The Big Conversation 2020

from BDP 2020 The Big Conversation

by BDP – Building Design Partnership

A Human Perspective

READING A CITY

Architect Michael Mullen describes how the Augustine Hill development adopts one planet principles for a new mixed-use urban community

**Augustine Hill, Galway; reconnecting the city with its maritime setting**

Understanding a place like Galway takes time. It requires a respect of history, an innate appreciation for the local communities and their needs as well as an informed reading of the future: future living, future working and the future of the city itself. Above all understanding a place takes experience.

As architects, BDP has been working in Galway for nearly 20 years, steadily developing a respect, appreciation, and understanding for the city and its people. Since 2015 we have been instrumental in a major scheme to reinvigorate the city’s inner docks. Now on site, Bonham Quay is attracting highprofile businesses to the region retaining talent, creating jobs, demonstrating how a quantum of regeneration can kickstart an area, activate streets, and create new patterns of movement within a city resulting in a renewed, wider confidence.

Building on the momentum of Bonham Quay, Augustine Hill is a progressive 8.2 acre development to reactivate the inner harbour area, stretching from Ceannt Station and Eyre Square past Forthill Cemetery to the water’s edge. This is the first opportunity of its kind to create a new Galway, a new community distilled from our understanding of its past, present and future into an architectural design to rival any forward looking global city.

Galway City has many reasons to be proud. The European Capital of Culture for 2020 is known around the world as one of Ireland’s gems, renowned for its wild, bohemian spirit, artistry and music and lively, cosmopolitan, city centre. However fame comes with its challenges. The city is creaking with tourists - five for every local - and that’s before the Capital of Culture designation! Quaint, cobbled streets add character, but offer limited relevance to the needs and demands of modern living, while a perceived continuing Disneyfication of the urban core could hamper the city’s potential to evolve and compete. Our approach is to delve into the city’s medieval DNA and balance current pressures and future opportunities to discover the elements that will endear and endure.

We have not, and could not, do this alone. Instead, we have consulted and conversed with over 2,500 Galwegians, with the central belief that good architecture is distilled from understanding those who will experience it every day and this process has shaped the design. An open, accessible promenade takes full advantage of the connection between land and sea, together with four squares and 11 streets that lead to an exciting new ‘esplanade in the sky’. Dense and walkable, it promotes urban living surrounded by community needs to

increase wellbeing, such as playgrounds and allotments, parks, a cultural venue for the burgeoning arts community, covered streets and spaces, placing new homes where they are needed to reverse urban sprawl and add social value. An increase in pedestrianised public realm takes pressure off the city streets while new hubs for cycling (1,150 bicycle spaces) and walking will reinforce and encourage further investment in rail, bus and electric parking.

Tall landmarks will anchor a new era in the city’s development and give a contemporary identity. This may look like a New Galway from afar, but it is integrated within the grain of the medieval city, expanding to rooftop parks which echo the local landscape of the Burren. Historic railway buildings will be creatively reused, evoking a range of different atmospheres throughout the streets and spaces, varied to respond to the diverse needs of locals and visitor of all ages, backgrounds, and circumstances.

Our progressive client places sustainability at the heart of the design, not just encompassing all standard building-related benchmarks, but also embracing operational sustainability. We are seeking to create the first mixed-use urban community in Ireland to adopt the ten ‘OnePlanet’ principles/accreditation to create better more sustainable places encouraging us as designers, and the working and living community to live happily within the earth’s resources. The framework is based around ten principles that cover all aspects of social, environmental and economic sustainability. Initiatives for Augustine Hill include using local suppliers, adhering to happiness and community checks and using green leases and an education facility to inform citizens and tourists about sustainability.

Faithful to our design lineage of placemaking for the cities of Liverpool, Oxford, Edinburgh, Belfast and Aberdeen, we seek to create an architecture inspired by the imagination of the local community. This is a new model for urban living in Ireland, one that is rooted in a love of place, with a familiar variety, colour and mix that people desire.

We have partnered with a local developer who has ensured that our understanding of Galway resonates with the vision of those who know the city best; its people. Galway is a city with a strong Irish cultural heritage, progressive and forwardlooking, and now leading the way in sustainable development. Augustine Hill embodies the ethos that architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.