Located at the newly landscaped entrance to a busy public square on the Newtownards Road high street, on a public thoroughfare and cycle route, on top of a culvert and situated between a pharmacy and a visitor centre gallery, many physical and regulatory constraints had to be taken into account along with the preferences of a large number of interested parties.

The project contributes to design research in the field of pavilion architecture through exploring three themes:

• the role temporary public architecture can play in enriching civic engagement in post-conflict cities

• the capacity of pavilion architecture to mediate between fragmented and discordant interpretations of public space

• the contribution innovative building technologies can make to local traditions of constructing architecture

The project brings historical construction methods into conversation with new technologies in order to act as a lens through which the relationship between east Belfast’s celebrated industrial heritage and perceptions of the area’s identity in the present day can be examined and revisited.

METHODS EMPLOYED:

1. Site analysis and strategy: responding to the physical and social context of C.S Lewis Square

Tasked with constructing a pavilion in a popular public location, multiple interpretations of the significance of C.S. Lewis Square and the surrounding area were collected through observation, conversations and desktop research. By avoiding overly prescriptive motifs and messaging, the structure was designed to sit quietly in the square until somebody was compelled to engage with it, but to be visually articulate enough to reward those instances of deeper enquiry, creating opportunities for slower, more habituated forms of involvement.

2. Inviting engagement with the project through collaboratively conducting and curating historic research

To provide opportunities for deeper engagement, OGU Architects worked with the client team’s heritage officer at the client’s request to conduct an oral histories project, talking to local residents about their memories of working in nearby factories. Photographs of the pavilion’s construction, along with descriptions from the manufacturers of the challenges and techniques involved in making it were placed alongside these oral histories in an exhibition hung from the pavilion.

3. Interdisciplinary, focussed investigation with photographer: examining local cultures of factory-based manufacturing

OGU Architects worked with photographer Joe Laverty during the design development process to study each factory making components for the pavilion and to record the process of collaborative design research between the architects and manufacturers. Aspects of these factory spaces were ultimately echoed in the final pavilion design as a further reference to northern Irish manufacturing.

4. Collaborative design research with manufacturers: developing bespoke, factory-made building components for rapid on-site construction

Methods of building the structure were developed through collaboration between the architects and manufacturers. Ideas were tested through models, drawings and 1:1 scale prototypes. Because manufacturers were asked to prefabricate the pavilion components despite aiming to represent historical building elements that would have been made on-site, traditional and innovative techniques were inevitably brought together. The more skilled the manufacturer, the more experienced and knowledgeable they were in traditional techniques and they drew upon this knowledge to solve new problems and master new technologies.

Framing local manufacturing as part of a heritage of local innovators released the design from any demand to faithfully recreate a historical structure, allowing the pavilion to feel locally relevant through responding to current interests and constraints.