Project Year: 2023

The Foyer, An Investigation of Social and Economic Barriers to Health

The focus of my project is to explore a way to reduce health inequalities that exist in our society today. This includes people who are socially excluded within the city. It attempts to create a healthier city by integrating communities, placing value upon our public realm and forming an attitude towards the need for civic interaction while creating the best kind of internal and external environment – one that honours the needs and well-being of those who will use it.

The proposal sets out to create a Foyer for the city which reflects a new public house. It will include multi-use facilities including a reception foyer, a community café, G.P suites, counselling rooms, a branch public library, community rooms and an accommodation block. It addresses a shortcoming in civic institutions and civic places that allows for the welcoming of these people who may need short-term to medium-term support.

The chosen site for this exploration is a vacant plot adjacent to Colbert Station in Limerick City, Ireland. It is situated along Parnell Street, a site where I have observed a very evident explicit result of impoverishment. I have recognised that there is an abundance of people within this part of the city in dire circumstances that we have become so anaesthetized to. Thus, I have located the building in an area of the city where it is most needed.

The constriction of the proposal is made up of a red brick double-stacked open stretcher bond, it is a self-supporting façade intermittently tied back to a glulam column and beam superstructure to allow differential movement. Its colour echoes that of the surrounding Georgian buildings to add some unity to the streetscape. The double stacked and open bond of brickwork states the envelope is not load bearing but a screen enveloping the whole building creating different types of environments of light and ventilation conditions through various treatments of the perforated brick.

Assembling Place through Dissonance

The overall ambition of this adaptive-reuse and regeneration project was to inject new life through careful architectural intervention into the currently overlooked, and underutilised area of the Stranmillis campus around the Henry Garrett building. This is accomplished through the partial adaptive reuse of the Henry Garrett building, and the intervention of a loggia to activate the central, overlooked meadow space as an informal courtyard. The architectural challenges of this site included, the poor utilisation of the existing natural environment, partly due to the imposing road network throughout the campus that limits pedestrian movement around it. The relative lack of formal public areas for socialising and working, which include the stunning woodland and grass areas around the campus which create opportunities for informal social spaces, however they are not utilised due to the poor spatial layout of the campus, with disconnected buildings and pedestrian paths intercepted by roads. And finally, the fact that the Henry Garrett building itself, a Grade B+ listed red brick former multi purpose educational building, constructed in the late 1940’s, is laying derelict, in a state of disrepair. 

The renovation of this building could be a key intervention into unlocking the overlooked potential of the campus, as well as being crucial to preserving, and continuing to utilise the unique built heritage of Belfast. The success of the proposed intervention should re-animate this area into a socially cohesive, engaged space that will be utilised by future generations. The interventions are designed to outlast the Henry Garrett building, therefore as the existing fabric of the building further disintegrates over time, the intervention will remain, redefining the spatial alignment of the space to be shaped by future generations.

“Every building must create coherent and well-shaped public space next to it”(Christopher Alexander, in “A New Theory of Urban Design” 1987)

The Castle Centre: Shining a Spotlight on Architectural Form

The Castle Centre, situated on an inflexion between the seafront and the commercial heart of Ballycastle, provided an opportunity for an exciting performance and social hub, something wholly unique for the North Coast of Ireland. The design takes shape around five key concepts: a break in the street, a beacon for ‘the island’, the potential for two facades, using the agricultural barn as a structural module and ‘place making’. It is the very crux of the project that it must not only serve the local community and heritage, but also be a mirror of it. The elements include a central hall, individual study spaces, flexible meeting facilities, a outdoor seating facility and a purpose-built stage facing the square, with the tower being a physical representation of an attitude taken to the community which the building intends to serve: can this hub not only facilitate Ballycastle, but also the population of Rathlin Island, who are so dependent on the mainland. Through a physical beacon, which calls to the lighthouse typology so ingrained within the coastal environment, the net which the project’s cast is widened.

The long-standing ritual of barn raising became a key player in the narrative of the project. It provided the basis from which the structural module was created, and thus the project takes its form from the module. The material pallet is selected as to create independent experiences on the exterior and interior: The exterior is detailed through concrete at a human scale which is separated from the constant pitched roof by glazing. The interior is distinguished through a timber ply finish and glulam structure, creating an instant separation between inside and outside. This structural identity is dictated so that certain spatial moves can result in special places being experienced. This manifests itself predominantly in the meeting points between elements; roof and glazing, floor and wall, wall and ceiling.