10. Building a home for our stories
These images illustrate the elevations and the relationship of the building to each of the four streets.
The building massing actively restores the former urban block and addresses the varying heights of the existing context, with the elevations articulated by a series of layered planes and expressed horizontals which respond to the rhythms and expressed string courses of the adjacent buildings. The event space is illuminated to serve as a significant beacon for the scheme, with its central location in plan ensuring that it remains sensitive to established scale and silhouette.
Materials
The elevational materials are pale in colour in response to the listed Bank of Ireland and to the Portland stone, cream ceramics and white rendered finish of other significant neighbours. This light palette embeds the Bank of Ireland within the overall urban composition of the scheme and presents Belfast Stories as a new arrival in the series of significant buildings which illuminate our cityscape.
A perforated metal cladding system, creating an ever-changing veil in response to internal and external lighting conditions, sits on a precast concrete plinth containing a coloured aggregate which contributes to a series of green accented elevational features in response to the art deco detailing of the listed bank. In its architectural expression the building adds a new and varied layer to the reading of our city - a new chapter in our Belfast stories.
