practice A collaborative group of architects, urbanists and artists helps citizens to initiate projects that would be impossible within the development mechanisms that shape the public spaces of Belfast.
‘Building Initiative’ in Belfast
Dougal Sheridan
‘Building Initiative’ is both the name adopted by a focusing specifically on the methods of working that collaborative group of architects, urbanists and were developed, before concentrating on one project artists, and also the term they use to describe the to illustrate these methodologies and processes in ‘mode of agency’ chosen to inform and realise application. citizen-led urban regeneration in Belfast [1]. The The impact and legacy of the civil conflict remains necessity and forms of this praxis evolved in one of the most pervasive issues affecting the urban response to the city’s spatial, social and policy life and physical environment of Belfast. Belfast is still environment, and the inability of conventional a city of polarised territories. This condition has mechanisms of architectural practice to engage manifested itself in both the built form of the city, adequately with this context. Building Initiative with the segregation of the two communities being explored and pursued specific modes of agency, reinforced through the distributions of infrastructure which it termed ‘initiatives’, within a variety of and land use, and in the absence of public debate and sectors including architectural, planning, negotiation in relation to the city’s development. A educational, academic and media, and at a range of whole range of environmental issues affecting both scales from local to international. This created the communities has remained neglected and civil opportunity to work with a diversity of partner conflict has left the province with a legacy of highly organisations and to develop a correspondingly wide centralised and locally unaccountable structures of range of strategies. We will look briefly at the context government. The construction industry has taken of Belfast and Building Initiative’s response to it, advantage of both conditions by leading the way with
1 Staged event on an interface or no-man’s land or contested territory between two communities. The ice-cream truck was used to suggest a strategy of temporary non- threatening intervention into 1 these spaces
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generic commercial developments indifferent to local in effect use the built environment for what has social, spatial and environmental contexts [2]. been described as the ‘construction of emptiness in Cities can be understood as the sites where the city’.1 citizens benefit from the pooling and sharing of In response to this environment, Building resources in the form of spaces, buildings and Initiative members came together with the shared services. However, the erosion of these processes aim of opening up paths of initiative for civil can be observed in Belfast. Examples include: the enterprise to resume its formative role in the built closure of cross-community facilities because they environment in Northern Ireland. ‘Civil enterprise’ occupy valuable city centre land; techniques of was interpreted as economic, social and political separation including not only physical walls but also
large-scale infrastructure like motorways; planning 2 The original the entrenchment of 3 Yellow Space exhibition decisions to create cul-de-sacs and gated office parks. permeable urban the two at Belfast Exposed, fabric of terraces (a) communities May/June 2006 The impact of this is evident when the pre-conflict was substituted by reinforced, but each road network is compared with today’s much less impermeable cul-de- community is 4, 5 Yellow Objects being permeable one. Removing the ‘peace wall’ may sac estate layouts (b). fragmented within used to stage In this attempt to itself. The ‘peace a communicative happen with time, but it is not clear how these create ‘defensible wall’ is indicated action and distribute streets could ever be reconnected. These techniques spaces’, not only is here by the grey line the Yellow Press
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development that creates diverse, accessible, Yellow space integrated places. Exhibition, publication, web page, The concept of ‘yellow space’ was developed as a and a series of events were identified as the most metaphor for shared social space within the public effective modes of agency for pursuing this agenda domain, both as a response to the deficit of these and funding was secured from the Arts Council of spaces in Belfast and as a strategy to make these Northern Ireland in partnership with the newly issues evident and communicable to a wide range of established Architecture Department at the publics. Due to the diversity of sectors, scales and University of Ulster where some members of Building strategies of working, the colour yellow was a useful Initiative are based. device to make outputs recognisable and consistent –
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6 Yellow Press: 12,000 7, 8 Case studies of 11 Image constructed free copies were the Sculpture Park for the media of distributed and Palio in Siena in bonfire located in throughout Belfast, Budapest existing recycling commenting on centre existing context 9, 10 Bonfire structure and potential displays attention 12 Model of bonfire regeneration to detail of recycling centre strategies within construction and constructed from the city to the choreography recycled materials 7 of how it burns
in particular when utilising the media, where the kerbstones, murals etc. The intention of the Yellow colour’s graphic qualities reinforced a sometimes Space project was to utilise and subvert this semiotic polemic tone: colour sensitivity by using yellow to highlight a third All around the world the colour Yellow is used as a sign space, the shared social space of the city. Reference for things that are particularly useful and for things it was also made to the common use of yellow to has been agreed to share. Yellow is the colour of consensus, highlight shared objects and public goods and utility, and access. If the colour white can be thought to utilities: represent the ‘passive’ neutrality of surrender, the colour … yellow taxi, yellow pages, yellow traffic sign, Yellow stands for what might be called ‘active neutrality’ – yellow phone box, yellow dumper truck, yellow post a common ground created through usefulness. In this box, yellow traffic cone, yellow reflective work gear, city where colour is loaded with meaning – Red, Orange, double yellow lines, yellow subway train, yellow bus, Green, Blue – could the colour Yellow provide a new yellow box road marking, yellow skip, yellow number perspective. plate, yellow reflector, yellow crane, yellow post-it …3 This loading of meaning in relation to Red, Orange, The methodology of the project was to take Green and Blue refers to the use of these colours to precedents from other cities – policy exemplars, mark sectarian territory – with flags, painted models of procurement and prototypes of
