In a world where a blog is created every second does the world really need another blog? Well, it's got one.
An irregular set of postings, weaving an intricate pattern around a diverse set of subjects. Comment on culture, technology, politics and the occasional rant about life.
Alan ... in Belfast, Northern Ireland
The Paris landscape is distinctive among European cities given the lack of skyscrapers overshadowing its central district. One of my favourite trips in Paris is to take the RER A out to La Défense and wander past the fountains and along the airy walkways surrounded by chunky tower blocks to reach La Grande Arche at the far end. Looking four kilometres east back towards the city centre you should just be able to make out the Louvre courtyard in the distance through the far side of the Arc de Triomphe.
Over in the north-east of the city, Parc de la Villette offers an alternative to artsy Paris with a decommissioned submarine, a mirrored geodesic dome with a cinema inside and the Cité des Sciences museum with five levels of exhibitions and hands-on demonstrations. You could get lost in it for days.
Until watching An Engineer Imagines, I had no idea that these sites were all linked together by Belfast-trained structural engineer Peter Rice. The engineer spent much of his career at Ove Arup, working with architect Richard Rogers, finding ways to make exotic designs buildable. The Pompidou Centre in Paris is held up by the system his team developed. He spent years working on the geometrically-challenging Sydney Opera House.
The 32m-tall glass walls at Cité des Science were the first structural walls to be constructed without framing or supporting fins. The system developed is widely used today, but Rice found a way of making it happen first. His hand was on the glass pyramids in the Louvre. Later the film comes to London and his work on Lloyd’s building is revealed.
Italian architect Renzo Piano says that Rice could “design structures like a pianist who can play with his eyes shut”, going on to add that “he understands the basic nature of structures so well that he can afford to think in the darkness about what might be possible beyond the obvious.”
The film uses timelapse photography and old ciné film footage of buildings Rice worked on to show off his creations, celebrating the different aspect ratios and frame rates and weaving them together with voiced reflections from his own autobiography and interviews with architects and other colleagues to shine a spotlight on the engineer who worked from the shadows. Despite not becoming a household name – he’s described as “a thinker rather than a talker” – he was recognised within by his peers, only the second engineer to be awarded a gold medal for architecture by the Royal Institute of British Architects.
Yet this beautiful tribute to the engineer reveals his skill at bring different skillsets together to collaborate across disciplines and design solutions – exercising “soft power” and applying design expertise as well as engineering knowhow to find new ways to challenge conventional thinking. His colleagues speak as warmly as his family who disclose how he coped with his terminal brain tumour – he died aged 57 – and rediscovered his faith while working on Cathedrale Notre Dame de la Treille in Lille.
Filmmaker Marcus Robinson ties the narrative together with Rice’s most quirky project, an outdoor theatre in southern France lit only by moonlight. The modern building porn imagery is replaced with a hand-fashioned paraboloid and all manner of mirrored structures used to collect, focus and throw the light of the full moon onto an amphitheatre stage. La Théâtre de la Pleine Lune is a mad-cap eccentric passion project of French opera director Humbert Camerlo, but one in which Rice was intellectually invested, opening it up as the venue for a family celebration before his death.
An Engineer Imagines is a beautiful tribute to an ingenious dreamer whose inspirational talent and unorthodox approach is superbly portrayed to a non-specialist audience in this locally-produced documentary. Rice’s qualities are gently expressed through the film’s own editing decisions and format.
Few shows have the audience smiling before the cast are even on stage. But Martin Zimmermann manages it in his (nearly) solo show Hallo.
Boxes on stage have a life of their own as the wiry performer inhabits the set and animates his surroundings. Every prop is reconfigurable, reusable and can be reappear or disappear in an unexpected way. Nothing is at it seems. The show is totally full of surprises.
Panels slide magically across the stage. Zimmermanm jumps in and out of doors, one time agitated, the next laughing manically. For a minute or two we stare in wonder at an enormous moving parallelogram, admiring the shapes of light thrown onto the shifting scene as the performer clambers over it.
