Stamp of approval for iconic North West buildings.

A pair of iconic North West buildings have been commemorated with their own stamps.

Liverpool’s Everyman theatre and Manchester’s Imperial War Museum North (IWM North) have been chosen by the Royal Mail as two of 10 well-known UK buildings to feature on special stamps.

The Liverpool theatre, which was rehoused into a new Haworth Tompkins-designed building in 2014, features 105 life-size portraits of local residents on its façade.

Later that same year, the theatre was awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize for Building of the Year.

Gemma Bodinetz, artistic director at Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse Theatres, says: “We are hugely honoured to see our beloved Everyman celebrated in this way.

“Through the design and construction process our sights were firmly fixed on creating the perfect theatre for our audiences and artists; it never occurred to us that one day it would be winning major architectural awards let alone being licked and stuck on envelopes!

“Everyone at the Everyman is completely thrilled as I’m sure are all the local people represented on the shutters. It’s a very special thing.”

Steve Tompkins, director in charge of the Everyman project at Haworth Tompkins, adds: “We set out to make a public building that the whole community could feel was part of their everyday lives, a place where members of a diverse society could continue to communicate with each other.

“So to have the new Everyman immortalised on a stamp feels like a lovely endorsement of that ambition. I’m looking forward to tiny Everymans winging their way around the globe as ambassadors for this extraordinary theatre company.”

Manchester’s IWM North has also been honoured with its own stamp.

Located on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal and opened in 2002, the IWM North was renowned Polish–American architect Daniel Libeskind’s first building in the UK.

Its form was conceived as a series of fragments of a shattered globe that have been reassembled, with three interlocking shards signifying conflict on land, water and in the air.