Perspective December 2020

Perspective

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VOL 29 / NO.6 / DECEMBER 2020 / £4

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Contents

Northwest Multimodal Transport Hub See page 22 for Case Study

December 2020 - Volume 29. No.6 COMMENT

03

CASE STUDY

FEATURE The Plague Year

12

Northwest Multimodal Transport Hub Marianne O’Kane Boal

22

Q+A - Christopher Upson

38

Ormeau Parklet Architect’s Account

32

Thomas Jackson : A Retrospective Paul Larmour

40

The Harrison Boutique Guest House Karen Latimer

56

Art Review Marianne O’Kane Boal

80

Karlswood Stables Andrew Bunbury

66

Buildings at Risk

86

Book Review

92

Everogue Lane Architect’s Account

76

Cover Ormeau Parklet, OGU & MMAS Architects Published by Ulster Journals Ltd 39 Boucher Road, Belfast BT12 6UT Telephone 028 9066 3311 Fax 028 9038 1915 Email copy@ulstertatler.com Web www.rsua.org.uk Managing Editor Christopher Sherry Editorial Assistant Gemma Johnston Contributors Paul Larmour, Nicola McVeigh, Marianne O’Kane Boal, Karen Latimer, Paul Harron, Andrew Bunbury. Advertising Sales Lorraine Gill, David Millar Design Tatler Type RSUA Editorial Committee Kari Simpson (Convenor), Dermot MacRandal, Wayne Hazlett, Ciaran Fox, Jayne McFaul, Aidan McGrath, Roger Perrott Extended Committee Andrew Bunbury, Marianne O’Kane Boal, Keith McAllister, Paul Clarke. The Journal of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects, 2 Mount Charles, Belfast BT7 1NZ Telephone 028 9032 3760 Fax 028 9023 7313 Subscriptions Christine McGoldrick Telephone 028 9066 3311 Subscription rates UK £24 Overseas (inc. ROI) £30. Perspective is published bimonthly and distributed freely to all architects in Northern Ireland. It is also available by subscription. Printed by GPS. Copyright Content Ulster Journals Ltd Title - RSUA. Photography for Front Cover Joe Laverty Opinions expressed in Ulster Journals publications are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of the publishers.

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COMMENT

Clients Comment: Ormeau Parklet

Belfast Buildings Trust is a charity that works to make Belfast’s authentic buildings and places relevant for the city’s people. Belfast’s heritage isn’t just about bricks and mortar.

It’s also about how we understand and experience the city’s places. Because places matter to people. Two things make a difference: quality design that responds to people’s needs and using local character to enhance what makes a place distinctive. The Ormeau Parklet is guided by this approach with collaborative working between OGU Architects, MMAS, and Queen’s University School of Architecture, working as a core team from the outset.

Beyond the quality human design, the Ormeau Parklet demonstrates a different approach in Northern Ireland. Its temporary urban principles show that quick, responsive projects are possible here. Creative risk allows ideas to be tested and adapted; it shouldn’t be a barrier to taking action.

The collaborative nature of working across the charity, private and public sectors shows that an enterprising spirit can make delivery happen. Using knowledge and experiences best suited to the specific challenge is a winning combination for civic change rather than believing that a single actor can make the difference by itself.

Everyone has a role to play in Belfast’s future. People need to be involved in creating and refining the places that define their city. So, it’s vital that we all better understand what makes Belfast Belfast. That’s what should inform partnership work with residents and business and public sector organisations right across the city’s neighbourhoods. That’s what will ensure that heritage and design are relevant for people’s quality of life. The Ormeau Parklet is a model for bringing new heart to

Belfast’s neighbourhoods and reflecting the city’s heritage in how that happens.

Shane Quinn Belfast Buildings Trust “I am very pleased to have been able to support the Ormeau Parklet initiative. The Coronavirus pandemic has created an additional imperative to make more space for people within our streetscape. It has been great to see how popular the additional pavement and seating space has been since the Parklet was constructed. I hope that the prominent inclusion of bespoke cycle parking encourages people to think about how they travel locally as well as providing facilities for the many people who already realise the benefits of active travel in their daily lives.

The Ormeau Parklet was a rewarding project for the Department for Infrastructure in terms of working collaboratively with the architects, IMTAC and local manufacturers to design and trial something robust, cost effective and high quality that can be very temporary or can last for a number of years, depending on the needs of the local community and businesses.

Following the success of the Ormeau initiative, my Department will be working with Councils and local communities to build on this by rolling the Parklet model out in other areas across the North.

Nicola Mallon Department for Infrastructure Minister

Shane Quinn Belfast Buildings Trust

Nicola Mallon Department for Infrastructure Minister

Perspective 03

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NEWS WORK IN PROGRESS

Shared Womens Centre, Lanark Way, Belfast

Site Location

one of the most polarised and disadvantaged interface areas

TODD Architects have been appointed to deliver a new

within North West Belfast.

Shared Womens Centre located at Lanark Way, Belfast.

The building will create 1454m2 of shared space across three The iconic Centre is to be built on a former bonfire site

floors and will contain a multi-purpose hall, nursery facilities,

adjacent to the ‘peace wall’ which divides the Shankill and

education / training rooms, youth units, health & well-being

Falls communities. The building will be a shared space for

facilities and café.

women and their families and will serve both communities in Continued on page 6

04 Perspective PAGE04+06.indd 2

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Centre

na e ankill ng will d their munities

NEWS WORK IN PROGRESS

hin

of shared contain ities, h units, café.

Continued from page 4

Site Location Central Courtyard

The building has been designed around a central external courtyard and is largely 2 storey with a 3 storey ‘tower’ strategically positioned to announce the main entrance The external façade will be clad in clay facing brick with colourful fibre cement cladding and glazing facing into the courtyard.

The project is grant funded as part of the Special EU

Programmes

Body

(SEUPB),

European

Main Entrance

Regional

Development Fund (ERDF) Peace IV Programme with match funding from the NI Executive.  Peter Moran TODD Architects

Design Concept The building and has been designed around a central external courtyard and is largely 2 storey with a three storey ‘tower’ strategically positioned to announce the main entrance The external façade will be clad in clay facing brick with colourful fibre cement cladding and glazing facing into the courtyard.

06 Perspective PAGE04+06.indd 4

The project is grant funded as part of the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB), European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Peace IV Programme with match funding from the NI Executive.

07/12/2020 15:07

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NEWS WORK IN PROGRESS

Belfast Garden Villa

Situated on a site with a very long garden in east Belfast the proposed villa connects to the existing home via a glazed link. The link allows us to create two protected courtyards with full observation from the new extension, the courtyards are designed to be passively observed from the extension to provide a safe enclosed area for the grand kids to play. The Villa has been designed in two zones, living and sleeping, both zones are defined by their own sloped roof which rise at different angles, the different angles of the intersecting roof slope allows for high level windows, flooding the living space with natural light throughout the day, reducing the need for side windows therefore providing more privacy.

The exposed timber glulams supporting the roof is reflected through the use of natural timbers throughout the rest of the Villa, defining openings, both internal and external.

Planning was approved in November 2020 with works starting on site early 2021. Estimated build time 5 months. A 360 VR walkthrough is viewable on mccreanorandcoarchitects.com Paul McCreanor Jnr McCreanor Company Architects (MCCA)

10 Perspective PAGE10.indd 2

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NEWS

BOOK

The Plague Year

The Plague Year by Marcus Patton, just published by Grand Piano Press, is a history of the events of 2020 told through daily cartoons reflecting on lockdown, political chaos, climate change and Brexit.

However this is not just a book of jokes, nor is it all political.

The pictures draw on such diverse references as HG Wells, Casablanca, Shakespeare, the Bayeux Tapestry, quantum physics, Van Morrison and the Siege of Troy. The observations on life in 2020 range from the quirky to the barbed and from anger to surrealism.

The book contains over 150 full colour cartoons, accompanied by a brief calendar of events, from the early days of washing our hands singing Happy Birthday, to the interview in the Rose Garden, the re-opening of pubs, the hasty return from holidays before quarantine, and the shadow of Brexit, up to the American election.

Marcus Patton is well known architect, illustrator, cartoonist and historian based in Belfast. His last book of illustrations, The Opera Hat of Sir Hamilton Harty, won Best Book at the Irish Print Awards. 

The Plague Year Marcus Patton Format 10in x 8in, 94pp. £15 softback, £25 hardback.

Available from Grand Piano Press, info@operahat.co.uk.

ISBN 9781715754594 (hdbk), 9781715754600 (softbk)

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MALONE RIDGE

C a r l a n t o S how r o o m 5 - 7 G l e n m a ch a n P l a c e , B o u ch e r Ro a d , B e l f a s t , BT1 2 6 Q H T. 0 2 8 9 0 23 043 3 E . i n f o @ c a r l a n t o . c o m w w w.c a r l a n t o . c o m

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Taking cues from motorway acoustic barriers, where visual illusions are created as you pass, this finned facade is intended to be appreciated at speed – the point of view of a typical observer driving along the adjacent N3.

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Farrans are delighted to have delivered the North West Multimodal Transport Hub on behalf fo Translink.

Farrans is a specialist company committed to building with care, fully embracing both the structural and social aspects required for effective building solutions. Our construction project teams are selected on the basis of their individual ability, relevant skillsets and commitment to work as part of an integrated delivery team.

The key skills within this experienced team are:

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07/12/2020 15:39

FEATURE CASE STUDY

Northwest Multimodal Transport Hub

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THE TEAM Client Translink Architect Consarc Design Group Landscape Architect The Paul Hogarth Company Project Manager /M & E / Structural & Civil / P-way Designers Mott MacDonald

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Quantity Surveyor JCP Consulting Interpretive Artwork Tandem Design S&T Project Manager Babcock Main Contractor Farrans / Rhomberg-Sersa Photography Lorcan Doherty

07/12/2020 15:35

FEATURE CASE STUDY

S

ome of the world’s most impressive architecture is to be found in train stations and transport hubs such as the Gare du Nord, Paris; King’s Cross Station, London and the Estación de Atocha, Madrid, all of which feature significantly-scaled interior expanses. The recently completed Northwest Multimodal Transport Hub in Derry-Londonderry, designed by Consarc Design Group, has clearly looked to the latter, Madrid’s Estación de Atocha for reference and inspiration. This stimulus has been contextually combined with the restoration and refurbishment of the original Waterside Train Station designed by John Lanyon, eldest son of Charles Lanyon.

In 2013, Translink undertook an initial feasibility study to consider the future railway provision in Derry City. The outcome of the feasibility process and consequent economic appraisal concluded that the best location for the new hub

would be in the refurbished historic former station. Architects Consarc Design Group were appointed in late 2015 as part of the design team. Works commenced on site in September 2018 and phase one was completed approximately a year later with phase two completed in November 2020. European INTERREG funding secured for the project helped inform the ‘transport hub’ nature of the scheme with active travel spaces. The Northwest Multimodal Transport Hub is located on the east bank of the River Foyle at the base of Bond’s Hill, and accessed via a paved area off Duke Street Roundabout.