Muttering along with the odd “Hallo” are accompanied by piano music that adds shade and emotion to the performance.
The motorisation is invisible, the level of control is exact. The delight of Hallo is the precision with which ‘accidents’ have been planned to happen as parts of the staging are ‘damaged’ and one scene transforms into the next. The attention to detail is extraordinary. It feels like the performance is made up on the hoof ... yet it's planned to within an inch of its life.
Even the appearance of the stage hand (Roger Studer) introduces mystery and humour as this invisible character develops its personality and confidence on stage.
Hallo is beautiful and the most unexpected highlight of the festival. Both performances at Belfast International Arts Festival are now over, but if you ever have the chance to see Hallo or Martin Zimmermann, drive long and far to see a show. Production photos by Augustin Rebetez
Ever wanted to see inside Belfast Central Fire Station? Or to be one of the first inside the new Ulster University building? Or to don a hard hat and walk around the new Exhibition and Conference extension on the side of the Waterfront Hall?
Belfast Central Fire Station: 45 minute tours led by Station Commander Al Cunningham at 10.30am, 11:45am and 2.15pm on Sunday 19 July.
Jump on board the Wee Tram for a 90 minute guided tour around Titanic Quarter by self-confessed Titanorak Chris Bennett at 10am and 2pm on Saturday 18 July.
The Soloist in Lanyon Place - 40 minute tours at 10am, 11am and noon on Saturday 18 July.
Divis Tower: visit the only remaining structure from the Divis Flats complex, tour the top floors and hear from residents - 40 minute tours at 11am, noon and 1pm on Sunday 19 July.
Architectural practice Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios: a lunchtime talk to look at some of their projects and learn how an initial scribble becomes reality - 1pm-3pm on Saturday 18 July.
South Belfast Methodist Church opened in 2012 and provides community facilities (like gym, conference hall and classrooms) along with a space for worshup. Open 10am-6pm on Saturday 18 and 2-6pm on Sunday 19 July.
The Tropical Ravine in Botanic Gardens has been undergoing restoration. Ahead of its reopening in late 2016, you will have a chance to see the ravine in an uncharacteristically empty state and hear about the delicate operation that will be required to repopulate it with its greenery. Check on placeni.org closer to the festival for date and time.
And don't forget to check out HOUSE, a tiny two storey structure inside PLACE on Lower Garfield Street during the Open House Festival: a library, a cinema, a space to reflect ... and the festival hub and information point.
Click on the programme summary below for a legible version!
I’ve consistently blogged about EHOD in previous years, and many of the venues and attractions listed in old posts are open again this year. So it’s worth a peruse of the old posts to find some gems.
Belfast
Currently celebrating 125th year of operation, the tour around Belfast Central Library has long remained unticked on my EHOD to do list. Tours 10.30am and 2.30pm on Saturday.
The Masonic Hall in Arthur Square (better known as Cornmarket) has been refurbished and offers fantastic rooftop views across Belfast city centre as well as an insight into a somewhat mysterious organisation. Open on Saturday from 10am-4pm with a tour at 11am.
Templemore Baths (at the top of Templemore Avenue) are open on Saturday from 11am-3pm with tours of the community trust-maintained baths on the hour and a short documentary by Lorna Milligan How far can you Swim, Son? showing every ten minutes between 1pm and 3pm.
While Sunday’s Art Deco tour in Belfast is fully booked, another free tour has been arranged for Sunday 21 at 10.30am – you can register through PLACE. Spaces are still available on tours looking at the architecture of Donegall Square, city centre churches, and an urban photo walk. More details and booking at PLACE.
Twenty minute tours around Belfast Waterfront Hall will take place on the hour between 10am and 6pm on Saturday,
If you’ve never visited Sinclair Seaman’s Presbyterian Church (tucked in beside the Belfast Harbour Commissioner’s Office on Corporation Street) it’s well worth a trip to see the novel pulpit and naval artefacts throughout the building. Open on Saturday 10am-5pm and Sunday 2pm-5pm with tours subject to demand.
