After a decade of piecemeal change at Belfast Harbour, can the Northern Irish capital's new waterside developments create a cohesive, inclusive city fabric along the River Lagan?
As I cross the Lagan Weir Footbridge, the drama of the view stops me: the high concrete bridges of the M3 motorway sweeping across the river, under them the ships in their deep-water harbour at the edge of Belfast Lough – and ultimately the Irish Sea.
Ten minutes’ walk from the city centre, just after the ceramic swish of the Big Fish sculpture, this is a well-trodden path by visitors to the Titanic Belfast (2012), the city’s shiny, angled poster boy for post-Troubles tourism.
But the promise of the Eric Kuhne-designed museum and regeneration masterplan has been slow to deliver in the decade or so since it was set out. So what is there now at Belfast Harbour, and where are the opportunities for good design to populate the gaps on this formerly industrial site?
As you step down from the city centre and Lagan Weir Footbridge it is clear how piecemeal these developments are. The path descends into no man’s land of empty parking lots under the M3 flyover, with mismatched tarmac and gravel, run through with a busy set of roads. But there is change in the air – and on the ground.
Queen's Quay Kiosk: a Belfast Harbour staging point
Into this underwhelming context, the deliciously spare and engineered Queen's Quay Kiosk has landed, its warm orange-yellow sails signalling to the city centre that this is a place worth a visit. I start my tour here with its architects, two Belfast-based practices which have impressed RIBAJ as Future Winners in recent years: OGU and MMAS. Under the bright sails, which soften the Northern Irish weather, gather Sunday runners, cyclists fuelling up, tourists and parents with pushchairs.
Belfast Harbour has jumped from industrial wasteland to corporate – people have never had a sense of ownership
It is one of the early manifestations of the ambition from the city to make better use of the waterfront. The Bolder Vision for Belfast document, drawn up in 2019, identifies this in one of its four key actions: ‘Embrace the River Lagan and Waterfront: capitalise on one of the city’s most defining, but underused assets, the River Lagan, by strengthening connections from the city centre to the east and its surrounding communities – enhancing connectivity across and around the River Lagan.’ Queen’s Quay Kiosk builds visual connections and offers a reassuring staging point along the leisurely length of the harbour.
I visit a year on from the publication of a more detailed study of the waterfront by Denmark-based Schulze+Grassov: Embracing the Belfast Waterfront. It picks up on the value of such temporary interventions as the kiosk to activate the space, and the use of local design talent – and in the long term, an advisory design panel. The overarching concept is of a Belfast waterfront promenade, looping around 10km of waterfront, bordered by myriad buildings.
The bulk of the land, and a significant proportion of Belfast itself, is owned by Belfast Harbour. It holds more than 800 hectares, from Thompson Dry Dock where the Titanic was fitted out, to the working harbour, and the office development of City Quays on the north bank of the Lagan.
Here, the public realm is getting an upgrade with a series of linked projects, starting with City Quays Gardens, designed by Gillespies, with Consarc. Substantial parcels of land are leased out, with pockets of development such as the Titanic Distillery, which has brought copper stills and new life to a historic pump house with the work of Belfast-based Like Architects.
The 75-hectare Titanic Quarter is leased by Harcourt Developments. It was kicked off by the Titanic Belfast, and by Eric R Kuhne & Associates’ masterplan (2005). It plays host to the huge SSE Arena, its bulk sharply delineated by terracotta, which brings the area to life as the Belfast Giants take to the ice or James Blunt hits the stage. The paint hall for ships has been turned into film studios (as Game of Thrones fans will know), and given a new grey and yellow striped addition.
There are already flats here, flanking a small marina, and in the old drawing offices of shipbuilder Harland & Wolff, you can enjoy the Titanic Hotel’s generous gentility. Alongside it, the Loft Lines’ 780 homes plus offices, designed by Todd Architects, are climbing into the sky – sparking an ongoing controversy about the view to Titanic Belfast from the motorway being hidden. The distinctive yellow Harland & Wolff crane gantries are still visible.