It now stands as an inviting presence at this busy arterial juncture. The Hub is a careful combination of conservation and contemporary considerations. The new is embraced by the old within this scheme. Historic architectural elements of the former listed train station are akin to welcoming arms that have gathered a twenty-first century response into their care. The archways of the active travel centre and that of

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Perspective 25

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FEATURE CASE STUDY

South elevation

East elevation

1.

1560

North elevation

West elevation 26 Perspective PAGE22-29.indd 6

07/12/2020 15:35

the distinctive clock tower invite interactive engagement with the public. The clock tower can be walked or cycled through and this action on the landscaped paved area allows a sense of human closeness with the historic architecture. The overall scheme includes new track alignment with associated platforms and canopies, ‘park and ride’ car parking and a public realm scheme. It also includes a Greenway that links the existing riverside walkway from the south to the Ebrington site via the front and side of the building to the east. Views over the River Foyle are maximised in the scheme and enjoyed predominantly from the platforms and café. It is this comprehensive connectivity in terms of transport, cyclists and pedestrians that makes the Hub such an anticipated and sensible solution for the city. It will also ensure a long overdue revitalisation for this area.

and Barony Glen sandstone Italianate-style Railway Terminus.

Rectangular on plan with two unequal gable-ended ranges…

The rear of the building to the North is the former railway

The former Waterside Railway Terminus is a Grade B listed building designed by John Lanyon and built in 1873. This is an important example of railway architecture in Northern Ireland.

It is described as ‘late-Victorian detached two-storey Granite Perspective 27

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40 Perspective PAGE22-29.indd 8

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bright spacious surroundings softened by internal landscaping; their interior is warm, welcoming and conceived on a human scale. The combination of an open airy space with two landscaped planters at its heart provides a positive experience of waiting to travel or to meet family and friends.

The interior area concludes with an adaptable community space that enhances the permeability of the building. The interior is connected to the platforms and tracks outdoors through a large rectangular window and above this the form is repeated to admit additional light and sky views.

shed which is a large span double-height space with a pitched roof supported on steel trusses’.1 The front section of the building was badly bombed in the 1970s, and the 1980s saw its refurbishment as a warehouse and office accommodation, with a glazed south-facing façade linking the two original masonry blocks. The design principles centred on bringing the existing listed building back into active reuse. The entire footprint of the existing station was utilised, both the front masonry section and the rear former railway shed. This is an impressive achievement and has provided an interesting and dynamic combination of historic and contemporary spaces.

Passenger and staff needs have been fulfilled through facilities provided. Commercial opportunities are realised at the front entrance of the building in the form of the café and the newsagent. The first floor is now in use and the active/ sustainable travel office space on the ground floor is likely to be occupied soon.

I referred to the architects’ international inspiration for this scheme at the outset of this article and this is tangible internally in the Transport Hub. The Estación de Atocha in Spain’s capital city was an 1892 replacement for the original station that was destroyed by fire. It consists of a huge shed featuring a wrought-iron-and-glass inverted hull roof connecting two brick flanks. In 1992 the station’s main hall was converted into a shopping mall with a centrepiece of a one-acre tropical garden. The architects have looked to Madrid for their combination of historic and contemporary:

Ascot designed and installed external and internal signage, which is an important dimension of any public facility, let alone one which aspires to be a gateway interchange point for the city. On the interior, whose narrative unfolds gradually from the main entrance in its wooden panelling (housing the ground-floor fit out), Tandem Design were employed to bring the historic space to life with a series of interpretative interjections, for example, the engaging graphic wall map that provides a fresh contextual reading for passengers of the city’s attractions and those of its environs. Tandem Design were also responsible for the intricate laser-cut steel planter screens (4m height) that feature scenes of the city’s industrial past, railway heritage and future aspirations. There are a range of plants contained and these are individually labelled for interpretive purposes.

A significant piece of historic railway architecture had become a ‘building at risk’ in recent decades. Thankfully, it has now been sensitively conserved and revitalised for the future. It is heartening to observe a transport hub that acknowledges the importance of the pedestrian and the cyclist fully in its scheme. The design has essentially embraced the public and local community both internally and externally. It has become a means of inclusivity, providing outdoor walking routes that are properly considered and connected. It has also provisioned a welcoming interior that has a substantial proportion of designated community space. The project is a breath of fresh air that sparks the imagination for what can happen between journeys and within active meanwhile spaces. 

Marianne O’Kane Boal 1 Extract from Listed Building Description in the Historic Environemnts Division

Cost Consultants on the North-West Transport Hub Building Surveying MEP Engineering  Project Management  Principle Designer Services 

The new EU INTERREG VA-funded North-West Transport Hub. Overall scheme cost £28m (including Greenway).

JCP Consulting Ltd Lomond House - 85-87 Holywood Road, Belfast, Co. Antrim BT4 3BD Tel: 028 9022 1100 | Web: www.jcpconsulting.co.uk

JCP Perspective 29

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Transporting communities Mott MacDonald aims to improve society by considering social outcomes in everything we do, relentlessly focusing on excellence and digital innovation, transforming our clients’ businesses and their communities.

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Weaving a distinctive sense of place into the fabric of the North West Transport Hub, interpretive interventions pay homage to the heritage of the region and the City’s role as a cultural threshold.

Interpretation at the

North West Transport Hub Derry~Londonderry

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30 Perspective PAGE30.indd 1

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CASE STUDY ARCHITECT’S ACCOUNT

Ormeau Parklet

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THE TEAM Client Belfast Buildings Trust Department for Infrastructure (Construction Phase)

Manufacturers Fabrite, Moore Concrete

Architect OGU & MMAS Architects

Planting Memento and local residents

Research Queen’s University Belfast

Business Collaborators Dirt Bird, General Merchants, Green’s Pizza, Bread and Banjo

Accessibility Support IMTAC

Funders Department for Infrastructure, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast City Council, Department for Communities

Design Team: Chris Upson, Fearghal Murray, Rachel O’Grady, Eryn McQuillan Research Team: Dr Rachel O’Grady, Dr Agustina Martire, Juliette Moore, Jonathan Yau

Main Contractor White Mountain (DfI MTC)

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Surfacing Shannon Road Markings

Photography Joe Laverty

07/12/2020 15:40

CASE STUDY ARCHITECT’S ACCOUNT

T

he Ormeau Parklet is a demountable urban installation located along part of the Ormeau Road in Belfast.

Conceived first and foremost as additional public space, a small number of parking spaces have temporarily been converted into pavement in order to facilitate safe distancing for pedestrians and also to provide a place that hospitality businesses can use to serve food and drink outside when guidance allows. It also supports eight new spaces for cycle parking. The project aims to test and record the advantages and disadvantages the parklet creates for local businesses and residents in order to contribute to ongoing discussions about future change to the city’s public realm.

In Spring 2020, a group of professionals from different fields met via social media after sharing similar ideas online. They had discovered a shared belief that Belfast’s urban spaces needed to be transformed to support people through the pandemic. Belfast Buildings Trust, OGU Architects, MMAS Architects and lecturers from Queen’s University Belfast met online to discuss how they could initiate an urban project to improve part of the Ormeau Road. The team lived or worked locally and had noticed many small hospitality businesses likely to need support, as well as several pedestrian ‘pinch points’ where people were unable to keep a safe distance apart. This model of a cross sectoral core team, including a built environment charity, architects and researchers, was key in being able to approach the project from different

points of view and to take advantage of multiple skill sets to coordinate partners and stakeholders with a variety of interests in the project.

Early discussions took place between the architects and the Department for Infrastructure (DfI) to better understand how such a project could be achieved technically. The Ormeau Road is a busy trunk road and a project such as this one had not been constructed before in Northern Ireland. DfI were extremely supportive from the start as it began to take shape as an urban prototype. This collaborative trialling and research-based design approach between DfI and the architects was critical to the success of the project. Regular assessment and contact continues with the DfI team.

Early in the process, the team walked the Ormeau Road with Michael Lorimer (IMTAC) and Joe Kenny (local IMTAC partner) to understand the issues along Ormeau in terms of accessible design and difficulties for those who are visually impaired or using wheelchairs or mobility scooters. The pandemic had exacerbated the problems at several pinch points for everyone. At this point three sites had been selected as possible locations for the parklet and these were discussed with local businesses to gauge interest. Following these conversations, one site was chosen and a more indepth consultation process with the adjacent businesses was carried out.

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Ormeau Road WA Green Collection (1910-1935) - note original wide pavings Credit ® National Museums NI

Ormeau Road Parklet area August 1981 Image courtesy of Philip McAlpine (www.belfast35mm.com)

Parklet Partners Comments QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY

“

Dr Rachel O’Grady and Dr Agustina Martire, lecturers in architecture at Queen’s University Belfast, were involved in the Ormeau Parklet from its inception. Their experience working with public spaces and people-led places was instrumental in delivering the parklet and the research around it. Dr O’Grady’s work in the design and research of Built: East Pavilion at C.S. Lewis Square and Dr Martire’s collaborative StreetSpace project, set both academics in the ideal place for being part of the Ormeau Parklet team. Dr O’Grady, Dr Martire and students from the StreetSpace project are in the process of measuring the impact of the parklet and analysing the feedback from the public to assess its success.

Early findings show that the feedback from the public that uses the parklet has been largely positive, and the negative reactions do not seem to be significant so far. The changes on parking patterns seem to be negligible for now. Despite lockdown rules that included the removal of chairs and tables in the parklet, the space has been used regularly for social distancing and for sitting for a coffee or a break. The final result of this research will hopefully help inform future tactical interventions in Belfast and the rest of Northern Ireland.

”

BELFAST CITY COUNCIL

“

Earlier this year, Belfast City Council, the Department for Communities and Department for Infrastructure agreed A Bolder Vision for the city that provides a blueprint for how our streets and public spaces are designed and used to meet the changing needs of a diverse range of users. Drawing upon the Vision, Council has been working with partners across the city to create attractive, accessible, safe and vibrant spaces and support existing businesses and encouraging inclusive growth as part of the city’s recovery.

Collaboration and co-design of projects is central to Council’s approach because it results in local ownership and better -quality projects to meet local needs. The Ormeau Parklet initiative is a great example of what can be achieved when

statutory and civic partners work together to be innovative and trial new ideas based on high-quality design. This is particularly important in light of the challenges facing local communities and businesses as they navigate the ongoing pandemic and its aftermath.

In this case, Council has been able to support Belfast Buildings Trust to deliver the initiative through partnership working and Covid19 Revitalisation funding, supported

by Department for Communities and the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. The parklet demonstrates a local, best practice approach to placemaking that not only creates more space for people, but also shows how businesses are diversifying and adapting their premises. By taking an enabling role, Council has been able to support delivery and learn lessons that can be applied to similar projects in other parts of the city.

”

THE INCLUSIVE MOBILITY AND TRANSPORT ADVISORY COMMITTEE (IMTAC)

“

Imtac is delighted to have been involved in the development of the Ormeau Parklet. We believe the project is a great example of inclusive engagement and collaboration. In particular we would praise the positive approach taken by the architects (OGU/ MMAS) in engaging directly with disabled people to inform the parklet design.