If you book you can join free tours of the Grand Opera House on Saturday and Sunday at 10am, 11am and noon. The Ulster Hall is also open for guided tours on Saturday 10am-4pm and Sunday 10am-noon.
Lisburn
Hilden Brewery is running a free tour around Ireland’s oldest independent brewery at noon on Saturday and Sunday. [Brings back memories of our class visit in P7 when we came away from the brewery with school blazer pockets full of hops to chew on for the next month!]
The R-Space Gallery (32 Castle Street) in Lisburn was once the Cathedral Rectory and is now a thriving visual arts and crafts space. Open on Saturday between noon and 5pm, hard hat tours are available and talks at 2pm and 4pm.
Beyond!
The Victorian country house Drumalis (just outside Larne on the Glenarm Road) is open with free tours on Saturday afternoon (noon-4pm) and afternoon tea is available to purchase.
The Moravian Church at Gracehill (outside Ballymena) opened in 1765 and is running tours on the hour on Saturday (open 12.30pm-5pm). The nearby Gracehill Old School is also open on Saturday 12.30pm-5pm with a living history exhibition running throughout the afternoon.
Star shows at the Armagh Planetarium are free on Saturday, though you need to book. http://www.armagh.co.uk/event/free-shows-for-european-heritage-open-day/ Open between 10am and 5pm.
A Cold War bunker buried 15 feet under a field http://www.nibunker.co.uk on the outskirts of Portadown will be open to visitors on Saturday and Sunday (11am-5pm). FULLY BOOKED
There are countless other venues open to potter around or more formally tour across Northern Ireland with a strong showing up in Derry, including a guided urban walk around the city centre (booking required, but places still available).
It’s European Heritage Open Days weekend in Northern Ireland. It’s your chance to get inside over four hundred buildings without paying and to find out about their use and history.
This year the buildings will be joined by artists, poets, storytellers and other performers who’ll be giving the weekend a cultural slant. Settle into a pew and see the film To Kill A Mocking Bird in Belfast’s Rosemary Street Church at 8pm on Saturday. And check out the excellent Wireless Mystery Theatre who will be broadcasting old-time radio shows and commercials from Sawyers in the Fountain Centre every twenty minutes on Saturday afternoon.
Away from Belfast, the R-Space Gallery in Lisburn (32 Castle Street) is hosting Shrieking Sisters, a rehearsed play by Carol Moore and Maggie Croni about Suffragette Lilian Metge who attempted to blow up Lisburn Cathedral in 1914. Play on Sunday at 3pm preceded with by a guided walk at 2.15pm. Booking essential.
UU graduate Jonny McEwan – who’s responsible for the fantastic panels on the side of the Skainos building on the Lower Newtownards Road – has created a site-specific video installation that can be experienced in Armagh Public Library. Saturday 11am-6pm; Sunday 2pm-6pm.
But back to the buildings …
Every year people rave to me about the Belfast Central Library tour. The library is open to wander around most of the day, but the behind the scenes tour is at 11.30am (until 12.15pm). The Linenhall Library's worth a tour too. PLACE have organised a Mapping Belfast walking tour that will consider how Belfast has (and could) be mapped, and how this helps us understand the city. Leaves the front of PLACE (40 Fountain Street, near the back of Boots) at 11am. At noon another tour leaves the same spot to investigate the Art Deco buildings that can be spied across the city. Fully Booked.
The MAC’s architects are giving tours around the Cathedral Quarter arts venue at 10am and 11am on Saturday morning. Given my lack of appreciation for the outside of the building, and my ability to get lost inside its concrete floors, maybe I should book a place!
A goodselectionofLisburnchurches – many of them listed buildings – will throw their doors open on Saturday ... but not Sunday! One year I’ll remember to call in Castle House (on Lisburn’s Castle Street), the former residence of Sir Richard Wallace.
