Titanic Park, Belfast - Group Masterplan Part 1 Project 1999 Ambrose Tohill Queen's University Belfast | UK TITANIC PARK - GROUP MASTERPLANThe strong grain of the existing sliplanes establishes the built form on a North - South axis, acting as buffers to the prevailing south west wind, exploiting southern gains and northern light. The grain maintains continuity between disparate areas of the site and the views from the distributor road down the building avenues to the River Lagan. Mixed use is layered vertically with public functions maintained across ground level .BUILDING BLOCKSProject considered the strategic design of three masterplan blocks - here combined into a “superblock” - Media Centre at ground, offices above with a rooftop restaurant. The dynamics of the masterplan were maintained using sliplanes, varying heights of blocks and the expression of stairs and lifts.MONASTERYI explored the ordering of the monastery around a vertical cloister within a compact corner urban site - rather than the sprawling horizontal cloister found in rural monasteries. The site is a square in which the church, cloister and courtyard were all proportioned to one another. The cloister becomes the entry point to the church, a double cube, forming the core to the building, with an auditorium below and private oratory above - all enshrined in a thick brick coating. Ambrose Tohill and Laura O’Hagan are the two first class honours students who graduated from our BSc (RIBA Part I ) course earlier this summer.Ambrose’s design for the urban monastery in Belfast is both imaginative and based within reality. Selecting the site himself, Ambrose made clear site and urban planning moves, using the offshoot of the otherwise square site to form an abstract entrance volume - as way of preparation and cleansing of the spirit before entering the main monastery volume. He exploited the compact nature of the site to form a dense, intense building thoroughly resolved - in Ambrose’s serious approach to the production of architecture. The scheme resonates with the aesthetic restraint of older, more traditional Irish buildings and produces a spatial sequence relevant to an introverted urban monastery. Ambrose communicates through careful drawings and talks in a very considered, prepared way about his proposals.AJ