In many ways the COVID-19 pandemic has added to existing barriers experienced by disabled people using our streets and pavements. The Ormeau Parklet has successfully sought to reduce and remove some of these barriers by creating inclusive, accessible additional space and removing clutter from the existing footway.

Imtac believes the parklet provides an excellent template for similar projects across Northern Ireland, both in terms of specific responses to COVID-19 but also generally in making our public realm and streets more people focused.

”

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CASE STUDY ARCHITECT’S ACCOUNT

The location of the project on a trunk road meant that boundary treatments needed to be safe and robust. However, the structure also had to be demountable so that the project could function as a trial and adapt in future if necessary.

The team was also conscious that as a trial project designed for simple disassembly, the building components should be able to be taken away and easily reused in order not to waste materials. For the project to be replicable, it needed to represent value for money and be easily and quickly assembled on site. For these reasons, precast concrete agricultural units were selected that could arrive on a truck and be quickly lifted into position. Bespoke prefabricated corten screens and bicycle stands could also be rapidly delivered and installed.

Both the concrete and corten components were manufactured in Northern Ireland. It was important that the project supported as many local businesses as possible. Planting was also designed, supplied and installed by Memento, a business located on Ormeau Road. The quality of the plants was important to the team, wishing to set an example for urban projects across Northern Ireland to increase planting and support biodiversity wherever possible. The plants were chosen to provide colour through autumn and winter, and local residents helped to set them in place. Quality was a priority despite the rapid construction time, so that the parklet could be an uplifting place for people to spend time in a period that has been difficult for many. The warmth and pattern of the corten steel, investment in a variety of plants, bespoke cycle stands and addition of a tactile surface coating (also crucial to provide the necessary floor contrast and ‘feel’ to aid those with visual impairment) were all chosen to add to the sensory experience of the parklet and make it a place that people could enjoy all year round.

Once the two practices involved had decided upon key design decisions with the other core team members, they began to discuss the technical aspects with local manufacturing partners. At this point there was no funding in place and a strategy for procurement and implementation was needed.

Taking advantage of existing relationships with local manufacturers Fabrite and Moore Concrete, the architects arranged the rapid development of prototype components at risk whilst funding was still being sought.

As a prototype and trial project, one of the core project aims was to develop a model of delivering temporary urban interventions with partners from multiple sectors that reflects the important role architects play within this model, not just in terms of ‘concept’ or ‘technical design’ but also in terms of strategy design, engagement, coordination and fundraising.

This project required a flexible, collaborative approach with the various organisations facilitating rapid delivery. Belfast Buildings Trust acted as the client figurehead for the design phase, with the Department for Infrastructure installing items supplied through various funders on the ground. It was critical to this project that the architects were involved from the beginning. If these projects are to be replicated quickly the procurement model is also vital to ensure that projects can be delivered at speed and with quality, prototyping with local, skilled manufacturers.

Partnership with engaged clients like Belfast Buildings Trust who place design as a central focus and the close collaboration with DfI, BCC and IMTAC ensured that this was the first parklet to be delivered in N Ireland. An advice document entitled The Ormeau Parklet: Policy discussion paper for future parklet development, co-authored by the team, describes the parklet partnership model in more detail and has been sent to decision makers across N Ireland.

This project demonstrates how architecture and design on a modest scale can transform public spaces in NI and contribute to the recovery of cities post-pandemic. As city and town centres change in the coming years, there has never been a greater need for testing ideas. If the right models of partnership and procurement are adopted, the creative imagination of architects can offer public bodies, businesses, community organisations and local residents urban solutions that will not only create safer spaces in the short term, but will test ideas about how our future towns and cities are resilient, creative, sustainable and inspiring places to live and work. 

OGU Architects

MMAS Architects

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FEATURE Q+A

Christopher Upson Christopher Upson is Director of OGU Architects, one of the Ormeau Parklet architects.

What is your favourite building?

I would say the Indian Institute of Management by Louis Kahn really stands out as a favourite.The building has a wonderful ethereal quality - every time you turn a corner you find another detail or quality of light that is mind-blowingly good.

I saw it whilst on an amazing month-long trip around India.

Ahmedabad itself is definitely worth visiting. We stayed in a courtyard house with a very generous local family. As well as the chance to see one of Louis Kahn’s masterpieces, there are also several Le Corbusier buildings - lots of incredible historic and modern architecture, all in one place.

What is your least favourite building?

I find most suburban housing on the periphery of towns and cities in Northern Ireland lacks imagination or any informed response to the site. Such developments are often formed around cul-de-sacs, which are difficult to escape without the aid of a car. Existing parking standards in modern developments here require multiple spaces per dwelling which tends to create a sea of tarmac and reduces the scope for better quality landscape for children and adults alike.

A linked issue is that such developments tend to exacerbate existing urban problems; like the relatively limited number of people who live within the centres of towns and cities in Northern Ireland. The quality of housing generally is something that needs real debate. We need better guidance so that hopefully over the coming decade we get progressive and sustainable residential developments that meet the needs of the people living there and support thriving places.

Which city stands out as a model of good design?

It might not be as obvious as some European cities but I am inspired by Berlin every time I visit. There is a real energy and a willingness to test and trial new things. Leftover spaces and old buildings are often used in clever ways.

Licensing laws allow for ad hoc events, or even a few seats outside a local shop will often be well used as a simple place to have a drink or coffee with your neighbours - making residential streets much more vibrant and inclusive.

Rather than being left derelict, many older buildings are utilised without substantial refurbishment or enclosure for temporary event spaces, markets, places for art, eating and drinking - all with an incredible atmosphere. Many areas along the water are increasingly well appropriated with interesting uses and spaces to relax for the day.

It is a model which could be utilised in Belfast. Our diminishing number of old warehouse buildings and spaces could be revitalised without the requirement for large amounts of funding. We have recently lost Gilpins and some of the other warehouse buildings in Titanic Quarter but there are others like Riddel’s Warehouse which hold massive potential for this light-touch development - if Hilden Mill was reoccupied in an interesting way it could be a great place to cycle to along the tow path.

What made you choose your chosen career path?

I like the balance of the creative and technical side. I spent a lot of time growing up making things (with varying degrees of success). Even now, I still try to bash the odd bit of wood together to make furniture. Architecture is a nice mix of solving problems at different conceptual levels, whilst something real and tangible is made at the end. Despite all the drawing, modelling or testing, there is always a new quality to the built form I find very exciting to see.

If you could change one thing about Belfast from a design point of view, what would it be?

Confidence to take chances with designers and architects with the focus being on the best quality outcome. In architecture, the current procurement model prioritises those who have completed certain types of building before (whether the finished product was excellent or just average), which seems like a reductive model for procuring the best architecture and excludes lots of practices.

Belfast and Northern Ireland has a crop of outstanding new and younger architecture practices. However, the procurement landscape is particularly difficult to move through to enable them to work at scale. It would be good if this process could be reviewed and significantly improved.

The RIAI recently ran a prestigious competition for Ireland House in Tokyo, which actively encouraged partnership between practices and allowed smaller practices to team up with bigger ones. Two local practices came second with a beautiful entry. For certain types of projects - public procurement encouraging partnership between newer and established practices may be one way of exploring developing the design sector. The talent exists here to significantly improve Belfast but the procurement process needs to be modified to improve the overall quality of design within the city.

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What does good design mean to you?

I would say it is a feeling. When it is good, it just fits and feels right - effortlessly making your life better.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

Those times when you know that the idea you are progressing has quality and depth - the design seems to progress at incredible pace.

I love working through the details. It depends a lot on the type of work, whether the arrangements are in place to have the direct relationships. If so, it is great fun working closely with a good manufacturer or maker who enjoys the process of getting things built well. Architecture is a team sport and working with good people makes it better.

This is a process I really enjoy and I have been lucky to work with some amazing clients, contractors, engineers, makers and manufacturers over the years.

Indian Institute of Management by Louis Kahn

I also enjoy working at the other end of the scale where it is about large-scale strategic thinking and urban design which can change and influence what happens in towns and cities in a way that usually isn’t possible with individual buildings.

As a practice we love to collaborate with other creative people. At the moment we are working alongside MMAS Architects on a number of inspiring projects, Estonian Architects as part of a travelling exhibition exploring wood and also with the photographer Joe Laverty who is fantastic.

Favourite – movie, band, art piece?

MOVIE An obvious choice but Goodfellas is fantastic.

BAND I don’t have a favourite band and love a wide variety of music. Current favourites include William Onyeabor and Brittany Howard - who I was due to see earlier in the year before the performance was cancelled due to the lockdown. Hopefully we can get back to live gigs soon - it’s so tough for people in the music industry at the moment. A French friend recommended the radio station FIP as a great way of discovering new music; it’s a good tip for architects - I like to put it on when I am working as I find it has great music to listen to when drawing.

ART PIECE I love Nigel Peake’s drawings.

Berlin

Nigel Peake drawing

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St Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church, Alfred Street, Belfast, 1841-44 : interior

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FEATURE

Thomas Jackson : A Retrospective Dr Paul Larmour recounts the career of Thomas Jackson, one of Ulster’s most prolific architects of the nineteenth century whose architecture varied as much in style as it did in building type

Thomas Jackson

Thomas Jackson was born on 30 August 1807 in Waterford, Ireland, to Quaker parents. His training as an architect was in Bristol in the office of the neo-classical architect, and fellow Quaker, George Dymond. A curious relic of Jackson’s days in Bristol exists in the form of a beehive which was built there to his designs in 1827 and shipped to Waterford the next year before eventually resting in the garden at Altona, a house Jackson built for himself in Belfast many years later. It now stands in the garden at Clandeboye House, Co Down, moved there at this author’s suggestion in 1985.

On the completion of his articles in Bristol, Jackson returned to Ireland, and by June 1829 had set up office on his own in Great Patrick street, Belfast, and was advertising for business in the local press offering ‘a strict adherence to chastity of design, as exhibited by the best examples of the ancients’.

By January the next year, however, he was working in partnership with Thomas Duff, an architect from Newry who had established a Belfast office some years earlier. Duff had recently, in 1829, secured the commission for a museum to be built in College Square North in Belfast for the Natural History Society, and had a number of other jobs in hand, and clearly welcomed assistance in dealing with his increasing practice.

In addition to seeing to the construction of the museum from 1830 to 1834, Duff and Jackson together, from their office in the Commercial Buildings, in Waring Street, were responsible for such other jobs in Belfast as a pair of houses in Donegall Square West (1830); the reclamation of the Short Strand by forming an embankment (1830); supervising work on the interior of the Third Presbyterian Church, Rosemary Street (1830); repairs to both St George’s and St Anne’s churches

Beehive built to Jackson’s design in Bristol in 1827, later moved to his garden at Altona, Belfast

(1831); a Friends Meeting House in Frederick street (1831); and five villas on New Lodge Road (1831). Commissions elsewhere, beyond Belfast, included the installation of toilets at Clandeboye House, Co Down for Lord Dufferin (1830-31); rebuilding the Crown Court at Carrickfergus Court House, Co Antrim (1832); the Bank of Ireland, Trevor Hill, Newry, Co Down (1832-35); additions to Caledon House, Co Tyrone for Lord Caledon (1832-33); and additions to Killyleagh Castle, Co Down, for Lord Dufferin (1834).

