Queen’s Students’ Union

The Team

Client Queen’s University Belfast

Lead consultant RPP Architects Ltd

Architects Hawkins\Brown & RPP Architects Ltd

Structural / civil / flood risk

Doran Consulting Ltd

MEP services consultant

JCP Consulting Ltd

Main Contractor

Felix O’Hare & Co Ltd

Photography

Gareth Andrews Photography

Approached on a grey winter’s day, past the Lynn Library and University Square, the bronzed grid of new student centre presents a calm and muted tone. The new building disengages from the adjacent terrace, sitting four square on the geometry of Elmwood Avenue. The initial generosity in the entrance volume continues in the flow of terrazzo floor through the building’s length to the Mandela Hall. The intent of building set as Palazzo comes to mind. This unhindered openness extents up the stair and through floor plates; one can meander up to an end social space with its terrace overlooking the mountains. The diagram of the building allows service, cores and private space to be accommodated to the northern / inner edge of the block.

The overcast winter’s day also accentuates the clarity of view out to the set pieces of the campus, both distant and close; this is a privileged site in the city and the campus. The typology of building as glass container from which to view a series of historic buildings of articulation and texture sets up a number of reciprocal questions. By day, how does it contribute to the ensemble, is it is a mirror? At night by turn, the characteristic as vessel and transparent room becomes apparent. In this case the building varies with the weather being more muted in winter and, when viewed obliquely where deep glazing mullions reduce reflection.

The generosity of the tall glazed hall set within the campus realm is an attractive concept, a room for gathering. A steel ‘grate’ holds the glazing and ceiling plane, a first reading was that the concrete armature of the main floors would brace and define this foyer hall. The intent, however, is other; floors are open trays set or shuffled in the framework, space runs deep back into the plan and the stair pushes forward with its giant scale; the limits or transitions of red steel to solid framing are dynamic and ambiguous, not always resolved.

An early project aspiration was to reduce parking along Elmwood Avenue, thereby connecting the newly liberated forecourt and wide pavements to Elmwood Hall. Clearly, change to traffic and streets in Belfast is difficult to achieve, decades hence one can imagine Elmwood entirely free as a linear park and cross axis for the city. Viewed at this urban scale the design intention for a long frontage to Elmwood Avenue had a clarity that is somewhat reduced by planning negotiations to introduce projecting bays.