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construction – and to examine their appropriateness improvement strategies, and from specific building and applicability for Belfast. These case studies from projects to campaigns challenging city planning other contexts were in many cases examples of policies. Examples include responding to citizens themselves taking the initiative, through Department of Social Development masterplans by social, cultural and economic work across the the preparation and publication of alternative plans, boundaries of identity, income and ethnicity. These submissions to the Northern Ireland Policy on projects included processes of securing public spaces Architecture and the Built Environment for universal use, opening up information consultation process, architecture student projects technologies for wider access, providing different to support and document existing shared but types of building responses to different needs, and undervalued public spaces, workshops for young decommissioning and recycling ideological symbols people in sheltered accommodation to improve their and spaces.4 These case studies were presented in the shared environment, and studies to create form of an exhibition and publication, and a series alternative economic development models for of workshops with specific groups [3]. mixed-use incremental building on ‘infill sites’ in These case studies and workshops stimulated two Belfast’s city centre. modes of action: instrumental action, through the ‘yellow initiatives’, and communicative action, ‘Re-imagining’ rituals through ‘yellow objects’. The yellow objects were One of these initiatives, which I will briefly describe used to demonstrate in a practical and everyday way to illustrate the working methodology, dealt with that citizens can take initiative in appropriating and the phenomenon of Belfast’s bonfires. These determining their environment. They took the form enormous and controversial urban fires, which for of mobile multi-purpose news-stands which also the Unionist community are principally used to unfold to form seating and tables, offering the celebrate the victory of the Protestant forces of possibility of temporarily claiming an urban space William of Orange at the Battle of the Boyne on 12 [4, 5]. These yellow objects were used for distributing July, display an element of community as a the Yellow Press, a free newspaper, which Building social/cultural event, but also contain the element of Initiative published and edited and which offered a danger, and sectarian and environmental threat.5 critical interpretation of Belfast and its current This initiative dealt with the dominance of public developments [6]. space by sectarian representations within the The yellow initiatives were usually developed in context of the poor quality of public space outside collaboration or discussion with local partner central Belfast, and efforts by the city council to groups or organisations, and ranged in scope from address the environmental issues associated with educational and advocacy projects to environmental bonfires. The initiative aimed to reassess the social
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value of the bonfire and reinterpret and re-imagine in temporarily appropriated waste ground [9, 10]. 8 the bonfire in a new progressive form. Therefore the question was posed: could these As with most of the initiatives, case studies of programmes be combined to create a ‘utility-event’ alternative social, environmental and architectural space unique to Belfast? A proposal was developed projects from other cities were examined. In this for combining the programme of recycling centre case, examples were sought of how other cities have with the creation of a space that could host a variety transformed and incorporated unusual events, or of outdoor activities – including car boot sales, challenged historical baggage, into their physical workshops, outdoor performance – and, of course, and cultural landscape. One such example is the could also be used for a bonfire [11]. Not only would Sculpture Park in Budapest, where the negatively this alleviate the environmental issue but it would perceived iconography of the Cold War regime was dilute the sectarian element of the event by hosting decommissioned and a public sculpture park it in a managed public space, trading sectarian created, allowing an alternative, more personal symbolism for cultural recognition. This proposal interpretation of these cultural fragments [7].6 A became the basis of workshops held with second case study examined the Palio, the horse race environmental agencies, city authorities, artists and around the urban square in Siena, which plays out community representatives. Looking at one the tensions of the city’s competing and highly particular site, a large model was made of the territorial communities.7 In this dangerous event the proposed ‘Bonfire Recycling Centre’ as a way of participants’ safety and issues of animal rights have making the idea more accessible. The model was been negotiated and balanced against the cultural constructed using scrap materials and timber pallets spectacle and tradition [8]. associated with bonfires to emphasise the recycling In the case of Belfast’s Bonfire Night the primary idea [12]. issues and activities involved in the preparation of Although this initiative was polemic in nature, it these bonfires are environmental, i.e. the perceived has paralleled and influenced change within the city dumping of waste and burning of toxic materials. authorities’ approach to the bonfire phenomenon. However, this gathering, storing and organising of For example, Belfast Council now runs a ‘Best Kept materials can be a quite involved and coordinated Bonfire’ competition, and recently launched a pilot process. Similarities were observed to the process of project to address accessibility and safety issues gathering and sorting materials that occurs in around bonfires. More controlled bonfires in the Belfast’s newly built recycling centres. In fact both form of beacons are now officially supported in the bonfire site and recycling centres can be active public parks on condition of the removal of any social spaces, although bonfires tended to be located sectarian imagery.