While the design of some of these joint commissions may be attributed to Duff in particular, there seems no doubt that it was Jackson who was responsible for the villa development of 1831 at Cliftonville just beyond the end of

26-30 Cliftonville Road, Belfast, 1831

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FEATURE

Graymount, Gray’s Lane, Belfast, 1835

the present New Lodge Road in Belfast. This was a personal speculative venture inspired by the Clifton suburb of Bristol where Jackson had lived, hence the name he gave to the development which then gave its name to this part of the original New Lodge Road. It was a venture which was more ambitious in original conception than was eventually realised, due to commercial pressures, and only a limited number of the intended buildings were erected. All in classical style they included a pair of semi-detached houses at nos. 34 and 36 Cliftonville Road, a detached house called Cliftonville Cottage, at no. 24, which was Jackson’s own residence, but which has now gone, and a terrace of three houses, occupied for some years by the Home for the Blind, which still stands at nos. 26-30 Cliftonville Road. A Doric order, laurel wreaths, and a band of anthemion ornament are amongst the Greek Revival features and motifs that decorate this terrace block, the most imposing element of the original estate. It is further distinguished by the giant scale of the mutuled eaves and the windows which peer between the triglyphs of the frieze.

In 1835 Jackson, newly married at the start of that year, split from Duff who went back to practise in Newry until his untimely death in 1848, while Jackson set up an independent practice in Belfast – at first in Waring Street and then for many years in Donegall Place – in which he was to be continuously active for the rest of his life. An early commission under his own name was for Graymount, a sizeable country house at Gray’s Lane, built for the linen merchant William Gray around 1835 on a slope to the north of Belfast overlooking Belfast Lough. This was a fine Regency-period house in classical style, finished in stucco outside, with full-height coupled pilasters

Graymount, Gray’s Lane, Belfast, 1835 : interior

Music Hall, May Street, Belfast, 1838-39

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FEATURE

St Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church, Alfred Street, Belfast, 1841-44

across the front, and a central Ionic tetrastyle portico. Inside, an Ionic hall screen lead to an impressive double-return stair with a big spacious lantern soaring above, while rooms to each side exhibited fine neo-classical detailing with bold panelled ceilings and ornate marble fireplaces.

Among other early commissions for Jackson in independent practice were a new entrance from College Square North together with a porter’s lodge at Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and a schoolhouse at the rear of Fisherwick Place Presbyterian Church, Belfast, both dating from 1836 and both now long gone, as well as a new meeting house in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, that same year. His first significant personal commission was the Music Hall of 1838-39 in May Street, Belfast, built as concert rooms for the Anacreontic Society. Described in the press at the time as being in ‘ItaloGrecian’ style this neo-classical building featured a purely Greek front consisting of a pair of tall columns based on those of the ancient Ionic temple on the Ilissus at Athens, set between plain pilasters, and sloping-jamb windows derived from those of the Erectheum at Athens occupying the recessed front wall, while the long exposed side elevation displayed a series of round-headed windows. This imposing building was regrettably demolished in 1983 in spite of being officially listed for protection. It had been abandoned for some time after a period of use as a church.

In 1841 Jackson scored a notable success by winning the competition, against thirteen other entrants, for St Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church in Alfred Street, Belfast. Opened in 1844 the building not only heralded a break from his usual

Reformed Presbyterian Church, College Square North, Belfast, 1843

Former Unitarian Meeting House, Ballymena, Co Antrim, 1845

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FEATURE

Following his success at St Malachy’s, Jackson designed three other churches in Gothic style during the 1840s. These were the gable-fronted Reformed Presbyterian Church of 1843 in College Square North, Belfast (demolished in 1966), the Unitarian Meeting House (later Faith Mission Hall) of 1845 in Ballymena, Co Antrim, and the tower-fronted (but long demolished and long forgotten) Presbyterian Church for the Fourth Congregation in Donegall Street, Belfast, rebuilt by Jackson in 1843. In another break from his usual classicism, Jackson also produced seemingly unbuilt designs in 1841 for a new school for Belfast Academy, which were described as ‘a modification of the style of the English Collegiate buildings of the Tudor period’.

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Donegall Street, Belfast, 1843

neo-classicism, but in its own right constituted one of the most original Tudor Revival churches in Ireland. Here Jackson eschewed the usual practice of laying out a Tudor-Gothic style church on a longitudinal plan in the manner of English collegiate chapel models – which his former partner Thomas Duff had done at Newry Cathedral and St Patrick’s Church, Dundalk, Co Louth – and instead laid his church out on a lateral plan with the altar placed on one of the longer walls and a gallery running around the other three sides. The flat ceiling of the main rectangular space was then densely patterned with stuccoed conoidal pendant vaulting inspired by Henry VII’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey. The exterior walls were built of red brick with cut stone dressings to openings and along the battlemented parapets, but the original intention was that the whole exterior would at some future time be coated with what was termed Roman cement in imitation of cut stone, thus the explanation for the dressings all noticeably projecting from the brickwork.

Savings Bank, O’Connell Street, Waterford, 1841-42

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FEATURE

Castle Buildings, Donegall Place and Castle Place, Belfast, 1846

Corn Exchange, Victoria Street, Belfast, 1851 : interior

Royal Terrace, Lisburn Road, Belfast, 1847

Corn Exchange, Victoria Street, Belfast, 1851

While Jackson’s practice was almost entirely confined to Ulster, with a growing number of buildings in the Belfast area, there was one notable exception outside the province.

This was the Savings Bank in O’Connell Street, Waterford, won in competition in 1841 against twenty-six other entrants.

An impressive pedimented classical building in granite, with Corinthian pilasters across the front, and a pair of Ionic ‘in-antis’ porches, it originally had a cupolaed clock turret rising above the pediment, as dictated by the terms of the competition, but this was removed in the 1930s.

During the 1840s the scope of Jackson’s work was expanding, as commissions came in for commercial and industrial buildings, while Italianate detailing generally replaced his earlier Greek. In 1846 he designed an extensive three-storey stuccoed shop and wareroom block in Belfast, known originally as Castle Buildings (but later dubbed Gibson’s Corner), occupying the curved corner of Donegall Place and Castle Place. It was characterised by its rhythmic sequence of round-headed second storey windows, springing from giant pilasters. At the same time he was also engaged in designing a number of factories and mills, most of which, if not all, have now disappeared, including a weaving factory for Mr Bosie at Gordon Street, Belfast (1841), a weaving factory for Kennedy & Son at Millvale, Falls Road, Belfast (1843-44), and a flax mill for Chermside & Co. also at Falls Road, Belfast (1846).

Meanwhile his domestic architecture of this period included

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Bertha, Malone Road, Belfast, 1853 (now demolished)

Luke Mausoleum, Clifton Cemetery, Belfast, 1857

Derryvolgie House, Malone Road, Belfast, 1856-58

a terrace of houses at Apsley Place, 56-70 Donegall Pass, Belfast, designed in 1844, with laurel wreath and anthemion ornament on the pedimented doorcases, and the longdemolished Royal Terrace, Lisburn Road, Belfast (1847), as well as country houses in various forms of classical style such as Tamnamore, Co Tyrone (1845) for Richard Lloyd, and, most probably, Dunbarton House, Gilford, Co Down (1845) for Hugh Dunbar.

During the early 1850s Jackson worked on such diverse buildings as a Gas Works for Cookstown, Co Tyrone (1851), Ulster Bank branches for Cookstown (1852) and Downpatrick, Co Down (1853), the Friends Meeting House in Railway street, Lisburn, Co Antrim (1853), and the Corn Exchange

in Victoria Street, Belfast (1851), erected by a company of the grain merchants of the town. A two-storey building with shops below a lofty first floor hall, the Corn Exchange was built of rusticated and pilastered sandstone, with a tall Renaissance-style open loop-work parapet, an Ionic ‘in antis’ doorway, and an emblematic piece of sculpture representing a corn-sheaf surmounting the exposed end elevation. In its time the exchange-room upstairs was reputedly one of the finest public halls in Belfast. Industrial commissions continued into the later 1850s with Jackson at work on the likes of Glenbank Spinning Mills for John Emerson at Upper Crumlin Road, Belfast in 1858, as well as more Ulster Bank commissions such as that for Londonderry that same year (destroyed in 1975). One unusual commission of the

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FEATURE

Springfield, near Magheragall, Co Antrim, c.1855

Former gate lodge to Longwood, Shore Road, Belfast, c. 1860

Glenmachan House, Old Holywood Road, Belfast, 1862 (now demolished)

Queen’s Elms, University Road, Belfast, 1858-59 (now demolished)

time was for the Luke Mausoleum of 1857, a monument of Egyptian character erected in Clifton Cemetery, Belfast, for which Jackson designed a stone chamber surmounted by an obelisk, originally with a now-displaced sarcophagus over the door-head.

Meanwhile Jackson was in growing demand for wealthy merchants’ houses and villas. Among the larger residences, all in classical style and invariably with Ionic columns to the front entrance, were Seapark at Whiteabbey, Co Antrim (1853) for John Owden, where he later, in 1859, designed a set of Turkish baths; Bertha, Malone Road, Belfast, built in 1853 for Sir David Taylor, but now demolished; Derryvolgie House, Malone Road, Belfast (1856-58) for Cranston Gregg; and undoubtedly also Caera, Windsor Avenue, Belfast, built

in 1854, but now demolished. Other large houses of the period, but of astylar type, included the recently demolished Lakeview House at Lurgan, Co Armagh, for Francis Watson, and Springfield near Magheragall, Co Antrim, built for Joseph Richardson around 1855. Many of these larger houses, in suburban areas as well as in the countryside, were equipped

by Jackson with gate lodges in complementary style, such as the one at 186 Shore Road, Whitehouse, Co Antrim, dating from around 1860 and built for the now-demolished Longwood. One notable break from Jackson’s usual classical idiom for domestic work came, however, with his design for Queen’s Elms, a terrace of houses on University Road, Belfast, built directly opposite the gates of Queen’s University in 1858-59 in a flamboyant Jacobean style with shaped gables, but now demolished.