You can get into Stormont Castle and see the polo-mint table the Executive sit around (a truly odd piece of furniture) on Saturday and Sunday. Parliament Buildings – which runs tours all year round – is open too. The Clifton Street Orange Hall – complete with minutes of an Orange lodge meeting in Irish – is open on Saturday.
On Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 September, over 300 buildings will open to the public for free as part of the fifteenth annual European Heritage Open Days. The full programme is available to download, or split into smaller county-wide sections.
Further afield the 36.5m tall St John’s Point lighthouse is open on the Sunday (sadly fully booked already). Up on the north coast, the architect will offer a guided tour around the new Giant’s Causeway visitor centre.
Armagh Observatory is opening up on Saturday, and the neighbouring Armagh Planetarium is offering free star shows, though booking is essential. Many churches are open, some even open on Sunday!
Note that not all buildings are open on both Saturday and Sunday. Check the EOHD website for opening hours.
Each year I wander around the top two floors of the University of Ulster’s Belfast campus (the ‘Art College’) in awe of the architectural models and product prototypes that fill the floors. Wood, cardboard, perspex, trees with green fizzy foliage, trees made of wire loops. And then there are the hundreds of white plastic figures inhabiting the buildings, sometimes completely out of scale with the height of the rooms!
Last year someone had moved the Northern Ireland Assembly into the city centre and floated it on top of the roof of office accommodation on Chichester Street, while others designed a variety of multi-faith spaces.
Against the backdrop of St Anne’s Cathedral and the MAC Belfast, this year’s end of year show features plans for a Civic Forum near Belfast City Hall, an Info-Space (modern library or “multifunctional piazza urban sanctuary context”), a building entirely clad in greenery, enormous spherical lights (built around rather underwhelming low wattage bulbs), and an office block that looks to have been inspired by Enric Miralles’ window seats in the MSP offices at the Scottish Parliament.
As an experiment – though not an entirely successful one – I took some timelapse shots flying through the models. In retrospect it would have been better to take a shot ever half second (rather than every second) and to hold the last frame for couple of seconds to better transition between models. Next time ...
While blown away by the models and the creativity behind the plans that back them up, I’m always a little bemused that many of the students either fail to identify themselves clearly on the huge posters surrounding their work, and often fail to display the title of their work in a font size big enough to catch your eye as you walk over to their area of the floor.
Up the road, the QUB Architecture end of year exhibition is also underway in the Former Science Library (Chlorine Gardens). Doors open Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm (until 8pm on Thursdays), running until Friday 22 June.
(The music on the video is "The Air Up There - ambient (gameboy Korg DS10") by Receptors and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.)
Urbanized was the first of three films that PLACE and Forum for Alternative Belfast are supporting at Belfast Film Festival.
It's a documentary that looks at the design of cities.Taking examples from across the globe, Gary Hustwit looks at how individuals, architects and public authorities have intervened. Most of the areas examined have been stressed or neglected.
The film tackles strategies for increasing public safety with overlooked walkways in a township; building social housing with the tenants involved in decisions around compromises (having a bath tub beats having hot water if your shack up to now has had neither); introducing cycle lanes by deliberately neglecting roads for cars and leaving parked cars as a buffer between cyclists and motor traffic; creating a cost-effective Tube-like bus network with stations and dedicated lanes; converting disused elevated rail tracks into soft public spaces providing escape from the bustling city underneath; and the power of local activists to broaden a community's imagination and self belief not to mention introduce unregulated community gardens.
There's also an insight into an experiment along a Brighton street in which residents monitored their energy usage and the results were tracked on graphs spray painted onto the road outside their front doors.
The film is focussed on the statistic that 75% of the world's population will live in a city by 2050. If there isn't to be a massive increase in slum-dwelling, congestion from the number of cars on roads, and dysfunctional city layouts, then the voices in this film need to be listened to in order to avoid the worst aspects of urbanism.
Applying the film to Belfast, Derry and gather urban sprawls cities in Northern Ireland, there are lessons about bike safety, metro public transport and social housing.