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13 Graphic representation of the interrelationships, sequence and processes involved in the initiation and development of the Woodvale HUB proposal
Woodvale HUB Local residents had developed the idea of a multi- Initiatives like this, and their dissemination through use building in the park that would, in their own exhibition and communicative actions, resulted in words, ‘make the park equally welcoming to users Building Initiative being approached directly by including those traditionally at odds (e.g. young citizens’ groups wishing to initiate projects to create adults and pensioners, racial minorities and and improve their own local, underutilised and long-term white residents, etc., all of whom feel a negatively perceived public spaces. One such sense of ”ownership” of the place)’. The proposed example was Woodvale Park, which is located in the site was a disused cinder pitch in a corner of socially and economically deprived area of the Upper the park beside a high-traffic shopping centre Shankill in west Belfast. and adjacent to a traditionally volatile interface
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1 The plug-in path, with integrated seating, lighting and water feature 2 Tiered seating and performance area 3 Proposed gate to Tesco car park and relocation of pedestrian crossing 4 The BIG ROOF – shelter for cinema/concerts/events 5 Small shelters/squats for young people 6 Allotment gardens and scarecrow project 7 New path and nature trail though wild area 8 Toddler’s garden 9 Kiosk – selling tea, coffee and snacks 10 Picnic area 11 Exercise track suitable for older people 12 Table-tennis tables 13 Flexible spaces – for events and gatherings, to contain pool tables etc 14 Family room – wet area with basins and seating 15 Toilets 16 Kitchenette 17 Terrace adjacent to kitchen – could evolve into cafe 18 Soft play space – off the terrace for easy supervision of very young children
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14 A board game was and functions 15 Plan view, Woodvale institutional and developer-driven mechanisms used to test the ranging from HUB model location and types of landscape surfaces to that shape the public spaces of cities like Belfast? programmatic building types on 16 Excerpt from Yellow And how can professionals and academics in the intervention into the different locations in Press depicting fields related to the built environment act as agents park. Players took the site and each incremental build-up turns placing pieces piece was given a of programmes of this alternative action?’ representing construction and around the ‘Plug-in The post-conflict social context of areas like different conditions maintenance cost Path’ Woodvale Park displays the increasing desire of people to get out of their domestic confines and into between Catholic and Protestant communities. the public realm – as evidenced by increasing The location of this area within the park was numbers of park users. But this is coupled with a strategic due to the fact that both communities legacy of fragmented social spheres and a pervading were already sharing the generic commercial space lack of confidence in authorities. Furthermore the of the adjacent shopping centre and its car park. polarised thinking that grew out of the civil conflict This suggested the possibility that any intervention is reflected in equally polarised perceptions of could draw people from these spaces into the acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in the public park, particularly through a programmatic realm. For example, ‘anti-social behaviour’ was intervention like a café, which was not provided perceived as the major problem in the park for in the shopping centre. which young people were held largely responsible. It The lack of action from the City Council’s Parks was apparent that although young children were Department, despite ongoing campaigning and catered for with play equipment, and adults with lobbying by local residents, raised the questions, bowling greens and walkways, there was no real ‘How is it possible for citizens to initiate projects provision for the twelve to twenty-five year-old age that would otherwise not be realised within the group. When they did appropriate their own spaces,
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for example gathering under the bandstand or and involvement in the design process.’ A key aim of simply being in the park outside its limited opening the Arts Council is to further the public’s hours, this was viewed as ‘anti-social behaviour’ even understanding of architecture and the Woodvale when alcohol or drugs were not involved. It was HUB was seen as a ‘live project’, whereby the public hoped that questioning and discussing these would learn about architecture by participating perceptions with all parties and age groups could directly in the brief making, design and lead to a less defined idea of public space which, like communication processes. As a starting point to the this forum of discussion, was a place of negotiation design process, Building Initiative developed the and dialogue where acceptable behaviour was ‘Woodvale HUB Board Game’ as a tool to allow relative to the context of each situation. stakeholders to participate in the structural stages of It was therefore necessary to develop active planning, creative thinking and representation. approaches and methods to build consensus, Game pieces were produced to represent different confidence and capacity within this fragmented conditions and functions ranging from landscape social context. This involved establishing