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Altona, Glenmachan Road, Belfast, 1864

Glenmachan Tower, Glenmachan Road, Belfast, 1860s

Lismachan, Glenmachan Road, Belfast, 1869-70

Craigavon, Circular Road, Belfast, 1870

In the early 1860s Jackson was again involved in a speculative villa development in the suburbs of Belfast, this time on land which he had acquired to the east of the town from Sir Thomas McClure. There he designed such houses, mainly in Italianate style with rendered walls and all standing in their own spacious grounds, as Glenmachan House (built in 1862, but now demolished) which he himself occupied for a few years before it was sold to Sir William Ewart; the more modest Glen Ebor (later renamed Hampton) which also dated from 1862; the comparatively plain Altona, built in 1864 for himself, and where he lived for the rest of his life; and the stonebuilt Glenmachan Tower, the most splendid of the series, replete with an octagonal tower commanding distant views all round, built for Sir Thomas McClure. These were followed a few years later by Lismachan, another rendered Italianate villa on Glenmachan Road, this time with a square tower, designed in 1869, and not far away, Craigavon on Circular Road, a grand Italianate villa set in extensive grounds, built in 1870 for James Craig. Â The 1860s saw Jackson involved in railway work. As architect to the Banbridge, Lisburn and Belfast Railway Company he designed stations in such places as Banbridge, Hillsborough, Mullaghfernan, and Dromore, all in Co Down, and all dating from 1861, as well as the great seven-arched viaduct at Dromore which was completed in August 1862. The line closed in 1956. He also continued his work as architect to the Ulster Banking Company during the 1860s and beyond, designing such branches, all in Italianate style, as Strabane, Co Tyrone (1861), Ballymoney, Co Antrim (1864), Maghera, Co Londonderry (1866), Granard, Co Longford (1870), Lisnaskea, Co Fermanagh (1872), and Garvagh, Co Londonderry

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FEATURE

Former railway viaduct, Dromore, Co Down, 1861-62

(1873). In all he was to design nineteen new branch banks for the company over the course of his whole career, plus alterations and additions to about as many more.

From 1863 Jackson worked in partnership with his two sons, Anthony and William, but not consistently so, and precise dates of allegiance are uncertain. Anthony only stayed with him for a few years, until about 1869 when he went out on his own, while William remained until at least the end of the 1870s before emigrating to Australia. The expanded office of Thomas Jackson and Son (and occasionally ‘Sons’) saw various changes of stylistic approach from time to time, but although there is no record of how design responsibilities were shared, it is possible to attribute some works to specific individuals. It was presumably Thomas himself who designed the Scottish Amicable Assurance Company building (later known as the Heyn Building) of 1863 in Victoria Street, Belfast, an ornate palazzo in what was termed at the time as the ‘modern Italian’ style. It was the first purpose-built insurance office block in Belfast. The entire building was designed to be fireproof, with stone staircases used throughout, which was recognised at the time as an appropriate example for an insurance company to set. The arcaded treatment of some of this building’s windows was taken to an extreme shortly afterwards, presumably again by Jackson himself, in the design for an extensive warehouse for Sir John Arnott & Co. in Bridge Street, Belfast (built in 1865-67 but destroyed in the war-time blitz of 1941). This took the form of a tall central pavilion with lower lateral wings, in which the entire streetfront elevation of three-and-four storeys was fenestrated, with a rhythmic arrangement of round arches on piers and clustered columns of granite with sandstone capitals, to allow the maximum amount of light into a deep building.

Ulster Bank, Maghera, Co Londonderry, 1866

Former Scottish Amicable Life Assurance Company, Victoria Street, Belfast, 1863

Further commercial buildings in Belfast by the wider firm, invariably in Italianate style, and presumably by Jackson himself, included The Ulster Buildings, an office block in Waring Street built for the Ulster Banking Company in 186970 alongside their headquarters at the time, and Gordon House, on the corner of Lombard Street and Rosemary Street (1878). Meanwhile, other buildings in Belfast by the wider

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Arnott & Co. warehouse, Bridge Street, Belfast, 1865-67 ‘Cottage Villa’ at Fortbreda Park, Belfast, 1876

The Ulster Buildings, Waring Street, Belfast, 1869-70

firm, such as Riddel’s warehouse in Ann Street (1865-67) and the former Trueman’s warehouse of flat-iron form in Victoria Street (1868), displaying polychromatic brick and stone detailing in various modes of medieval style may be attributed to Jackson’s son Anthony whose independent work was usually in a similar ‘Ruskinian’ manner. Yet another break from the familiar Italianate idiom of Jackson himself

emerged briefly in the 1870s with the Queen Ann styling of red brick cottages at Fortbreda Park, Belfast in 1876, which may indicate the taste of others in the office, which by this time, in addition to Jackson’s son William, appears to have included a new recruit, F.W.Lockwood. The following year the firm was at work on the Hospital for Sick Children in Queen Street, Belfast (1877-78), designed in a form of Early Renaissance style, chosen no doubt to recall in a modest way the great period of hospital building in Jacobean England.

Built in the centre of what was then a very populous district of the town, the front was set back from the line of adjoining buildings in order to gain some extra light and air. It’s essentially classical style would seem to suggest the hand of Thomas Jackson himself.

After the departure of his son William for Australia, Thomas Jackson continued working for a few years, practising once again under his own name alone, although commissions were few. One of his later buildings, a shop and warehouse of 1883-84, in Italianate style, for Forster Green & Co. in Royal Avenue, Belfast, with a curved corner leading into North Street, in its pilastered upper storeys, tripartite windows, pedimented dormers, and even a reversion to his old favourite, the Ionic order, for the ground floor columns, shows him as committed as ever to a display of classical forms where it seemed appropriate. The last known building of Jackson’s career, on the other hand, the Fountain Street Hall in Belfast, built in 1889 (but now demolished), was a less grand affair, described at the time as ‘plain and modest, to meet the views of the worshippers’.

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Forster Green & Co., Royal Avenue, Belfast, 1883-84

Former Hospital for Sick Children, Queen Street, Belfast, 1877-78

The next year Jackson, who was not normally in the public eye beyond his routine work as an architect, was included in the ‘Contemporary British Architects’ series which had been running in the London-based journal ‘The Building News’.

In their issue of 15 August 1890 they published a portrait photograph of him together with a long list of his buildings, although unfortunately for posterity, not comprehensive and without any dates for them. It was a small but rare, and as it turned out, timely tribute, as only two weeks later he was dead. Jackson died on 1 September 1890 at his home Altona after suffering a stroke just two days after his 83rd birthday.

Thus ended the life of an architect whose career had spanned more than half a century, from the late Georgian era to the late Victorian. He had built an enormous amount all over Ulster, but particularly in Belfast where he had been part of a generation that had laid the foundations of the small town’s later growth into a great city. Beyond his extensive practice, however, Jackson seems to have played little part in wider affairs. Early in his career, in 1833, he had been made an honorary member of the Belfast Natural History Society, and had gone on to give two lectures to that society, one in 1838 and one in 1842, and later on, in recognition of

Fountain Street Hall, Belfast, 1889

his work as architect to the Belfast Royal Hospital he was elected a life governor of that institution. Although he seems to have neither sought nor acquired any higher public or professional honours, Thomas Jackson did occupy a special position in nineteenth century Ulster as one of the very first professionally-trained architects to settle in the province. 

Paul Larmour Photo credits : All colour photographs by the author. Black and white photo of Royal Terrace by Dr David McMahon, courtesy of Trevor Carleton.

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ULSTER UNIVERSITY

Unseen Characters: Other Ways of Knowing Buildings Who or what are the unseen characters of architecture? In theatre, comics, film, television, literature or in a radio play there is quite often an unseen character who advances the plot in a significant way. Their absence also enhances their effect on the plot. This super studio is curious about who and what are the unseen characters of architecture. How do we find them and then represent them? And when identified, how might this change what we do as architects and, how might our understanding of these characters, essential to advancing the plot, alter our attitude to architecture? There are two ways this studio seeks to consider this.

Firstly, there is an emerging body of work in research, theory and practice which is aiming to articulate the agency of buildings. This involves recognising and seeking to identify not only what buildings are, but what they do and how they act and for whom. Often portrayed as background, neutral things, against which we play out our lives, buildings are now considered “active�. Buildings change us as we change them and a true understanding of what a building actually is might therefore require us to find ways to note the material, spatial and social realities of buildings in both design and use. Hilde Heynen has identified that to date, much of these attempts to articulate the reality of buildings has occurred in text, and not in drawings or other visual representations. This perhaps renders this discussion somewhat abstract for architects and others who work in visually with buildings. It is in this context that the Unseen Characters studio aims to investigate and propose ways to address that.

Secondly, buildings too are often discussed as the sole work of individual architects. But the background histories of buildings are far more complex. There are the clients, the builders, the commissioners, the occupants, the politicians, the financiers, the cleaners, the painters who, along with countless others, contribute to a buildings design, use, survival or demise.

It is stating the obvious to say that buildings are made by more than the architect alone. This studio is curious about understanding buildings with reference to the true range of humans who both contribute to and sustain their existence, discussing buildings as this material and spatial continuum of collective human activity and endeavour.

In general, the super studio structure at the University, gathers students from all years to work under the umbrella of the studio for one year. Thus, in Unseen Characters, students, drawn from years 1 to 6 are working together for the first time in this new studio. Students are considered the first unseen characters we encounter in the studio. Students began the

year by making memory theatres, to both remember back and to project forward. Making two collaged and spatial models, each student worked back from memory and experience and forward to new imagined worlds. Like holding a shell to your ear to hear the sea, students make these models to listen to echoes of past rooms, cities, experiences and material atmospheres and then, through making, they each assembled these into models that offer a new way of translating these past experiences into future ideas in design. Then, from home or place of work, the students documented and recorded how they used the models. This was done by drawing them and the objects they had to hand. In these drawings and actions narratives of architecture emerged, histories, true stories of lives lived in the company of buildings. Family histories and stories unfolded, bound up in spaces, underlining our spatial, material and social connectedness.

Next, students worked together in two groups, assembling a new building in section, a boarding house, for transient and permanent characters. Students wrote invented life stories for the characters who are to reside in their boarding house. The building was assembled with the survey drawings made from the rooms and models of their lived experience and students swapped rooms and place new characters inside. Questions of scale, size, living quality and standards, publicity and privacy, design specificity and occupational unpredictability, ways and forms of living and how buildings change over time emerged in these truly collaborative, constructive conversations across students at all stages of their education.

The work in this studio continues, more stories unfold, the characters human, material and spatial emerge. Whether mapping the world of birds, examining how Belfast might host new communities, or examining the hidden boundaries of cities that deny freedom and participation in city life, students will not work to any definitive resolution of site or program, but rather, in drawing their conclusions, they will become more attuned to and more part of the messy, material reality of the built world around them and the role of the architect within it.ď ­ Emmett Scanlon + Martina Murphy (studio teachers), with Stephen Carey, Bethany Dumican, Aoife Kane, Danielle Hynd, Aedan Mackel, Tiernan Devine, Kathryn Francey, Anna Thompson, Jane Lavery, Erik Varadi, Christopher Otley, Conor Flint, Dominik Wisnolowski, Rachel Wallace, Orla Murray, Sarah Taylor, Caoimhe Kelly, Tawatchai Thaiporn, Steven McLeister, Courtney Brannigan.

