Barrow Square
The Barrow Square project explores how an underused square might be reinvigorated in advance of the site being fully developed in future. New activity and covered space is brought to the area at a point of cultural intersection between the former harbour, newer riverside office buildings and local residents who still retain a strong identity connected to the docks. It is intended that a small investment in this meanwhile project will support the existing regeneration efforts of the local community and enliven the square in this interim period prior to long term development.
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Belfast Harbour (client), MMAS, Design ID, WH Stephens, SCC
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Planning Approved
Historically, the Barrow Square site was a busy dockyard, not a public plaza. It was a unique and culturally important spot however, born out of a unique spatial condition: the urban neighbourhood fabric of Belfast’s Sailortown projected into and overlapped with the working river edge which created a meaningful threshold between work and play, domesticity and industry, focus and escape, day and night. The now derelict Rotterdam and Pat’s Bar, famous for live music, were located directly at the boundary of the yard, creating a deep cultural threshold between work and community. Behind the bars was St Joseph’s Church, frequented by dockworkers, Sailortown families and sailors. The relationship between industry and community in this maritime neighbourhood supported a huge range of creative endeavours, from live music to boxing, festival organisations, ice cream and marble crafts.
In the early 1990s, the site was hard landscaped to respond to the area’s fame for music, designed to hold outdoor performances. However, currently the Rotterdam and Pat’s Bar lie derelict as the land awaits development, which creates a lifeless edge to the square and of course has drastically reduced the use of the area for events.
Image Above: Barrow Square, located on Harbour land (white), is located at the end of a slither of land containing housing and a community space (dark blue).
Image Above: The site was a working yard before it was a space for public use
Image Above: Site of Barrow Square highlighted in red
Image Above: The Rotterdam and Pat’s Bar, for which this site was famous, now lie derelict awaiting development. Barrow Square can be seen behind.
Image Above: The Rotterdam Bar in 1988 with the working yard behind.
Process + Thinking
It was important that the work would have a civic scale. The proposal is for the insertion of colonnaded pavilions forming edges to the square which currently feel ‘gappy’ and incomplete, planned for vehicle movement rather than pedestrians. Inspired by the historic dock shed structures that used to occupy the space, the pavilions will have a mix of workspace, food and community space to engage and attract people, with sheltered decks providing informal spaces for a wide range of users including local resident groups to fill and inhabit. A new series of events are planned to support the use of the square.
This work intends to create a safer, greener, more attractive and more people-friendly environment in the docks area. It aims to promote the key active travel route through the space whilst increasing footfall along the river’s edge: Belfast notoriously rejects and turns its back on the river and has failed to take advantage of the water as a pubic space.
The scheme is proposed as a demountable installation that can be resused elsewhere. It brings together many of the approaches to ‘temporary’ architecture that our team have been developing across many of our urban projects. It is hoped that the scheme will obtain planning permission in the next month and that the work will act as a significant catalyst to the once powerful civic and cultural life of the riverside.
