In Belfast, communities have been living separately, divided by walls, identity, memory. The project weaves-in an ecosystem of initiatives requiring care and maintenance with the current entanglement of spaces in the neighborhoods of Falls and Shankill. Catalysts have been designed to change perceptions of spaces of conflict, where memory of violence and division render possibility for change unperceivable.
Constructing the research field
This project started as an investigation of how the interfaces barriers in Northern Ireland are physical traces of conflict that could reproduce intergenerational trauma. This investigation was a way to uncover the difficulties that generations go through in communities that have lived in spaces of conflict. My own heritage with these types of contexts was a motivator to work with the very difficult and complex problematics of the city of Belfast.
Architecture is responsible for much of climate change, biodiversity loss and exploitation of resources through construction. It can also be responsible for perpetuating a condition of living that a new generation has to endure. What is the role of the new generation of architects, when it seems like most of what we produce creates so many harmful consequences? Our most pressing responsibility is to engage in these difficult contexts that our field has been taking part in, producing, harming. Spaces of conflict, such as Belfast, in Northern Ireland, is a context which has been studied to conceptualise how a practice of mending architecture can contribute to repair of the harm done.
Belfast: Spaces of intergenerational injustice
In the 1960s to the late 90s, Northern Ireland was subject to a sectarian conflict named the Troubles. This conflict opposed two identity groups: Catholic Nationalist Republicans (CNR) which identify as Irish, and Protestant Unionist Loyalists, (PUL), which have allegiance to the United Kingdom. Instances of bombings, terrorist attacks, injustice and trauma between the two identity groups created further divide during the Troubles. Memory of violence and physical traces of the conflict linger in Belfast, and still affect the way communities live and move in the city today: interface barriers, or peace walls, were put up by the military as temporary protective barriers during the Troubles.
The collective memory of Falls and Shankill: An entanglement of spaces of conflict
In the neighbourhoods of Falls (catholic) and Shankill (protestant), the interface barriers create a continuous dividing wall between the two communities, only interrupted by a handful of gates that open during daytime. These structures have acquired a notion of permanence, with people on each side feeling like these security barriers are still needed for protection, despite the Good Friday peace agreement being signed 25 years ago. Those perceptions of the peace walls are passed from generation to generation, by the reproduction of collective memory through the entanglement of a multitude of conflicted spaces in the neighbourhoods of Falls and Shankill. The future generation of children, one that hasn’t lived the conflict, are told stories of violence through the memorial gardens, murals and commemorative plaques. The interface and the homogeneity of the neighbourhoods allows them to parade and light up bonfires in celebration of their identity. And through this cycle created between collective memory and space, the antagonism and division is reaffirmed. To counter this, immaterial initiatives have been created through social work. However, memories of these intercommunity relations are rarely materialised in the physical space. I hypothesised that in order to create change in the entanglement of spaces, immaterial initiatives have to be combined with material ones, to affect both space and collective memory.
Entangled threads: Spaces of conflict as sites for mending
At the neighbourhood scale of Falls and Shankill, embroidering the entanglement of spaces allows to find moments of intensity between the interfaces, memorial gardens, murals, community spaces, divided spaces, and churches. This stitched map highlights the connections and interdependencies between the spaces of conflict of these neighbourhoods. To remove the interface is not as simple as pulling one thread out.
One point of intensity has been researched and analysed as a propositional site. In this instance, the interface separating Falls from Shankill is interrupted by a series of two gates, which are connected to an unused former linen mill located in a neutral space, and which open up to a memorial garden and sports complex on the Falls side, and a blighted space on the Shankill side.
By lifting up the existing connections between the sites of this area through a new structure of relations, the proposition creates an ecosystem of spatial and immaterial articulations in which processes of mending and care could take place.
Conceptualising mending in architecture
The concept of mending was fitting to the context of Belfast, where the urban fabric and the relations between neighbourhoods are damaged. Repair can mean to bring back to a state of functionality, or to re-pair, to pair up again. But how do we re-pair something that was never paired in the first place?
To mend.
To mend something is not to fix. This project is not about fixing or resolving the conflict.
To mend a fabric is to make an alteration towards better use, sometimes a different use.
To mend an urban fabric is to render it more livable and for it to provide people with their needs.
To mend is not to erase the past and start new again, it is to work with what exists, with most of the past fabric remaining, that we repair in the present, for use in the future.
To mend doesn’t have to be carried out by a professional.
To mend things ourselves means to free ourselves from harmful systems: the textile industry, consumerism, the cycle of replacement, of demolition and reconstruction. It is a skill that allows us to be self-sufficient and empowered.
To mend is a delicate act. It can be visible. It is on something that has been used and damaged but where potential or emotional value remains.
To mend can also be intended in the relational sense.
To mend asks for forgiveness, to make amends.
Learning from embroidery repair
Because of the very sensitive nature of this context, just like transformation of the interfaces, all material transformation is a significant one. In embroidery repair, minimal alterations can have a significant impact on longevity and use of the mended fabric. Additionally, through care, time and effort, the garment is being revalued, and carries on a new meaning. Being quite minimal in the material aspect, and shifting perception and uses of space rather than the whole physical spaces themselves, has been one tactic used for the creation of the catalysts.
