is shaped, and the floor has a horizon. It’s the thinking behind the building, and the way this high-tech building has a low-tech display, an audiovisual slide show, that is so unbelievably impressive. Libeskind is a genius, but his design is also testament to the bravery of Trafford council.

My bad building is 1 Piccadilly. Piccadilly Gardens is the centre of our city and having taken the opportunity of getting Tadao Ando, the Japanese architect, to do a rather strange but very interesting fountain and a controversial concrete wall, they put a new office block on to what was a grotty but nevertheless green space. When we all complained, our civic fathers said it would be wonderful, but when it was finished it turned out to be an incredibly ordinary, irrelevant piece of shite – just a nothing building. Every time this great city builds a nondescript new building, it is throwing away an opportunity. The lessons of Bilbao have clearly not been learned.

Anthony Wilson was the founder of Factory Records. He and his home appear in Inner Spaces,

a design series that begins on BBC3 on 24 May.