The Infinite City

For the last episode of our current Summer Season, our guest is someone who has been involved in architecture in Belfast since she first came here more than twenty years ago. Dr. Sarah Lappin is an architect originally from Colorado in the United States. Her career has included several years as a practising architect, and work in various architectural organisations. She now teaches theory and design at Queen’s University, where she has just been appointed Head of Architecture.As well as her busy teaching career, Sarah researches architectural history, with a special interest in 20th century architecture. More recently, she joined the sound art scholar Gascia Ouzounian to set up a research group into sound and the city.In this conversation with Conor McCafferty, Sarah reflects on Irish architecture ten years on from the publication of her book, Full Irish: New Architecture in Ireland (Princeton University Press, 2009), her PhD research into architecture centres, what makes for a good architecture degree course, and more.The Infinite City is produced by PLACE. This special Summer Season of episodes was made possible by an Arts and Heritage project grant from Belfast City Council.

On this episode of The Infinite City, our guest is a PLACE alumnus, someone whose career has brought together a passion for cycling with the discipline of urban design and smart city technologies.Aaron Coulter is an Urban Designer from Belfast. With a degree in Environmental Planning, he went on to pursue a Masters in Urban and Rural Design, both at Queen’s University. As a graduate student Aaron worked with both PLACE and the Forum for Alternative Belfast on various urbanist initiatives in the city.After working for several years as an urban designer in London, Aaron recently took up post as the Smart Cities Programme Manager at See.Sense, a cycling technology and data company based in Northern Ireland.Aaron himself is based mostly in London these days; Conor caught up with him on Skype to talk about cycling in Belfast compared to other cities and how to improve the cycling experience through urban design and data.***The Infinite City Summer Season 2019​Episode 4: Aaron CoulterProducer and Host: Conor McCafferty​The Infinite City is produced by PLACE. This special Summer Season of episodes was made possible by an Arts and Heritage project grant from Belfast City Council.

In Episode 3 of our special Summer Season, we’re sharing a recent studio conversation with someone who has had a huge influence on architecture in Northern Ireland. Barrie Todd is a retired architect with a career that has spanned the public and private sectors and many advisory and governance roles. Todd Architects, the practice Barrie founded in the late 1970s, has grown into one of the most significant in the UK and Ireland.Barrie retired from practice in 2005 after a management buy-out at Todd Architects, but he has remained one of the key figures in architecture in Northern Ireland ever since, with appointments as RSUA President, Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group and a 2-year commission to review the Queen’s University Architecture course.Barrie has also been tireless in his campaigning for cancer research. When their daughter Jill died after a short battle with cancer at the age of 23, Barrie and his wife Trish set up ask an architect. Architects across Northern Ireland offer an hour-long consultation free of charge when members of the public make a donation to the Friends of the Cancer Centre.Barrie recently sat down with Conor at PLACE to reflect on his journey as an architect, finding and making work in the context of the Troubles here, his philosophy on architecture in cities, and how he has sought to contribute to a culture of architecture in Belfast and beyond.The Infinite City is produced by PLACE. This special Summer Season of episodes was made possible by an Arts and Heritage project grant from Belfast City Council.

In this special summer season of The Infinite City, listen out for interviews with professionals whose careers have intersected with the city of Belfast and with the work of PLACE.But first, we have a live episode we recorded last October. Our venue was the amazing Sonic Lab at Queen’s University. If you haven’t already heard it, Part 1 featuring Aisling O’Beirn and Garrett Carr is available now. Here, in part 2, our guests are Darran Anderson, the Derry-born, London-based author of Imaginary Cities and Agustina Martire, who came from South America by way of several other cities to settle in Belfast, as an urbanist and lecturer and an advocate of city streets. We also have a wrap up session with all four guests and some audience Q&A.This live episode was made possible thanks to the support of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Arts & Business NI, British Council and Belfast International Arts Festival. The Infinite City is a project by PLACE. Our Summer Season 2019 is supported by Belfast City Council.

This week, to kick off a special Summer Season we’re excited to share a two-part live episode.In October 2018, Rebekah and Conor invited four special guests to join them for the first live episode of The Infinite City podcast, recorded in front of an audience at the Sonic Lab in Belfast.This live episode was the closing event of Open House Belfast, an architecture festival organised by PLACE that invites the public inside the city’s best buildings, engineering projects and artists’ studios. After a weekend of building tours, site visits, talks and artist performances, it was great to sit down with people who have studied the city (both Belfast and cities more broadly) to talk about urbanism in Belfast and beyond.Our venue was the amazing Sonic Lab at Queen’s University. We had four guest interviewees, including the writer Darran Anderson and the architect Agustina Martire, both of whom who you’ll hear in part 2. But first, in this episode, Aisling O’Beirn discusses her artistic work on the politics of place through site-specific projects in Belfast, and writer Garrett Carr, author of The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border, tells us about his experience making maps in the edgelands and subverting official mapped spaces. Plus, a reading by the writer Eunice Yeates and a performance by Mark McCambridge, who makes music as Arborist.The Infinite City is a project by PLACE. Our Summer Season 2019 is supported by Belfast City Council.

In this final episode of Season 1, we explore a lesser known chapter in the tumultuous history of housing in Belfast. Marianne Elliott, a retired professor of history, walks us through the place she grew up.The estate in North Belfast where Marianne’s family lived was built as part of a radical experiment in social housing. Its successes and its failures hold important lessons for a city still struggling with how to build a shared future. Marianne Elliott's "Hearthlands - A Memoir of the White City housing estate in Belfast" was published by Blackstaff Press in 2017.  We have a special announcement - we will be recording a LIVE episode on 21st October 2018 at SARC in Belfast! We hope you can join us. Listen to the end of the episode for details.

In this episode, we meet the conservation architect Andrew McClelland. He tells us about the hidden history of Castlecourt - one of the biggest city centre developments of the twentieth century in Belfast.How does a big development like this happen in the city? And what else - demolished or unbuilt - might have stood in its place?

For this special episode, Conor sat down with our PLACE colleague Jane Morrow to talk about an exciting upcoming project, the Urban Design Academy.

In 2015, Gallaudet University in Washington DC set about finding an architect to design a new part of its 150 year old campus. Fifty-one architecture firms from across the world threw their hat in the ring, but it was Hall McKnight, a small practice based in a humble brick building on an East Belfast industrial estate that clinched the prestigious project.In this episode, architect Richard Dougherty, who has been deaf from birth, talks about bringing his personal experiences into the design of "Deaf Space" for the Gallaudet project.The Infinite City is a production of PLACE, Northern Ireland's Built Environment Centre. It is produced by Rebekah McCabe and Conor McCafferty, with assistance from Maria Postanogova and Stuart Gray. It is supported by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios and Arts and Business Northern Ireland.

We're back with Episode 4 on Thursday 14th June. In the meantime, Conor and Rebekah have some recommendations for good 'city listens'. See you next week!