Belfast is cut up in so many ways – the waterfront connects the city and allows communities to come together at the water’s edge
A powerful vision for Belfast's waterfront
So back to Embracing the Belfast Waterfront. The vision was brought together for Maritime Belfast, which started life delivering Titanic Belfast. Now it is charged with protecting and enhancing the seagoing heritage, while animating it with an annual festival and small projects, helped by a retainer from Belfast Harbour.
Making the vision more powerful is that it was brought into being by a task group that included city, government infrastructure and transport bodies, the harbour itself and the biggest active developer which controls the Titanic Quarter. The waterfront has been accepted as a character area in the local plan.
This, says Oliver Schulze of Schulze+Grassov, gives architects and planners ‘a chance to make a contribution’. There can now be architectural design standards, which Schulze sees only patchy evidence of in what exists so far.
Underpinning plans to embrace the waterfront are two new bridges, one upriver where there is already work visible on either bank, alongside new housing and businesses at the Gasworks. The other bridge will land among rather dreary offices at Sailortown. But its reach should be much further than that.
OGU and MMAS are working on a project to enliven the public space near where the new bridge will land (think cycle workshop and coffee). The route will also connect Sailortown’s community, marooned between water and motorway with goods traffic thundering past, and North Belfast – Northern Ireland’s second most deprived area – to the Titanic Quarter.
Across from Sailortown, the bridge will meet Hickson’s Point, which pushes out into the River Lagan, an idea posited years ago by architect and urban thinker Mark Hackett, that seems to be finding its moment. Ambition is high, says Sean Dolan, senior development manager with Belfast City Council: ‘We have done a feasibility study, it needs to be a world-class bridge… unique in design.’
The prominence of Hickson’s Point, which is visible from three sides, ensures it has a future worth debating. It already has consent for a 30-storey tower. But Schulze+Grassov is advocating for some kind of public gesture, a cultural building or perhaps a park. Schulze emphasises the harbour’s importance as transcending sectarian divides. ‘Belfast is cut up in so many ways, down so many division lines,’ he says. ‘The waterfront connects the city and allows communities to come together at the water’s edge.’
Big ideas and barriers around Belfast Harbour
One stumbling block for building at Hickson’s Point – as on much of the harbour land – has been the cost of remediation, an estimated £6m here. Northern Ireland has no Homes England to sink money into this. The Gasworks site upstream was subsidised by the European Union, but that route no longer exists.
‘Remediation costs are our biggest hurdle,’ says Dolan. ‘They are probably why we are not delivering city centre living at the quotient we would want.’ He can identify 3,500 residential units approved by planning but not yet being built out. This issue with viability applies even to student housing, a market on the up, fuelled by the move of Ulster University into the city.
Beyond housing, there have been some big ideas. Ritchie Studio worked on concepts for the giddying, 12m-deep Thompson Dry Dock. Maccreanor Lavington is making plans for Clarendon Dock on the river’s corporate north side. But perhaps there are stepping stones needed first.
John McIlduff, creative director of the Belfast 2024 cultural programme, points to the leap in the harbour's use and the problems this has inadvertently left in its wake. ‘It jumped from industrial wasteland to corporate,’ he says. ‘People have never had a sense of ownership. And the disconnect between developed areas makes it hard to navigate.’
He adds to that diagnosis risk-averse planning on traffic, and floods cutting the city off from the river – although Belfast is not alone in this, with flood walls appearing in many riverside cities.
One project McIlduff commissioned for Belfast 2024 – DRIFT, again from OGU and MMAS, and MacEwen Award-shortlisted – floated people on the river to let them feel part of it. And that architect-team’s other work, of kiosks and pavilions, is helping knit people and fabric together.
Perhaps this could be a new moment for the harbour, with the public green space at City Quays Gardens completing, and Under the Bridge, an urban sports public realm project tucked under the motorway flyovers, out for design tenders. Maybe next is an investment in water sports – and water quality to match.
That is a long-term project though. Until then, there should be no arguing with the privilege of a river view and the quality of light that generates, even on a dull day. Now the architecture has to step up to match it.