A great film to start the short Belfast Film Festival season, marred only by the odd typo in the subtitles (every voice is subtitled even the English ones) and the unusual screening in the Belfast MAC (where the audience sat far away from a relatively small screen).
Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival is back, running this year from Thursday 3 to Sunday 13 May. This year must be flying in: it doesn’t feel like three months since the baby sister Out To Lunch festival finished in January.
It’s an evening festival this year, with lunchtime events banished to weekends. As usual lots of events catch my eye:
Homebird // Sunday 6 May, 5pm and 8pm // The Dark Horse // £6 // The 1948 story of Maire de Baroid’s family emigration to California leaving her behind in Cork, told through the “evocative sounds of voice, guitar, Irish harp and fiddle”. An aural treat.
Oscar Niemeyer: A Vida é um sopro (Life is a brief moment) // Tuesday 8 May at 6pm // The Dark Horse // £4 // A film about the great architect Oscar Niemeyer whose “buildings tend towards the formal and monumental, sometimes at odds with his socialist principles”. Followed by a panel discussion. You can’t beat a good architectural film!
Simon Hoggart // Tuesday 8 May at 8pm // The Black Box // £8 // Reading from “his compendium of anecdotes from his life in journalism”, parliamentary sketch writer Simon Hoggart will let you into the secret of what he’s witnessed over the years.
Glenn Patterson: The Mill for Grinding Old People Young // Tuesday 8 May at 8pm // The Assembly Rooms // £8 // The local author will read from his new novel telling the story of Gilbert Rice (born 1812), working beneath the shadow of Harland & Wolff and dealing with the impact of his love affair with Maria, a Polish barmaid.
Michael Smiley – Immigrant! // Thursday 10 May at 8pm // The Assembly Rooms // £8 // Michael Smiley tells his comic story of leaving Belfast for London and moving from a “homeless, jobless, futureless young man” to life as a actor and comedian.
Mark Thomas – Extreme Rambling // Thursday 10 May at 8pm // The Black Box // £8 SOLD OUT // Brilliant comic Mark Thomas reading from his book about his Middle East ramble which took him across “the entire length of the Israeli Separation Barrier crossing between the Israeli and the Palestinian side … six arrests, one stoning, too much hummus”.
Vyvienne Long + Our Krypton Son // Thursday 10 May at 8pm // McHughs Basement // £6 // A classically-trained cellist and critically acclaimed songwriter.
Tracey Moberly: Text Me Up // Friday 11 May at 7.30pm // Free, but book // The Assembly Rooms // Artist Tracey Moberly saved the 90,000 text messages she received since 1999 and has created a “breakneck biography” with them together with a contextual commentary on the amassed missives. A travelogue illustrated with texts and photographs.
Kids’ Noisy Cinema: The Red Balloon // Saturday 12 May at 1pm // Belfast Barge // £4 // A percussion workshop followed by a screening of the timeless children’s classic The Red Balloon in which “a young boy discovers a balloon which seems to have a life of its own and together they go on an adventure through Paris”. Suitable for children aged between 7 and 11 years old, it’s a humorous story about friendship and love, without dialogue. Attending children will add their own soundtrack using props and percussion.
Hackney Colliery Band // Saturday 12 May at 8pm // The Black Box // £8 // “Bringing the tradition of mobile marching bands firmly into the 21st century” with funk, hip hop, ska and contemporary jazz played by an all-acoustic brass ensemble.
Also running throughout CQAF is The Open Source, a performance and workshop space in an otherwise empty Art Deco building in Belfast. Sinclair House – coincidently just opposite the Occupy Belfast People's Bank building – will feature a programme of “art, design, dance, music, gaming, coding, or any other creative pursuit” people are passionate about.
Wenceslas has come to live with us. He's a hamster. He moved house from his breeder in East Belfast yesterday afternoon and moved into his new home. Tissue paper was provided. Over time he dragged it all down to the bottom corner of the cage. One sheet he even lifted and dropped over the edge from the raised platform to the ground floor of his compact and bijou accommodation! And while we were out of the room - but while the timelapse camera was still running - he even managed to climb upstairs without using the tube.