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FEATURE

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FEATURE CASE STUDY

The Harrison Boutique Guest House 43/45 Malone Road

T

here may be readers of Perspective who still remember the old architecture huts at the bottom of Lennoxvale where students in the early days of the School of Architecture at Queen’s University slaved away over their drawings. Indeed, some students may even have wended their thirsty way along the Malone Road to the nearby watering holes known colloquially as the Bot and the Eg(g). It is hoped that, being students of the noble art of architecture, just some might have paused in passing to admire the handsome stucco and brick terrace at 37-53 Malone Road, known to an even earlier generation of female students in the 30s and 40s as Bachelors’ Row, wherein apparently the most eligible of young men were to be found.

The huts are long gone but their imposing neighbours remain. In October 1992 the Malone area became an Area of Townscape Character (ATC) and then, in 2000, it was designated as the Malone Conservation Area which, in the words of the conservation plan, means it is “ an area of special architectural and historic interest, the character of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance.” The terrace at 37-53 is further protected by being listed Grade B2.

Terraces were introduced onto the Malone Road in the 1880s, with that at 37-53 designed in 1886 by William Eaton, about whom little is known, although according to the Irish Builder he was based in Botanic Avenue, and he did design other terraces in the area as well as the now demolished Crown Chambers of 1885 in Royal Avenue. 37-53 Malone Road is an imposing Victorian, four-storey brick and stucco terrace with distinctive conically roofed full-height bays. A strong Classical influence is evident in its hierarchical treatment and the marble columns used for the window and door openings as well as in the interior detailing.

Despite its obvious merits and importance, the terrace has been through difficult times and was beginning to look rather run down and unloved. Originally built for domestic use, through the years it has accommodated a range of uses and the houses at 43/45 had been converted into one big office, losing much original detail in the process and having unsympathetic alterations inflicted upon it. Enter stage left one of those indomitable, fiery spirits who are always up for a challenge: Melanie Harrison not only bought one of the houses in the terrace to live in herself but has now converted two of the other houses into The Harrison Boutique Guest House, creating in the process, as she says, “somewhere I would want to stay in myself”.

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THE TEAM Client Derek Harrison Architect McAdam Stewart Architects Jimmy McAdam/Richard Parkes

Structural & Civil ADD Consulting

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Acoustic Consultant F R Mark & Associates Fire Consultant Quam Consulting Ltd Photography Bradley Quinn

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FEATURE CASE STUDY

Jimmy McAdam of McAdam Stewart Architects worked with the owner and with advice from the Historic Environment Division to retain as much as possible of the building’s original fabric such as coving, skirting and ceiling roses and also to take inspiration from the existing elements where these had to be replaced. In the building process the original staircase was uncovered and refurbished and remaining original doors and the windows have been retained. Where interventions were necessary to bring the accommodation up to the standard required by today’s visitors, it was ensured that they were reversible. Working on converting a listed building for a new use is not without its challenges but the only major debate here seems to have been around the need to provide lobbies for the bedroom areas to meet fire regulations, and this turned out to be a benefit in the social distancing times we live in, as it provided space to leave trays without having to enter the bedrooms.

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FEATURE CASE STUDY

The local theme is evident throughout the building. Not only can guests stay in rooms named after an eclectic collection of local worthies such as Ruby Murray, Percy French, Van Morrison, Jonathan Swift, Anthony Trollope, CS Lewis and Denise Austin (the elephant angel) but at a practical level local materials and furniture and fixings have been used wherever possible. The indefatigable owner has sourced flooring from the Royal Victoria Hospital, railings salvaged from Ebrington Barracks and the work of local artists adorns the walls.

Even the garden has a George Best rose in it! Indeed, the regeneration theme carries through to the community green space at the back of the terrace which has been brought back from dereliction to a small oasis in this urban setting. A great deal of flair and imagination, not to mention a good dose of tongue-in-cheek mischievous humour, has gone into the interior design (the Head of the nearby School of the Natural and Built Environment has coined a new style for some of the interior decoration as “Punk Baroque”).

Inevitably there were delays because of Covid and opening in September 2020 was undoubtedly a challenge, but the Harrison Boutique Guest House deserves to succeed and most surely will. It is handsome, comfortable, quirky and very much of its place; it was lived in by John Cleaver of Robinson and Cleaver with his wife and eight children for many years. The work at No 43/45 has breathed new life into an imposing and important terrace and will, it is hoped, act as a catalyst for further sensitive architectural regeneration of this kind. 

Karen Latimer

GL

ELECTRICS

FOR ALL YOUR ELECTRICAL NEEDS. GL Electrics are delighted to have been associated with the Harrison Boutique Guesthouse 96 Markethill Road, Tandragee, Co. Armagh BT62 2EU Tel: 028 3884 1838 | Mobile: 07771 743017 Email: glelectrics@hotmail.co.uk | www.glelectrics.

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Perspective To advertise please contact Lorraine Gill T: 028 9066 3311

39 Boucher Road, Belfast BT12 6UT Tel / 028 9066 3311 Fax / 028 9038 1915 sales@ulstertatler.com Perspective 63

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TEL: 028 2565 2566 ext3 sales@moore-concrete.com www.moore-concrete.com PAGE65.indd 1

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FEATURE CASE STUDY

Karlswood Stables

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THE TEAM

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Client Cian O’Connor, Karlswood Farm

Grass Arena consultant Hayden Turfcare

Architect / Designers Karlswood / Alain Storme in conjunction with Clabel Milano

Grass Arena contractor Atlantic Golf Construction

Landscape Architects Park Hood

Sand Arenas RUF International Germany

Main Contractor Fallon Civil Engineering

Photography Donal McCann

Landscape Contractor Peter O’Brien & Sons (Landscaping) Ltd

Karslwood Website: www.cianoconnor.com

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FEATURE CASE STUDY

F

or a small country, Ireland has traditionally punched well above its weight in the equestrian world. The industry is of major national importance in terms of employment (especially in rural areas) as well as in tourism and exports.

The long tradition of skilled horsemanship combined with the fortuitous limestone soils, ideal for healthy equine bone growth, has meant Irish horses are in demand across the globe. Consequently, the country is the third largest breeder of thoroughbreds in the world.

Show-jumping (or stadium jumping) is a sport that is little more than a century old, having emerged out of horse training and skills within military or cavalry schools in continental Europe. While its traditional centre remains in Italy, Belgium and Holland, Ireland has been closely involved at all stages with variations of what would eventually be formalised into “show-jumping” being held at the RDS arena in Dublin

from 1881 (where it is was known as Leaping). In the 20th century, it became increasingly popular due to its suitability as a spectator sport and, subsequently, as it adapted very well for television. It remains popular and the Irish team are significant competitors on the world stage and due in Tokyo next year for the Olympics.

Karlswood is located in the rural countryside of Co. Meath, approximately 20 miles north of Dublin and is the home of Olympic medal-winning showjumper, coach and international horse producer, Cian O’Connor. Over the last couple of years, the site has been transformed from a relatively simple farmstead into world-class equestrian facility that is designed and managed to ensure that it is an industry-leading Centre of Excellence dedicated to talented and exceptional sport horses and their care.

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In 2019, Park Hood Landscape Architects were engaged to assist a wider design team in coordinating a masterplan and delivering the collective development. Clear direction was provided by the client, together with specialist consultant, Alain Storme, based on their experiences and assessment of similar premises across Europe, North America and the UAE; the objective was to distil and capture the best elements and features into this project.

Phase One of the masterplan was achieved within 18 months and included construction of a series of bespoke and functional buildings, yards and facilities customised for the requirements set out by the client team (which basically entailed the design and construction of buildings around a horse’s needs and requirements). The objective of the landscape design was to rationalise external site movement and utilitarian uses while coordinating the facilities without losing an Irish “sense of place” and setting. This was primarily facilitated by a strong formal grid linking the client’s house, client and guest stables, the indoor arena and the outdoor facilities and arenas which, set into a well landscaped environment, sought to combine the character of an old Irish demesne with the latest in equestrian technology and development.

The development includes a sand arena (extending to 80m × 100m) that is one of the largest in Europe. Near this is a grass “Grand Prix” arena (140m × 100m) which was designed in coordination with the team including Hayden Turfcare (who previously delivered the sports pitches at the Aviva (Lansdowne Road) Stadium and that at Croke Park). The jumping field took its base concept from the legendary

arena in Aachen and includes two water jumps, a double of ditches, a lake, a devil’s dike, a hedge fence and stone walls. It also allows for the replication of any arena in the world and possible combination of jumps so to provide an effective practice ring before attending any up and coming events. The two arenas incorporate major drainage systems and specialist surface designs, including an ebb and flow hydroponics watering system, allowing these areas to be used at all times of the year. This may sound simple but the ground has to be capable of absorbing a horse (say 85 stone), going at speed (say 25 mph) or jumping / landing (say 5 feet or more). Combined with the somewhat wet Irish weather, it becomes clearer why this has evolved into a science and specialist skillset all of its own.

The paddock, lunging and training areas are framed against a quintessentially Irish vista that rolls out onto a backdrop of undulating County Meath countryside. To strengthen linkages and reinforce the formal design grid, an avenue of 80 lime trees (Tilia cordata) has been planted. These are semi-mature stock (approximately 7m in height at time of planting) and provide an instant effect in terms of maturity in the landscape, giving added resonance and aesthetic quality to this project. The entrance to the arena itself is framed by a beech (Fagus sylvatica) archway, which was supplied and planted at a height of approximately 5m. Further hedges define both working and functional areas to frame buildings, paths, crossing points and roads to further reinforce the grid.

By taking the decision to plant such trees, hedges and shrubs as mature size or stock, Karlswood gives the impression that it has been in situ for much longer than its 18 months suggest.

The paths that criss-cross the development include specialist

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FEATURE CASE STUDY

(recycled) rubberised surfaces in areas subject to significant horse traffic that offer a soft, anti-slip surface, reducing concussion on their legs and joints. Internally, a natural clay brick in traditional herringbone pattern is used in the stable floors and this design was extended into the external landscape to provide visual coordination. Other external elements aside from show-jumping equipment, fences and gates are kept to a minimum but this has in part been made possible by clear and readable design that allows for guests to easily find their way, including to a viewing gazebo, without requirement for heavy handed signage. Further, the layout has clear definition of public guests and private or working areas as the facility clearly has to provide both a showing and working lands.

There is an old proverb that “Care, and not fine stables, makes a good horse” and the layout and design of Karlswood demonstrate, on that basis, there is likely to be many a good horse emerging from this centre. Further, it has shown that Ireland can match and exceed any other such facility and clearly reasserts the commitment and future in terms of show jumping. The majority of people who visit this site will be focused on the horses but given that they are framed so well by this development, set into a well-designed landscape, they will undoubtedly revaluate other facilities and what a Centre of Excellence really means. 

Andrew Bunbury

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Karlswood Equestrian Centre

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The layout and design has given us the opportunity to hold and display more stock, all controlled by a computer system which is directly linked to the RIBA Bookshop network.

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CASE STUDY ARCHITECT’S ACCOUNT THE TEAM

Everogue Lane

Client Clanmil Housing Association

Quantity Surveyor Hastings + Baird

Architect Hall Black Douglas

Main Contractor Kelly Brothers

Structural & Civil Thompson Barr Consulting

Photographer Mervyn Black

M & E A.H Design

F

ollowing a successful design competition, commissioned

by Clanmil Housing Association, Hall Black Douglas Architects were appointed to develop a derelict site in Crossgar, Co.Down. Situated in the centre of the village, the site offers prominent frontage to the busy main Downpatrick Road, and stretches back to the quiet residential Station Road.

