The Haçienda’s visual history to be celebrated in new photobook

News

A new book by designer Ben Kelly will look at the pre-history, lifespan and visual legacy of Manchester’s iconic Haçienda club, which closed its doors back in 1997.

Kelly was the club’s interior designer and has worked with photographer Eugene Schlumberger to create ‘Haçienda Landscapes’, which is billed as “part photobook, part visual history”.

A press release explains that the book “reflects upon the club’s enduring design aesthetic via photography of the industrial landscapes of the North, the graphic language of the everyday, and items selected from Kelly’s personal Haçienda and Factory Records archives, much of which has never been seen before”. It also includes a special contribution by famed graphic designer Peter Saville.

The Haçienda was central to the explosion of the acid house craze, and rave culture, in the UK in the late ’80s following its opening in a Manchester yacht showroom earlier that decade. The club was the project of the city’s Factory Records, with Kelly having been enlisted to design the interior following a recommendation from Peter Saville, who created release covers for key Factory acts New Order and Joy Division.

The book project is now crowdfunding via Kickstarter, and can be supported here.

A note on the Kickstarter page says of the design focused on in the book: “Kelly’s daring use of a hard-edged industrial graphic language paired with dazzling block colours communicated Factory’s intent for the venue; this would be much much more than a nightclub – The Haçienda would be a crucible for the cutting edge of music culture and creativity.”

Last year, the Haçienda was recreated in VR.

Revisit the club’s ’90s heyday with this photo retrospective.