My first impressions are that hamsters are clever, nimble beasts, and quite adept at problem solving.
Five small upside-down boats – currachs – leaning on each other with wool stretched over their hulls instead of traditional tar, creating a sheltered exhibition pavilion and performance space that can hold around 40 people. All mounted on a system of curved rails so that the currachs can twist round and close up tight like a clamshell to protect the venue at night. And designed to fit into a container on the back of a lorry for easy transportation to the next venue.
Throughout history skilled craftspeople have worked closely with architects to create landmark buildings encapsulating exquisite design and attention to detail, and the competition is aimed at reinforcing this link.
As a result of the ‘Craftitecture’ competition, Bucholz McEvoy Architects worked in conjunction with master boat-builder Jim Horgan (Galway School of Boat Building) and precision engineers Innovative Total Solutions (Cork) to create the Cruth Curach pavilion. (‘Cruth’ is Irish for ‘shape’ or ‘construction’.)
They won the competition, and their creation has been screwed together for the first time at the Electric Picnic festival which is running this weekend. Their pavilion will host craft exhibits, music and talks during the festival before being dismantled and shipped to Open House Dublin 2011 in October.
Merritt Bucholz – one of the architects behind the project (and Professor of Architecture at University of Limerick) was speaking in Belfast at a PLACE NI lunchtime event today. You can catch a short interview with Merritt above or catch his full talk in the video at the end of this post or watch. (Note that the video brightens up two minutes in, so stick with it!)
It was interesting to understand how the very precise 3D modelling of the architecture practice worked alongside the cruder practice of boat building. Bending oak in a steam chamber is much more rough and ready than the millimetre perfect geometric design.
The five currachs (up from four in the original competition pitch) were incredibly fast to build (each took around three days) and yet were light, strong and relatively inexpensive.
Merritt commented that the Cork engineers – who supplied the blocks and rails that allow the currachs to smoothly rotate as the venue switches shape – seemed closer to craftsmen than manufacturers as they built ‘single particular devices’ to solve individual problems rather than large end-to-end solutions.
Much of modern architecture – at least the results that I see on the streets of Northern Ireland – is about straight lines, right angles, and acres of glass and concrete.
But in a fascinating comment during the question and answer session afterwards – not captured on the video – Merritt suggested that ‘we have lost the memory … of how to use timber’. Wood has become decorative and secondary, disguising its incredible strength.
If you’re down at Electric Picnic, check out the Cruth Curach pavilion and let me know what you think.
European Heritage Open Days are only around the corner. The time of year when buildings through open their doors and allow the public in for free to see inside buildings that are often out of bounds to casual observers.
The rebuilt Lyric Theatre is offering three tours of its expanded premises – booking essential.
One novel addition to the normal schedule is a private home at 47A Ravenhill Road describing itself as ‘a family home build to a modest budget in a rational modernist idiom referenced to vernacular form’. Telephone pre-booking essential.
Many of Lisburn’s city-centre churches are open on Saturday (with the majority paradoxically closed to visitors on Sunday). C J Lowry’s jewellery shop at the junction of Market Square and the top of Bridge Street has recently been restored.
This year, EHOD are also promising some free audio tours to download covering Belfast, the walled city of Derry and the Causeway Coastal Route. Warning: I didn’t have much success unzipping them on a Mac. You may have more luck on a PC.
Something for everyone … including the thousand or more delegates at Sinn Féin’s Ard Fheis which will be in Belfast over the same weekend.
For the next fortnight there's an opportunity to explore the old Technical College in College Square East. Belfast Metropolitan College (Belfast Met) moves across to its new premises in Titanic Quarter in the autumn, so this will be one of the last chances to see around the historic building before it is locked up.
Historian Henry V Bell will conduct the lunchtime tours taking in the architectural and historical features of the building that has been educating people in Belfast for well over 100 years. Apparently there's even a working steam engine in the building, though you'll have to go on the tour to find out more!