Having grown up in this small village, I was very familiar with the site, and had only ever known it to be a wasteland, so it felt a great privilege to be given the opportunity to contribute to the existing built fabric as part of the design team.

The brief required that twenty residential units be developed on the site: six houses, along with fourteen apartments, with a requirement for two complex-needs units.

The surrounding context of the site is a mixture of residential, retail and community, with a mixed material palette varying from colourful render and pebbledash townhouses to more established buildings in stone and brick. Adjacent built forms along Downpatrick Street are a mix of one and two-storey, while Station Road to the west of the site is surrounded by private dwellings.

Having studied the challenges of the site we chose to deliver a solution that is a subtle contemporary interpretation of the surrounding village: considering scale, materials, massing and general character, whilst maximising the potential of the site.

The design concept was simple, aiming to continue the existing development patterns by infilling the gap in Downpatrick Road with a two-storey apartment building, adding important street frontage. This allowed the houses to sit back within the site, towards the more private Station Road entrance, maintaining the existing vehicle access.

The site offered defined boundaries, along with a challenging level change from front to back. We designed the main apartments in an ‘L’ shape to occupy street level with a smaller return block sitting into the site. A generous pedestrian underpass positioned halfway along the frontage ramps down quickly, dealing with the level change, offering connections through and giving the development an open and generous feeling.

It was important to break the strong linear facade along Downpatrick Road to reflect the more traditional proportions of the surrounding buildings. Set-backs of varying length and

depth are used along this elevation, with each end of the block sitting in line with the existing buildings. This helps anchor the apartments, while also reducing the building elements and creating an interesting streetscape. A change of material further enhances the elevation: each set-back is faced in a grey Roman brick, contrasting effortlessly with the smooth white render finish.

Tall grey windows and doors compliment both the brick and the render. Each apartment at ground-floor level has individual front door access, helping to maintain the rhythm of the existing terraced street, while adding additional movement to the façade, achieving vibrant, active frontages. The existing site topography offered a natural step along the apartment frontage, exaggerated by the use of parapets with simple chimneys to further read in harmony with the existing context.

The main communal entrance to the first-floor of the apartments is designed to be welcoming, with a large glazed corner at the pedestrian underpass; this also offers juxtaposition to the private individual entrances of the ground-floor apartments.

Landscaped amenity is created to the rear of the apartments,

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CASE STUDY ARCHITECT’S ACCOUNT

offering residents the choice of private shared external space, sheltered from the road and car parking. Landscaping is used throughout to soften the internal boundaries of the site and offers visual interest.

The houses to the rear of the site are a simple design, with clean lines and modern proportions. Roman brick planters and canopies help define the individual entrances.

The overall design serves to encourage community interaction, with ease of navigation through the site to the surrounding context and has been well received by the community.

The use of traditional materials in a contemporary manner aesthetically anchors the scheme into its setting, allowing it to rest sympathetically and quietly within the existing built fabric of the village. ď ­ Ruth Jamison Hall Black Douglas Architects

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Karen Power ‘Green Pond’ Photo courtesy of John Godfrey.jpg

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ART REVIEW FEATURE

The Black Monolith of the Flâneur Frederic Huska: The Black Monolith of the Flâneur is a reflective and meditative contemplation of the human condition, and one that is quintessentially existential. If we consider the monolith in science fiction, the most striking example is the black slab monolith of mysterious origins, found in three locations in the solar system, in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey series.

The monolith in these novels and Kubrick’s film acts as a meditation on the human condition and our place in the continuum of time: ‘behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth’, A Space Odyssey (1968).

In Huska’s installation the human condition and the experience of life, time and place is explored in a more micro sense than Clarke’s conception. The black monolith for Huska could be human consciousness, unreliable memories or the unknowable city itself.

The installation consists of eight framed photographs and a film that is projected onto the wall of the Sunken Gallery. The film work at the centrepiece of this exhibition is 12 minutes in duration and it features an intriguing, embracing and almost mesmeric narrative voice. In this film, a selection of carefully choreographed photographs is arranged in sequence and their consideration is reflected in the narrative. The female narration creates a shared space for the artist, the streets and the meditation. This is an everyman or everywoman. The identity of the speaker is not important; the focus is on shared melancholy, collective uncertainty and the aimless meanderings in the urban space.

The film opens with a black and white photograph of a hedge and a small square section of tarmac on the ground before the viewer. The female voice begins: ‘I know I still need to grasp, if I can, the sense in these walks I’ve been repeating for some time now. I know I have to discern my own logic which eludes me still.

I don’t hold any directions; have no method or pre-established plan, aside from staying within the area’. At this point the image changes to a second photograph of an old stone wall, railings and a tree above, and the narration continues: ‘strangely this lack of knowing is what draws me in, what prompts me to keep going, to search, to linger in these nooks that I previously would have neglected or simply not seen, like this block of stone blackened under the lacerating shadow of this sunny afternoon’. The image changes to an oil-splattered door, whose drips appear almost like mark making on an abstract canvas: ‘this inability to understand keeps you safe I tell myself, safe from error, safe from fixedness. Reluctantly my body propels itself forward…’ This excerpt gives a sense of the meandering flaneur and of the winding narrative. The surfaces and textures of the walls and buildings in the photographs make their

lingering impression on the eye. The shadows are apparent, light and dark emerge and the series of places and spaces featured are banal, inclined to be overlooked, yet familiar. The narrative, which has been composed of writings by Huska, I found reminiscent of Fyodor Dostoyevsky in Notes from the Underground (1864), of Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man (1952) and of Irish writers such as Flann O’Brien,, The Third Policeman (1967) and John Banville, The Book of Evidence (1989). This is perhaps not surprising as all these novels feature monologues of the depersonalised everyman figure.

The concept of the depersonalised flâneur is interesting. This French noun refers to a person, literally meaning ‘stroller’ or ‘saunterer’. The term is often associated with artists, writers or poets and the creative occupation of considering ideas.

All images courtesy of the artist Frederic Huska

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ART REVIEW FEATURE

The flâneur was featured in Romantic poetry and Baudelaire identified the figure in his essay The Painter of Modern Life (1863) as the amateur observer of modern urban life. The figure is often featured in impressionist paintings.

The artist plays with the role of voice in the work. Huska believed that to use his own voice was too close, personal and arguably a male voice might also have been overly immediate.

Huska’s decision to lend his flâneur a woman’s voice works on a number of levels: it distances the narrative from the artist as intended and creates a depersonalised everyman/everywoman mouthpiece. It also goes beyond this, however, and redresses the balance of inequality in gender representation. The flâneur in art and literature is predominantly assumed to be a man, as Laura Elkins (2016) has observed: ‘the flâneur – the keen-eyed stroller who chronicles the minutiae of city life – has long been seen as a man’s role. From Virginia Woolf to Martha Gellhorn, it’s time we recognised the vital, transgressive work of the flâneuse’.

Huska has expanded on this concept in his film: ‘essentially the piece is about failure in relation to a contemporary flâneur,

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which I hope can also resonate with today’s situation with the pandemic in a broad sense’.

This installation is the product of an artist who has fully immersed himself in his habitual environment. Huska is French and he is currently undertaking a residency at the Fire Station Artists’ Studio in Dublin, located in a gritty section of the city. The lack of purpose and reconciliation in his meanderings in the city reflect the increased loneliness of the streets during the current pandemic. His multi-layered practice incorporates photography, writing and film which combine to connect the self, history and the architecture of the city. This connection is far from harmonious, however, and is characterised by temporal dissonance, fractures of consciousness, and failed recollections.

The exhibition continues from 11 Dec 2020 - 24 Jan 2021 at the Sunken Gallery in the MAC, Belfast. Booking is essential, contact 028 9023 5053  Marianne O’Kane Boal

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ADVERTISING FEATURE

Redi-Rock Ha-ha wall adds the finishing touch to new, dream house in Co Meath In many ways the Ha-ha wall can be described as the hidden gem of architectural landscaping, similar to the modern-day Infinity Pool. Their initial use in the UK and Ireland was championed by the 18th century landscape architect Capability Brown, who recognised their use in providing houses with this feature. The unique aspect of the Ha-ha wall is that it is sunken and therefore not visible from the house side. The base of the wall is about 1.5 metres below the natural field level and gradually slopes upwards for about 5 metres to seamlessly reach the finished field height. Livestock, therefore, approaching the wall from the field side have to descend the gradual slope to find themselves at the base.

On the other hand, from the house side there is no sight whatsoever of the construction, allowing an unspoilt view of the surrounding countryside. Thus from a practical sense, Ha-ha walls act to keep cattle and sheep out of the formal gardens, without the need for obtrusive fencing.

Fast forward three centuries, this remarkable landscaping feature has made a stunning appearance in Co Meath, following the completion of the M3 motorway. Evan Newell, the man behind the project, takes up the story: “We had traditionally farmed 200 acres outside the village of Dunshauglin. The construction of the new motorway meant that we lost 40-acres however the compensation available allowed us to secure an equivalent land area located on the opposite side of the motorway.”

He continued:

“But every cloud has a silver lining as our new state of affairs gave us the opportunity to build a new house, farmyard and ancillary buildings on the recently acquired property.”

Construction subsequently began on what Evan describes as a ‘passive’ house, designed to meet the most stringent environmental standards as well as being totally energy efficient. The property extends to 4,500 square feet.

“As the development of the house progressed, we wanted to ensure that an uninterrupted view of the surrounding countryside was maintained. This was the overarching factor in deciding to build a Ha-ha retaining wall.

There are two acres of lawn around the new house, which sits on a slope. We wanted the wall not only to work from an aesthetic perspective, but also as a barrier to our thoroughbred horses that would be grazing in the adjacent fields.”

The wall extends to some 200 metres in length and is 1.5 metres in height. There is an additional capping of about 15 cm of grass planted soil and this effectively provides a much more solid barrier that is significantly in excess of a standard post and railing stud farm fence that contains stock grazing land adjacent to the lawn.

“We looked at a number of construction options,” Evan confirmed.

“However, after a visit to Balmoral Show last year, I became aware of the Redi-Rock retaining wall system, manufactured by Moore Concrete. It stood out as the immediate solution.”

Redi-Rock walls comprise of a series of one tonne interlocking blocks capable of creating an instant retaining wall system that is versatile enough to achieve high structures without compromising strength.

The precast concrete units have a natural effect cobblestone appearance which creates an attractive finish. As was the case in this construction, the top block is custom designed to allow planting.

Evan Newell again “Construction began in April this year.”

“Initially, it was a case of digging down and then adding a 6-inch covering of hardcore gravel. There was no need to put in traditional foundations as all we needed was a level surface as a base to build the wall.

The actual construction process could not have been any more straightforward. It was just like putting blocks of Lego in place.

