The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
About Belfast School of Architecture and the Built Environment
Location Belfast • Courses BA (Hons) Architecture, MArch • Head of school Neil Hewitt • Full-time tutors 10 • Part-time tutors 10 • Students 120 • Staff to student ratio 1:12
Undergraduate
Conor Quinn
Course BA (Hons) Architecture
Studio/unit brief What Connects Us?
Project title Women’s Tec
Project description This project seeks to contribute to the education of women in STEM as an extension to North Belfast’s Women’s Tec. Inspired by the philosophy of Women’s Tec and feminist architecture, the project aims to create spaces that support vulnerable women, refugees and those seeking employment. The principal triple-height workshop space facilitates visual connections throughout the building to create a safe atmosphere. Circulation acts as a place for social interaction. The shading colonnade wrapped around two of the façades creates a safe, raised relationship to the street and an opportunity to circulate the building externally via hidden roof gardens.
Tutor citation Conor’s project shows a sensitive and grounded approach to architectural design which responds to its context, the needs of a community and the potential for connecting to the wider city. Aoife McGee, Patrick Gallagher and Mark Todd
Postgraduate
Zoë Gibson
Course MArch
Studio/unit brief Waterlands IV
Project title Rathlin Island: A Landscape Repository. How do we archive the landscape?
Project description Rathlin Island, off the north coast of Ireland, is freighted with mythological stories, historical inhabitants, tailor-made professions and a 150-person population. This hand-drawn thesis pays homage to the art of cartography and discusses the need to archive landscapes by documenting flora and fauna, shifts in ecology and geological formations, as well as stories told in a community. It takes the reader on an intimate journey to discover ‘The Maker’, ‘The Cartographer’ and ‘The Performer’. The architectural programme touches sensitively a landscape that has been carefully documented.
Tutor citation Zoë’s thesis explored an interest in the nature of an archive both to register memory and to trigger creativity, which would ultimately find a place back in the archive. The beautiful drawing and working process was itself always presented as an archive. Paul Clarke and Peter McNie