Fortnight Publications Ltd.

The Mac Arts CentreSource: Fortnight, No. 466 (JULY/AUGUST 2009), pp. 18-20Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25704301 .

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iTie Mac Arts Centre

The Brief. Six floors of performance and visual arts provision to replace the Old

Museum Arts Centre, including two perform ance spaces (350 and 120 seats) rehearsal

dance and music studios, and 1,000 square metres of art galleries and visual arts

workshops/spaces, cafe, etc.

The Cost around ?17m - 18m

The Funders: DCAL, Arts Council, DSD, BCC, OMAC and other ongoing fundraising.

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Compared to other cities Belfast has had a long wait for a

dedicated community arts building. But the wait has turned out to be a boon. The international design competition for the arts centre was won

by a talented and relatively new local

architectural team. This has helped to root the consensus about

the significance of the Mac - the replacement for its near name's

sake, OMAC. Hackett, Hall and McKnight's (HHMcK) have a thoroughly humane take on the place of the built environ ment in social life. Their design portfolio, including their work on the new Mac, won the prestigious professional BD Young Architect of the Year Award in 2008. Deliberately non-iconic, the team's approach in a Belfast context is architecturally inspi rational, drawing on international thinking about the role of

public space in civic life as well as on a deep appreciation of its

significance in peripheral urban communities.

The Mac proposals enshrine some intriguing paradoxes from the world of building design and construction. Mark Hackett and Alastair Hall distinguished themselves by proffer ing innovative proposals for Belfast's 2001 bid for The

European City of Culture. They established their practice in 2003 when they jointly won the second stage of the competi tion for Belfast Lyric Theatre. They went on to bid successfully for the Mac in 2007 and Ian McKnight joined the practice.

Work on the site has just started. It is due for completion in

May 2011. If the result encourages diverse Belfast communities to experiment in exploring and celebrating connectivity

- geo

metric, spatial and otherwise - the Mac will amply fulfill its remit.

(Graphics and text reproduced by kind permission from

HHMcK)

The Site '...The street is the heart of Belfast social and urban texture. We are

used to a building plugging a gap but the Mac will be a new public space opening up links between the city and the Cathedral quarter.

Two entrances - one onto the proposed new St Anne's Square, the

other facing the rear of the Art College - and street-like foyer and

circulation spaces within the building ...will invite people to come

in, walk through, use this space, engage. Foyers mediate between

Arts Centre and city...'

FORTNIGHT JULY/AUGUST 2009

Section The design makes a virtue of its tight urban

streetscape: 'The dense site forces the building to

stack high... with galleries on top of the theatres -

a kind of "plateau" world to which one ascends via the staircase that terraces its way up the back of the

main auditorium...' a spiritual, aesthetic and envi

ronmentally-enlightened journey '...as one moves

up on top of the brick construction, another con

trasting world is reached characterized by daylight and structures whose geometry is looser ...'

19

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The Mac Arts Centre

Models 'Formal architectural ideas inform and define but

may be discarded as being subsidiary to other con cerns... The limited scope for presenting elevations

gives rise to a building whose aesthetics are largely derived from interior volumetric qualities

... a

robust and "hardworking" building, not a pre cious, highly refined object but rather a tough col lection of spaces

- a bit like the city itself - that

will weather an intensity of use and allow a con fortable and informal quality of occupation.'

City and Street 'The new building will feel as though it

grows out of the red brick of the city - in

this sense it is designed to be subsumed into the city fabric as though a remnant of the 'brickiness'. The "brickiness" of the interior of the building connects with an earlier heritage of working class terraces and Belfast warehouses....The tall portal elevation to Exchange Street West may be the face of the Mac in a wider city sense, but the elevation (with the tower) to St

Anne's Square has more architectural

weight ...as a lantern/beacon for the build

ing... and an acknowledgement of the piv

otal character of St Anne Cathedral to the

city and locality' - and to communities fur

ther out.

20 FORTNIGHT JULY/AUGUST 2009

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