Gaeltacht Quarter Culture-led Regeneration

The search for ‘complex ordinary’ in a sustainable environment 

The focus is the Gaeltacht Quarter to the west of the city centre, once deemed ‘beyond the pale’. The question is can architecture grant the possibility of a positive role in the creation of culture in the Gaeltacht Quarter?
The work of the studio will contribute to staking out new ground by using the Irish language as the centre of gravity culturally.
In the 1970s and 1980s the west — like most of the city — was outside the ring of steel that partially enclosed the commercial city core, outwith the jurisdiction in many ways.
It was considered lawless, barbaric; and still the people were resilient, creative and progressive. The west Belfast community was demonised during the conflict. Yet now is home to Féile an Phobail, one of Europe’s premier community festivals, and home to one of the most transformative urban actions in these islands, the Gaeltacht Quarter regeneration project.

The Gaeltacht Quarter regeneration project is an initiative rooted to a small group of eight families. The first priority of those who founded the 1960s Irish language community in Belfast, was communication, not grammar, nor vocabulary. They sought to engage with their English-speaking neighbours: they wanted to make a difference within their neighbourhood.
They held language classes and wrote plays and organised trips and events and laboured to help their neighbours, including the re-building of Bombay Street, Belfast (1969 / 1970). The founding families were social and economic entrepreneurs: they laboured to fulfil their vision, and in doing so inspired generations across both Belfast and Ireland.

For those inspirational individuals, old rural practices of helping neighbours by collectively working and co-operating, forming work parties to undertake key tasks at key and important times, was complemented by a firm belief in a self-help ethos that, ironically, perhaps, had its roots in the mid-nineteenth century work of reformist Scottish journalist and Chartist, Samuel Smiles. His 1855 publication ‘Self-Help’ argued ‘that man had a duty to educate himself’; that hard graft; and perseverance could make gentlemen of the working class. (Smiles’ son, Sir Walter Smiles, was an Ulster Unionist MP at the time of the Home Rule Bill and Partition in Ireland).
It seems possible that Ernest Benn, uncle of Tony Benn, who invoked Smiles and praised the virtues of self-help in the mid-1940s may have contributed to the re-emergence and re-imagining of Victorian Liberalism, but now with a left-leaning sensitivity.
As ever, culture always has provided the capacity to be both porous and exploratory.

 Féin-cuidiú: ‘self-help’, became a mantra for the Irish language community in Belfast, best expressed by the phrase, ‘deán é, na h-abair é’, ‘do it, don’t just talk about it’. 
In the context of a narrowing of community the families preserved in their determination to raise their families through the Irish language, establishing their own built community in 1969, and their endeavour and inspiration has since inspired a generation to imagine, develop and build schools, businesses, cultural centres, radio stations and sports complexes, growing to in excess of 50,000 pupils in the Irish medium education sector.
There is enormous potential for all of our citizens in such regeneration paradigm.  Their maxim, na habair é, deán é, “don’t just say it, do it”, also the ethos of the co-operative movements, resonates in a spirit of self-help. It is a confluence of history, cultural continuity and, now possibly, a fortuitous timing of events.
New opportunities are now, potentially, afforded under review of our Local Government administration with the support of maturing and increasingly experienced local politicians who remain committed to their constituency bases, notwithstanding current political lethargy.

The Gaeltacht Quarter proposal (An Cheathrú Ghaeltachta) has the opportunity of setting an example of how neighbourhoods, and the inner city, can connect to the centre — and to other areas. Of also staking new ground by using the Irish language as the foundation stone to build cultural, tourism and business initiatives as a stable and organic economic system that sustains people and is reflective of their needs and ambitions.  It can also be a model of partnering for change with the public sector: urban hybridity in its fullest understanding and potential.
Many city and neighbourhood areas seek a genuine mixed-use activity: one that would mix commerce, residential and business in one walkable place.

The proposed core of An Cheathrú Ghaeltachta provides that mix of a distinct residential neighbourhood with unique cultural and educational resources on its doorstep.

THE URBAN DESIGN STUDIO

Urban design is in itself a complicated, conflictive, multi-disciplinary field. It operates within established social, political and economic contexts. It tends to produce sequential products typically to examine and understand context, manage and propose development: masterplans, framework documents, visionary schemes with a variety of interpretations, or critical analysis that often tells a story.

This studio will introduce approaches to interventions in urban areas, a discussion of tactics and strategies; theories and principles of design; tools and techniques of analysis; knowledge and skills for design thinking.

URBAN ANALYSIS

Semester 1

The aim of the urban design studio in Semester 1 is the preparation of a cultural urban analysis, a framework for an agreed site, and a building proposition. The first project stage of the studio is the analysis of a site in town centre, Berry Street.
The analysis comprises massing, circulation legibility, historic traces, a sense of place and its atmosphere. The exploration and deployment of conventional and experimental practices of site investigation: including sonic, atmospheric, and tactile. It will explore the creative impact of the site. The analysis will be presented in the form of a studio show.

The second project, the Guerrilla Intervention, will be a site-specific strategic design proposition, in Mid-Falls, a ’draft’ of physical layout covering cultural, environmental and physical analysis tested through a variety of 3-D visual and textual modes. It will rely on interrogating knowledge and techniques of certain designers and artists to whom we look to for inspiration and will produce a notional sketch scheme of a building.

The third project is the Coláiste Feirste site and adjacent lands and will be the preparation of an urban framework that encourages future cultural development and sets out the evolution of the physical form of the building. 

Semester 2

Semester 2 will start with theoretical investigations and swiftly move to the design of a building.

At this time, it can be hard to project a positive vision for the city. But embracing change is a beautiful thing. The studio will stay grounded by keeping in mind worldwide concerns about social and racial justice; the coronavirus pandemic, and the economic downturn not as social determinants but as reminders: ‘how long will things be the same?’ 

Students will tie-in a personal vision for the city and make the claim, ”this is what I would do differently”.