Located in heart of Chester’s historic centre, Storyhouse provides the city with a much-needed new home for drama, film and literature, curated under the over-arching theme of storytelling. The £37m building incorporates an 800-seat main auditorium, a studio theatre, a cinema, a brand-new city-centre library and a café. The site includes a Grade II listed cinema, formerly an Odeon dating from 1936. Cheshire West and Chester Council hope to achieve a unique city-centre building with 18-hour a day activity. The concept for the building places the technically complex new auditorium and flytower outside the existing Odeon, allowing the cinema’s striking Art Deco interior to be restored and used to house the foyer, studio and library. The prominent brick exterior of the historic Odeon retains its landmark status in Chester’s townscape and continues to mark one of the major entrances to the site.