Tours start at noon, 18-22 July and 25-27 July. Turn up at the college.
Driving past Broadway roundabout on Wednesday, it looked like preparations were finally underway to build RISE, Wolfgang Buttresses' winning sculpture that will sit nearly 40m tall and consist of a mesh sphere suspended inside a larger outer sphere.
There was consternation in January when no one turned up at a local consultation event on the Falls to discuss the new piece of public art which will dominate the view as motorists travel up the M1 into the city.
The independently organised local events under the banner of TEDx share the same vision as its parent - "ideas worth spreading".
TEDx Belfast will take place at 4pm on Wednesday 23 March in Belfast Harbour Commissioner’s Office. Under the title of Creativity and the City, speakers with a connection to Belfast (and Northern Ireland) will deliver talks to stimulate thought and plant ideas about creativity, design, innovation, technology and entertainment.
Davy Sims and his small team have assembled six great speakers, with the possibility of one more. A number of TED talks will be shown during the event. Tickets (£30) are limited to 100.
Paul Moore :: Professor at University of Ulster's Head of School of Creative Arts. Member of Content Board Ofcom.
Ruth Morrow :: Ruth is Professor of Architecture at Queen’s University Belfast. She has worked as an architect in the UK and Germany and taught at Schools of Architecture across the UK and Ireland. Her work tests the potentials between people, place, creativity and pedagogy and ranges across activist design pedagogies, urban activism and innovative product development. All her work is underpinned by an ethos of inclusivity and design excellence. She is co-founder of Tactility Factory, a spinout company that has developed award winning, innovative surfaces, combining concrete and textile technologies. Together with her co-founder Trish Belford they are known for their ability to make ‘mad ideas sane’.
Sinclair Stockman :: Living and working in Belfast and Paris Sinclair is founder of Active Minds, Paris. Currently Sinclair works as an independent executive technology and transformation advisor, working with a number of innovative web service based companies, providing executive advice and also working on a number of innovative projects with global NGOs and in developing countries.
Colin Williams :: Colin's TV production company Sixteen South is the creator of Sesame Tree, a co-production with Sesame Workshop in New York - and Big City Park, a co-production with BBC Scotland, which recently won an IFTA (Irish Film and Television) Award. Both series have been commissioned by CBeebies for UK broadcast in 2010.
Mark Dowds :: from Northern Ireland now living in California, Mark is founder of BrainPark.com.
Maureen Piggot :: Maueen is Director of MENCAP Northern Ireland and is leading the development of a social media space for people with learning disabilities.
It's brilliant to see that Belfast (and NI more widely) taking the opportunity to celebrate itself and exclaim its own vision to the world. And since the talks will be videoed, the content will be available for a much wider audience afterwards.
Back in November, I posted about the RISE sculpture that will shortly be materialising on the Broadway roundabout at the top of the M1 motorway.
The project - and the funding - has been on the go for many years, with fabrication already underway up in Rasharkin.
As well as erecting an icon piece of public art, part of the project includes engagement events with local communities that will be staring at the two giant balls and walking underneath them. So workshops were to be arranged in the Falls and the Village.
"A lot of local people would prefer to have seen the money better spent elsewhere. But now that it's a fait accompli, people are beginning to warm to it, which is good."
Creator Wolfgang Buttress speaks in the clip below:
Belfast City Council and PLACE are out and about this week with Wolfgang Buttress, the artist behind the 40m high RISE sculpture that will be unveiled on Broadway roundabout by Easter. There was a public meeting in the City Hall on Wednesday at lunchtime, followed by an evening event at Falls Community Council.
You can catch Wolfgang from 7-8pm on Thursday night at the Richview Regeneration Centre, Donegall Road. Light refreshments will be served. To reserve your place, please call Ivy Rollins, Tourism Culture and Arts Unit, Belfast City Council on 028 9050 0512 or email culture AT belfastcity DOT gov DOT uk.
