Survey

Project one was divided into 3 parts, Observations, Evidence and Reflections. At the start of project one the studio was split up into two different groups, one group was tasked with looking at the division between Ligoniel and Squires Hill, my group was tasked with looking at how Short Strand is isolated from the rest of East Belfast. These groups allowed all years to work together before we all started to focus on our individual analysis.

Shorts Stand is a small Catholic enclave situated in the majority Protestant East Belfast, as a result the area has experienced large amounts of sectarian fuelled violence, in an attempt to resolve this multiple Peace Walls have been erected to keep both communities divided

PART 1: OBSERVATIONS

In the first Part of Project 1 our group was tasked with visiting short stand and documenting anything we though was of particular interest. After arriving in Short Strand my first impression was that it was an area in decline as I was immediately faced with a large row of derelict shop fronts, as I then travelled throughout the space I started to find myself hitting more and more dead ends as a result of the large amount of peace walls in the area, the purpose of these walls was to resolve political tension in the past however today they still make it highly inconvenient to navigate the space, taking inspiration from Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces I was able to analyse the Space even further. Applying his theories to the peace walls it became apparent that these Peace Walls are not just constructed out of brick and steel but they in fact utilise many different factors to create separation.

After everyone had taken time to investigate short strand we all returned to studio to compile our findings, I worked closely alongside my fellow 5th year Jordan to help direct the final display of everyone’s points of interest, we first took our route and straightened it out in order to create a foundation for everyone’s work to be pinned up on, I then complied a photographic story board with 3rd Years Teagan and Cara to highlight the main things that stood out on our walk. Once everyone’s work was up we were then able to take wool and highlight points of interest in relation to the satellite view of our walk compared to our straight one , this helped visualise the difficulty of navigating the space

“You must set about it more slowly, almost stupidly. Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless.”

-Georges Perec-

Learning From Las Vegas inspired map of the area.

PART 2: EVIDENCE

In the second part of this project I decided to settle on one particular space that caught my attention, this space for me was the BITCNI (Business in the Community Northern Ireland) Building located on the Albertbridge Road. The BITCNI Building also sits directly behind a community garden.

The reason that these two spaces stood out to me was that at first you would think that they are a positive sign for the area as they both promote better interaction with the local people , however there is an alarming amount of derelict buildings in the area and the community garden’s gates are usually locked shut, due to where they are currently located they also effectively block of a series of roads that would make the area easier to navigate.

I drew inspiration from Robert Venturis Book, Learning from Las Vegas as it introduced me to the concept of sign theory where just because something may appear one way it could in fact be having the opposite affect , the business that promotes a better community is in fact a hidden barrier that works to keep the community separated

Following on from this I then created two separate gifs to highlight the various levels of barrier present between one side and the other.

PART 3: REFLECTIONS

In part 3 of project 1 we were tasked with producing sheets that documented all of our finding and work so far, as I had been drawing a lot of the inspiration for my book from Robert Venturi I decided that I would produce my own version of the learning from Las Vegas Super Crit and call it Learning From Short Strand. In order to mimic the original, I have based a lot of my graphics and layout off the same structure that the original book uses. Etra nerionf irt

Vala Satios, egerobus viderum ponfir am optinte mentem intiquitas actus M. Sendioc tudem. Ibus vocri temum cupicio prionsul vividie ssendam, cae restrae cureor pes nocaet interce poponsumus re pes essolut iam intelus, que este medo, pare deme dit, dium hostrareo, quam din non sum mo

Learning From Short Strand