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Finding Temenos

Part 2 Project 2021
Jordan Beattie
Ulster University | UK
The Greek word ‘Temenos’ represents a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a sanctuary. This thesis seeks a means to assist in empowering the local community in developing inclusive, low-cost, low-carbon, low-risk options for the site and context through the demarcation of the last standing derelict linen factory off the Donegall Road, Belfast. Known locally as ‘The Village’, the once well-connected community with a plethora of industry, commerce, and leisure, now lies in a state of ruin through decades of deindustrialisation, recession, and civil conflict. In the present context single-agenda, profit-driven ambitions are responding to a post- conflict monoculture with the introduction of new exclusive gated-community ‘islands’, all but erasing progressive shared identity and industrial heritage opportunities and undermining community integration and stability.

‘Finding Temenos’ reframes the norms of architectural practice in the testing of a defined ‘bottom-up’ operational methodology. In this alternative, perspectives of spatial ownership, occupation and expression are explored, and local engagement is framed as the primary driver in determining project ambition. Emphasis is placed on grass-roots initiation, creativity, participation, and empowerment to seek a spatial production in mitigation of the established deficiencies of top-down market-led regeneration approaches typical in post-industrial, post-conflict Belfast.

Jordan Beattie

Tutor(s)

2021
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