The process to place a piece of public art on the pylon-free roundabout has taken longer than Belfast City Council and Roads Service ever imagined. The first commission – Trillian, a 45m tall wild flower designed by Ed Carpenter to represent a post-Troubles city – fell through when the price of steel rocketed beyond the project’s budget.
Wolfgang Buttress had been shortlisted the first time round, and nearly didn’t apply again when the commission was re-advertised. Speaking before the event began, he explained that having visited the site, he wanted a sculpture that would acknowledge:
“… the fact that there are two different sides, the fact that it’s important that it’s seen by both sides of the community as well as people coming into Belfast. It needs to be nice and simple, universal, and looks the same from each angle.”
The Bog Meadows are reflected in the reeds that will sit below the balls and (in some cases) structurally support them. Some of the reeds will also house the lights that will illuminate RISE at night, making it an icon from ground level as well as from the air as flights come in and out over the city.
Wolfgang describes in the short clip that he wanted the sculpture to be “open” and yet “have presence”. At nearly 40m tall and 30m across, it is a huge structure. It’s certainly in proportion with the tower blocks next to the Royal site.
Fabrication of RISE is already underway in Rasharkin and work to prepare the Broadway site should begin before Christmas.
A good aspect of the project is that around 80-90% of the money is expected to flow back into local NI businesses and suppliers.
I’m looking forward to Nick Patterson’s timelapse project to capture the construction.
There was quite a bit of discussion at the lunchtime event about how public art is commissioned. How constraining are the strings that are attached to public art projects, potentially compromising the raw art with constraints, briefs and box-ticking. Of course, throughout history, pretty much all commissioned art has been tainted by the funder and not just requested for arts sake.
But what should be the balance between aesthetic judgement and city building? How do democratic structures and civil representation sit alongside community involvement. Rather than be a completed monument, should public art be something that enriches people’s lives on an ongoing basis?
Belfast has an on-off relationship with public art.
The Big Fish has had a positive impact, along with the quiet persistence of the Nula with the Hula.
While the public got what they voted for, Dan George’s steel squiggleSpirit of Belfast was a bit of a let down and failed to capture the imaginations and hearts of city centre workers and shoppers. (The sculpture’s promised lighting features – “ribbon of light … [whose] … intensity, color and movement will be programmed” - failed to materialise which damaged its evening impact in Cornmarket.)
Personally, I suspect the sheer size of the enormous sphere, and the mesmerising effect of the smaller sphere suspended inside, will capture the imagination and hearts of drivers as they come towards the end of the M1 motorway heading into Belfast, or drive out of the city centre heading towards the underpass.
RISE has the potential to take over from the big wheel as the media’s shortcut image of Belfast.
I’m less sure about what local communities (the Village and the Falls) will make of it and how they’ll be able to engage with the alien structure that is about to appear. I can help fearing that it’ll be a target for throwing toilet rolls at and decorating with flags once a big enough cherry-picker is found.
A roundabout – even one that is as large as Broadway – is an unfriendly and isolated place. No matter how much grass is laid, no one’s ever going to cross over to the middle of it in order to kick a ball or sit on a bench and stare up at the sky. Cars whizz clockwise around the circumference, and people scoot across the middle spending no more than a minute or two to get to the traffic lights on the other side.
Although there may be a passing trade of shoppers heading to Park Gate, and staff heading over to the Royal Group of Hospitals, they are transient, windswept and in a hurry to get past. Poor access and parking, together with health and safety concerns must practically rule out any use of the space underneath the sculpture (owned by Roads Service) for community festivals and events.
Yet maybe there’s hope in the fact that within days or weeks of its announcement, RISE had already been given the nickname of the Balls on the Falls. Artist Wolfgang Buttress seemed quite pleased that it had been so quickly adopted.
telling the story of Gilbert Rice (born 1812), working beneath the shadow of Harland & Wolff and dealing with the impact of his love affair with Maria, a Polish barmaid.
