Background

Great Patrick Street is situated in Belfast’s iconic Cathedral Quarter on the edge of the City Centre. The surrounding area, until recently, was predominantly occupied by run-down industrial warehouses and commercial units. The completion of the University of Ulster campus has brought a new life to the area with many of the neighboring sites being redeveloped as high-rise student accommodation

Two leading children’s charities, Include Youth and Voice of Young People in Care (VOYPIC), jointly purchased the building in 2016 with the vision of retaining the character and redeveloping the building to become a first-of-its-kind dedicated community youth facility in the heart of Belfast.

Approach

The project brief was complex requiring a multifunctional, flexible solution which would provide a dedicated ground floor space to host the full range of programmes delivered by the two charities, who work with children and young people with lived experience of care. The ground floor spaces included meeting rooms, consultation rooms, sensory room, media room, teaching kitchen, activity spaces and separate dedicated spaces for the Include Youth and VOYPIC programmes.  The upper level was required to serve as the organisations’ regional headquarters with the organisations Include Youth, VOYPIC and Viable Corporate Services requiring their own separate and secure offices and an open area for refreshments and social interaction. Workshops were carried out with the youth groups to engage and understand their requirements and vision and an additional project brief was compiled identifying the types of light and airy, highly textured and colourful spaces the youth envisaged for the completed building.

Photography by Donal McCann