The wall itself was completed in four days. In contrast, it took a full four weeks to complete the accompanying earth works.”

Evan concluded: “Six months after the wall was completed, we had it fully checked over. The wall hasn’t moved a jot and it’s hardly likely to now!”

“Redi-Rock is an amazing system. It was the perfect option when it came to making the Ha-ha wall a reality.”

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RESTORATION

St Columb’s Hall

Built between 1886 and ‘88, St Columb’s Hall is an elegant, detached, two-bay, two-storey sandstone building, with a two-storey basement below, and a double-height hall to the rear. Designed in an Italianate Gothic style, it sits at the corner of Newmarket and Orchard Streets in Derry, adjacent to the City Walls. Architectural historian Professor Alistair Rowan describes the architecture of the Hall as ‘lavishly Baroque’.

A grade A listed building, it is one of a number of additions to the Heritage At Risk Register for the 2020-21 period. The St Columb’s Hall Trust are taking the first steps towards future repair, restoration and reuse.

The Hall was originally commissioned by the St Columb’s Hall Temperance Society (part of the Derry Diocese of the Catholic Church), based on the requirement for a building specially for the Catholic population of Derry City, which would offer community educational and recreational facilities. Constructed to designs by local architects, Croom & Toye, who won the associated architectural competition, the design of St Columb’s Hall is attributed to Edward J Toye who was responsible for a number of commissions for the Catholic Church in Derry City, and the surrounding area, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century, including the nearby Nazareth House.

When it opened in 1888 the building was named St Columb’s ‘Temperance’ Hall – a building for use in accordance with the ‘temperance movement’, a widespread social organisation opposed to the consumption of alcohol. Appropriately, above the main entrance of the building is a group of three statues featuring the figures of Temperance, Erin and Vulcan, carved

by Charles William Harrison, a Dublin-based sculptor. This is thought to be one of only two works by Harrison in Ulster.

Later improvement works were carried out in 1904, led by Daniel Conroy, and in 1930, J. P. McGrath led an extension and partial conversion of the Temperance Hall into one of the city’s first cinemas.

Led by the Church, originally funded and subsequently maintained for more than a century by donations from local people and by a small army of volunteers, St Columb’s has been an intrinsic piece of the cultural, architectural and historical fabric of Derry City since 1888. The Temperance Society’s use of the building waned over time, and the Church and the community’s use of the building also evolved its purpose into a leading cultural location in the city with a rich social history.

Continued on page 16

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Some key historical events over the course of the building’s history include: Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, speaking at the Hall in 1889 to motivate the Derry workforce to join their local union. Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst campaigned for women’s right to vote in a keynote speech at St Columb’s Hall in 1910; Eamon De Valera rallied supporters during the War of Independence at the Hall in 1924; and in December 1920, the British Army used St Columb’s Hall for several weeks as a barracks for hundreds of troops during a particularly bloody period in the city’s history linked to the War of Independence; in quieter times leading international performers Roy Orbison, Chubby Checker, Ruby Murray and Val Doonican also performed at the Hall in the 1960s.

However, by 2012, use of the Hall had declined as an increasing number of new purpose-built cultural venues opened across the city. The Church found that demand for the Hall had fallen away while the operating costs were mounting. In 2012, the Garvan O’Doherty Group took over St Columb’s Hall as a philanthropic project for the city and set about finding a community partner. In 2019 a charity, the St Columb’s Hall Trust, was established to lead the building’s future repair, restoration and reuse. The building was the topic of a 2019 publication by the Foyle Civic Trust, written by architect Peter Tracey and funded by the Department for Communities Historic Environment Division which investigated the building’s history and future.

At this stage, the Trust is developing a plan for the building that would include transforming the space into a ‘creative powerhouse’. Specifically, operating the building with a mix of uses to ensure its sustainability. Building on its past successes as a cultural venue, the plans currently being investigated include Ireland’s first VR-Ready music and conference venue incorporating a cinema, museum, and a creative therapy centre.

Anne-Marie Gallagher, Business Development Director at St Columb’s Hall Trust, described the first steps the group are undertaking to secure the building’s future. ‘Firstly, issues with the fabric of the building need to be resolved.

We are currently conducting a series of building surveys, to determine the exact repair work required. Over the course of the last 20 years, the building has been used only sporadically and the toll of that is now beginning to show on the building fabric.’

Images: David Bunting, Images NI.

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Like many who take the lead on such campaigns, Anne-Marie comes at this project from a personal and local community perspective, a love for the building, borne from being introduced to it as a young child by her aunt, Margaret Healy.

Margaret, like many others, volunteered and fundraised in support of the Hall over the years, and instilled in AnneMarie and her siblings how important a resource the Hall was for the community. This appreciation of the building, its history and its future potential is now channelled through her involvement with the St Columb’s Hall Trust’s efforts towards giving the building a successful future.

‘The second stream of work is concerned with determining a sustainable use for the future – that involves tailoring what we are doing to what the community needs, continuing to consult, test our ideas and adapt them to the operating environment we find ourselves in.’ The initial assessments are funded by the Architectural Heritage Fund Project Viability Grant scheme.

The Trust’s plans for meanwhile use have not been ‘immune’ to challenges resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. AnneMarie outlined how the group ‘had intended to host a number of events at the Hall from March 2020 to help kick-start fundraising for the project. Unfortunately, that coincided with the start of a global pandemic and all that came with it, so we’ve been forced to re-evaluate how we can use the space in the short, medium and longer term.’

The St Columb’s Hall Trust will now focus on finalising the survey work on the building, fundraising, building a coalition of partners to support the project and continuing to test ideas for viability. It is hoped that the plans currently being developed will see St Columb’s removed from the Heritage At Risk Register and fulfilling a future role for Derry and its communities as a cultural, music and conference venue in the years to come. Keep up to date with the progress of this project at www.saintcolumbshall.com. 

Nicola McVeigh Chief Executive Ulster Architectural Heritage

The Heritage at Risk Register is managed by Ulster Architectural Heritage in partnership with the Department for Communities: Historic Environment Division. More information at www.ulster architecturalheritage.org.uk

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BOOK REVIEW

The Buildings of Ireland: Cork City and County Frank Keohane

Above / Timoleague, friary

Below / Cork CIT Circus

Those buildings of architectural distinction and/or historical importance of Cork City and County are the latest to have received the ‘Pevsner guide’ treatment (so-named after the series’ founder, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner), the sixth in the Irish suite of these extraordinarily rich and superbly informative companions to buildings across these islands. The Buildings of Ireland series of guides was pioneered by Pevsner and Professor Alistair Rowan in 1979 and to date there are volumes covering North West Ulster (Counties Londonderry, Donegal, Tyrone and Fermanagh, by Rowan); North Leinster (Counties Longford, Meath and Westmeath, by Rowan and Christine Casey); Dublin (by Casey); South Ulster (Counties Armagh, Cavan and Monaghan, by Kevin Mulligan) and Central Leinster (Counties Kildare, Laois and Offaly, by Andrew Tierney), and this latest volume, authored by Frank Keohane, an architectural historian and chartered building surveyor who hails from Cork city, is to be welcomed with warm appreciation. Like its

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Mizen Head Dunlough Castle

forerunners, it is a true tour-de-force of scholarship, research and comprehensive exploration. While working with assistance from others, and drawing on (amongst other sources) the invaluable online Dictionary of Irish Architects (DIA) resource, the task undertaken by Keohane here should not be underestimated – fieldwork for the book began in 2008 and continued until 2017, with the publication finally reaching us in 2020; a Pevsnerian undertaking is not for the faint-hearted author, and we are in his debt.

The layout of the volume follows the familiar Pevsner guide pattern: each discrete historical period is described in an excellent, extensive Introduction, followed by a note on building materials and pointers to further reading, followed by the central gazetteer featuring entries on each building of note across the region (alphabetically arranged); the book concludes with a very helpful glossary and an index of artists, architects, patrons, residents and visitors. In addition, there is a good map and a selection of really fine photographs of some of the most significant and interesting structures covered; moreover, it is handsomely designed and produced – in a classic, understated style.

Aside from the enjoyable and informative merits of the book, the value of the volume is brought into sharp relief at the time of this review when Cork city’s former Custom House (or Revenue Building) is under threat of substantial demolition from an hotel and office tower development proposal. Keohane describes this ‘splendidly positioned’ building of 1814-18 with an adjoining bonded warehouses complex, beside the River Lee, in fine detail, pointing out the ‘glacial smoothness’ of the original structure’s upper storey. Decision-makers should take note and

Cork General View

rethink their approach – as we would all do well to consider the deep value of the built heritage generally – and this guide can help articulate why whilst also aiding wider appreciation.

Cork city, of course, has a particularly rich architectural heritage, from the famous St Anne’s, Shandon (with its ‘imposing W tower, famed for its bells … perhaps the city’s most evocative landmark’), to the astonishing St Fin Barre’s Cathedral by William Burges (‘a magnificent and startling creation [whose] consistency of style is almost unique in larger Irish Victorian churches’) to the exquisite Honan Chapel at University College Cork (with its ‘truly and sincerely Irish, jewel-like’ interior) to

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BOOK REVIEW

Below / Cork, Honan Chapel mosaic

Above / Fota orangery

Christ the King church by the American architect Barry Byrne of the early 1930s (‘the most important building of inter-war Ireland and one of the finest of its type and time in the British Isles’) to the very fine contemporary buildings of its Institute of Technology North Campus by de Blacum & Meagher of 2003 and CUC’s ‘singular’ Lewis Glucksman Gallery, nestling in parkland trees, by O’Donnell & Tuomey of 2004.

Beyond the city, there are other gems – ancient Youghal, with its c 13th St Mary’s church, its Red House and its Clock Gate Tower, and Kinsale with Charles Fort, its Market House and Church of St Multose, are full of them – and who can fail to be delighted

by EW Pugin and GC Ashlin’s monumental Gothic Revival confection of St Colman’s Cathedral at Cobh, ‘a town of great charm’ in itself; the cathedral was ‘one of the most expensive churches built in Ireland in the c19 [which] epitomizes the Roman Catholic resurgence during the High Victorian period’. Fermoy, we learn, boasts treasures in both its Protestant and Catholic 94 Perspective PAGE92-95.indd 4

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Above / Cork Glucksman Below / Killeagh, Dromdihy House

church buildings – the RC St Patrick’s has ‘a rich lierne-vaulted plasterwork ceiling with great pendant drops and foliate bosses, all springing from arcades on clustered and banded columns’, while the CoI Christ Church has an especially fine Caen stone and alabaster pulpit – ‘the heads of the Apostles, with Judas tucked behind the angel supporting the book rest, are exquisite’ (the book helpfully provides photographs of both).

Youghal, Presentation Convent

The Buildings of Ireland: Cork City and County Frank Keohane

The Buildings of Ireland: Cork City and County is a generous publication, an incredible achievement of authorship and architectural publishing and an essential purchase for the architecturally and historically minded. 

Yale University Press Hardback 682pp

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PARTING SHOT

St Columb’s Hall Photography: David Bunting Images NI See page 86 for Buildings at Risk article

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