and surfaces to buildings, each with corresponding facilitating a forum of discussion and negotiation construction and maintenance costs, thus allowing with local residents including young people, city participants to prioritise proposals against different authorities, local business and other stakeholders. budget scenarios [14]. The micro-politics of this process were reflected in Members of the public not directly involved in the the eventual proposal, which likewise resulted in a workshops and events had the opportunity to follow design strategy where social, cultural and economic the design process and outcomes through the use of spheres overlap. This journey is described in the accessible exhibition and publication material, graphic representation [13] showing the sequence which incorporated feedback mechanisms. Key to and interrelationships of participants, processes and this was selecting media appropriate to the social events, the tools used and the outcomes. context. The strategy was to tap into the tradition of From initial discussions with these groups a brief small local newspapers that exists in Belfast, was developed for a ‘Hybrid-Use Building’, or HUB, specifically in more deprived areas where access to containing flexible indoor and semi-outdoor spaces and fluency with digital media is limited, for sporting, recreational and cultural activities particularly among the older generation. This relating to both the park and surrounding area. accessible and inexpensive medium also had While remaining quite open and aspirational, the extensive distribution networks that could be brief was sufficient for the project to be run as a utilised, and the unprecious, unpretentious format student design project at the University of Ulster of these papers was well suited to presenting School of Architecture. This exercise generated many architectural proposals in a manner that readily diverse ideas, and broadened the discussion and invited comment or opinion. Reading these papers is possibilities beyond the preconceived solutions of often quite a public activity that accompanies and residents and stakeholders. It also built the profile of sustains discussion in the eateries, shops and bars of the project in the surrounding community and the area. Two issues of the Yellow Press, each with a Belfast institutions, as well as providing the students print run of 10,000, not only summarised the project with the beneficial opportunity to engage background, workshops and outcomes, but also meaningfully with a real social context. included articles from local residents and interest During the course of this project, students created groups.9 In addition to its public distribution temporary site interventions and performances in throughout the Woodvale Park area, the Yellow Press the park, to investigate and communicate was also sent to government agencies and other programmatic and siting strategies. They also specific stakeholders. presented their final projects as an exhibition in a Another tool developed both to enable marquee erected by local residents. These events participation and to act as a communication device captured the attention of park users, and were was an interactive mobile model. This travelled to advertised too, allowing local authorities and other the park and various venues including local schools interested parties to attend and participate in the and community centres where it was the focus of critique of the student work. It was also possible to workshops. These workshops involved the use these events to focus media attention on the participants unpacking and assembling the model of project, with local newspapers covering the events, the park, which was constructed of robust timber and a television documentary combining interviews pieces that could be moved around and ‘plugged in’ with local people, historians and students to portray to create various scenarios. The model’s design and people’s memories and the history of the Park, and construction also allowed it to function as a self- to communicate proposals and ideas for its contained mobile exhibition that was shown in improvement. various locations including shopfront windows, This public interest provided a foundation to foyers of public buildings and most successfully in successfully secure funding from the Arts Council of the entrance to the shopping centre adjacent to the Northern Ireland to ‘use the Art form of Architecture park. In this location it was exposed to an enormous through the participatory practices of workshop, volume and cross section of the public, who readily publication, and exhibition to raise public awareness engaged with the model, perhaps partly as a result of of the benefits of good design of the built their stimulated visual condition when engaged in environment and to stimulate public interest, debate the activity of shopping! With a comments-slot and
