it's our birthday .. modernistHQ is FOUR!

On May 1st 2019, after ten years of pop-ups and publishing, the modernist society embarked on our biggest and perhaps most foolhardy venture.. when we opened a real live shop... Not just a shop of course but a hub for all our activities, our magazine offices, our warehouse, our meeting place and exhibition space. We opened with copious bottles of Campari and with some help from a crowdfunder. The generous donors amongst you are still feted on a plaque just inside our front door. 

We publish a magazine about modernist architecture and so thought it would be a good idea to open a shop selling other books and zines and modernisticky things. Not since the demise of the CUBE gallery and RIBA bookshop had there been a place in Manchester so focused on architecture and design.

We also wanted a gallery space to exhibit prints, photography, paintings and other artwork for concrete sniffers and tower block lovers. And fortunately we chanced upon 58 Port Street.. not the ideal venue you might think -  a shop and former weavers workshop from Georgian times - but it suited us just fine.. right size, right location and just about affordable (if all went well).

Has all gone well? Hmm.. there's the small matter of Covid of course, when we either couldn't get into the building or had to pop in one at a time to pack and post our wares. We had to close the shop for some time and we've still not managed to repeat the jam packed launch events of those pre-covid days but we did manage to keep publishing and we passed the milestone of Modernist magazine issue number 40.

Our exhibitions have ranged from the the motorway paintings of Jen Orpin and the architectural photography of Daniel Hopkinson, to the Lego model of the UMIST Campus by Tony Bolton. At present we are hosting an exhibition focussing on the fragile Brutalism of war torn Ukraine.

modernistHQ is fully up and running now and we're ready to go into our fifth year at Port Street, still flogging books and zines whilst working towards issue number 47 of the magazine and cooking up new badges, publications and projects.

So, next time you're in town, why not pop in to the oldest modernist shop in the city and wish us a Happy Birthday.