Mending (city) fabric holes
When patching up a hole, one must start by the edges, and make their way in once the edges are secured. In the city of Belfast, there are a multitude of holes in the city fabric: some of those are blighted spaces. These damaged, demolished, abandoned sites often remain so for many years. Looking at the satellite imagery of the past 20 years of this specific blighted space, we can see that between April and July, there are bonfire preparations on site, where people dump old wooden furniture and wooden pallets to make a bonfire tower in the centre of the site. The bonfire is set off on july 11th of every year for protestant unionist celebrations. The edge condition of this blighted space is the classic palisade fence, which is an anti-climbing fence. The fence is a very well accepted, normal and used frame in the architecture of Belfast, and it normalises division of space, in a way that the interfaces structures would fit in that normality. The intention is to subvert the perception of the fence - to see possibilities of it being a different space, one that is not about human territorialisation and control. The fence could become a frame for bird life and sunflowers.
Catalyst #1: The bird+soil feeder initiative
This bird feeder has been crafted as a catalyst for change: if maintained, refilled and cared for, the bird feeder would provide sunflower seeds for bird life on site. If vandalised, deteriorating or simply being whisked away in the wind, the seeds would fall into the ground, where they would sprout and grow into sunflowers. The birds and the flowers allow for the fence to be considered as an amplifier to non-human species, but they also aim to be a deterrent for setting up large bonfires as they would create pollution for birds and flowers. This catalyst has been designed as an initiative for a collaborative workshop between the two youth clubs across the interface, for children between 8 and 12 and their parents. An instruction booklet has been crafted and sent to relevant stakeholders, and includes the motivation for making such bird feeders, step by step instructions, a maintenance guidance, and future possibilities.
Parent-children teaching is a dimension of the project that is quite important in dealing with intergenerational trauma. It has been analysed that anti-social behaviour and drug use by children and teenagers in interface areas have strong correlation to familial relations between parent and children. Knowledge and skill teaching from parent to children has been one way that I have become close to my mother, learned about the hardships in her life, but also seen the positive, the resilience. I have realised that these skill sharing situations were spaces where it felt safe to tackle barriers of trauma.
As architects, when we share our skills with others, we can offer the opportunity for them to envision another way of life, and how to achieve the changes towards it. By sharing our skills, we can democratise changes in the environment.
Catalyst #2: The pallet bee's nest initiative
The second social and material initiative involves creating relations on site between the Falls memorial garden, the pallets used for bonfires and the newly grown sunflowers on the blighted space. Through an external concern of biodiversity and pollination, the initiative involves youth centres from each side of the interface who have previously collaborated to a new collaboration: building pallet bee's nests.
The solitary bee, over the course of a few weeks, mates, lays eggs and builds a nest with pollen which her offspring will feed on to grow into the next generation, the following year. The notion of time reveals itself through the life cycle of bees and sunflowers. Every year, the bees and sunflowers are provided a ground to be cared for. The active, cyclical, action oriented part of these initiatives is important in the act of mending. The space created for the amplification of non-humans requires, and allows, human agency. Over the course of a year, bees, sunflowers, birds, interfaces, memorial gardens, and bonfires benefit from the reproduction of caring behaviours.
Possibilities for imagination
From this opened up opportunity for human agency, things can unfold in many ways. These propositions have been created to allow communities in Belfast to see how these two catalysts can challenge the current way of living, to have a way for minor voices to be heard, to test things out, and that care can create a cumulative impact over the years.
The recycling center
One opportunity which arises from the bonfire preparations and the sunflower fence is the implementation of a recycling centre. Just like the bee’s nest, that creates a 3rd use of bonfire pallets, the recycling centre offers the opportunity for wooden furniture to have another life, before entering a bonfire, or diverting them from entering it.
The recycling centre stations could be made by ramming earth which is added for sunflowers every year, using the fence for the framing, imprinting it onto the surface. It could also use the interface materials, when some of them are being removed from the barriers or being replaced, such as the mesh fences, the corrugated metal sheets, and concrete walls broken up in pieces.
The wood workshop
As materials accumulate in the recycling centre, a wood and metal workshop in proximity could open up in the courtyard of this unused building. This would become an anchor point between Falls and Shankill to make bees nests, dry sunflower stems, and repair broken second-hand furniture.
The bee shelters
With a workshop, bee shelters can be made to provide the hibernating bees a better chance of survival. The bee shelters are protected from rain and wind, but are not insulated. The use of the corrugated metal sheet from the interface is one option of materials to make these shelters.
The biodiversity educational center
The courtyard workshop could spread into the unused building, to facilitate the use of electrically powered tools. The old linen mill can become a biodiversity centre, where educational activities and acts of care for the ecosystem of humans and non-humans can take place. I have created a game inspired by dominos, which plays with these relations between the conflicted human spaces and non-human life of falls-shankill, and can inspire new connections to be made, and see other opportunities to enrich the ecosystem.
An ecological corridor
Through the cumulation of all these initiatives, an ecological corridor can connect the sunflower fields to the memorial gardens, creating larger combined areas, allowing flora and fauna to circulate between the two zones, and reducing urban heat island effects, which impacts the survival of bee larvae.
The role of the mending architect
This project in Belfast has been used to inform the creation of the practice of the mending architect. Under this propositional practice, architects can work in a way that makes amends to the earth, while also being mindful of the social consequences of the spaces that are and have been built. So instead of building new, the role of architect can shift towards engaging into crisis contexts, where mending is needed, analysing and researching thoroughly spatial, political, and social context, proposing new interpretations or uses of the existing space, and with design that is delicate and considerate of minimal materials, providing the tools for the work to be reproduced by minor voices, using acts of care, for new generations of humans and non-humans to live differently.