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writing materials integrated into it, the model temporal strategy allows trust in the project to became a receptacle and archive of people’s thoughts develop gradually and for it to adapt and respond to and comments. changing social dynamics [16]. For example the first The micro-politics of this participatory process, of step is likely to be the community garden with an engaging the social, cultural and economic spheres integrated art project developed by an artist who that form public space, was reflected in the eventual participated in the workshop process.10 This will outcome. The proposal that emerged was called the involve young local people constructing scarecrows, ‘Plug-in Path’, a strategy which allows these spheres based on images of themselves, to protect the to overlap and reconfigure themselves according to community garden. In this role reversal those changing needs. The Plug-in Path would provide a perceived to be the source of vandalism would new route connecting the park with the adjacent become the symbolic guardians of the gardens. shopping centre, increasing the movement of people Although the participants had originally proposed through this cut off corner of the park and thereby a ‘building’ containing facilities that would aim to improving the feeling of safety. The path would be a address the park’s inadequacies and social problems, programmed surface containing lighting, tiered it clearly emerged through the process that a seating, electricity and water supplies. Events landscape strategy was more appropriate and could organisers and participants could plug in to these ‘activate the space without the weighty apparatus of services to support activities like outdoor cinema, traditional space-making’.11 The decision to work concerts, markets, and the already existing series of with the condition of uncertainty rather than ‘fun days’ and festivals. resisting it resulted in a strategy of deliberate Therefore rather than a formal architectural programmatic indeterminacy allowing the proposal proposal the outcome was a strategy to allow the to respond to temporal change, transformation and incremental development of a set of programmes adaptation. which had been identified, negotiated, located and The momentum established by exhibition, Yellow set in an order of priority. These elements included Press, media coverage and presentations made to the community gardens, a kiosk that could move City Council eventually was enough to prompt the between different locations on the path, and a large Belfast Regeneration Office (who had been included translucent roof over the tiered seating area that in the workshops process) to offer part-funding for would create a space where young people could the project. The conditional nature of this offer in gather and where outdoor cinema and performance turn prompted the Parks Department to agree to could occur. This area would also overlook a multi- provide the required partnership funding. As a purpose games area which could be added next, result of the proposal being initiated and developed followed by a semi-enclosed toddlers’ play space and through a ‘bottom-up’ process, local residents and finally a pavilion containing flexible gathering and stakeholders are now well positioned and playing a meeting spaces [15]. central role as the State development apparatus and This strategic programmatic staging plan could procurement process begin to take effect. The adapt and reconfigure itself around the organising abilities and skills which artistic, architectural, principle of the Plug-in Path, which would be the urban and landscape design professionals normally unifying surface, shared by all age groups and park exercise within the confines of their traditional roles users. This incremental strategy was also a response can alternatively be redeployed to support and to the likelihood that funding would need to be facilitate the initiative of citizens in the sought from different sources for the various instrumental stages of the conception and inception programmatic elements and therefore become of proposals for the public domain. Who else is available at different times. In addition, such a better placed to take this role?
Notes 5. There are also less contentious Cultural Hegemony in Northern 1. Jürgen Patzak-Poor, Mark Hackett fire-lighting traditions like Ireland’, in Symbols in Northern and Orla McKeever (2004) ‘The Halloween which is claimed by Ireland ed. by A. D. Buckley (Antrim, Construction of Emptiness’, both communities. Because of 1967). unpublished paper from its presumed Celtic origins, 6. Statue Park Museum,
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(Belfast, 2006) provides a more Illustration credits Zurich; Jürgen Patzak-Poor, Berlin; detailed study of the arq gratefully acknowledges: Orla McKeever, Cork; Deirdre appropriation of urban space by Building Initiative, all images McMenamin, Belfast; Conor Moloney, these bonfire structures and an London; Dougal Sheridan, Belfast interpretation of these Biography pyrotechnic events in relation to Dougal Sheridan is Lecturer in Author’s address the history of fire in the cities, and Architecture at the University of Dougal Sheridan as combinations of Architecture Ulster, a member of the Building Lecturer in Architecture and Theatre. Initiative Research Group, and School of Art and Design 9. Yellow Press, ed. by Deirdre Principal of LiD Architecture. His University of Ulster McMenamin and Dougal research publications focus on York Street Sheridan, no. 2, April 2008 and no. critical theory in relation to the Belfast bt15 3, August 2008. appropriation of urban space, and Northern Ireland 10. Tom Hallifax, ‘Scarecrow publications and awards in practice [email protected] Sketches’, in Yellow Press, no. 3, related to the use of landscape August 2008, p. 3. concepts and strategies in LiD Architecture 11. Stan Allan, ‘Mat urbanism: The architecture and urbanism. www.lid-architecture.net Thick 2D’, in The Landscape Urbanism Reader ed. by Charles ‘Building Initiative’ members: Building Initiative Waldheim (New York: Princeton Joost Beunderman, London; Antje www.buildinginitiative.org Architectural Press, 2006), p. 37. Buchholz, Berlin; Gregor Harbusch, www.woodvalehub.com
Dougal Sheridan ‘Building Initiative’ in Belfast Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.