Public CoLab 2023

Public Colab 2023 was an intensive week long research project completed by first year Architecture Bsc and M.Arch students in Queen’s University Belfast. Aimed at designing public spaces along the river Lagan in Belfast the project was undertaken in partnership with Belfast City Council, Climate NI, Lagan Valley Regional Park, Maritime Belfast, Save our Lagan, environmental and sustainability experts from QUB and the Department for Infrastructure

In teams students were assigned one of eleven sections of the river Lagan to develop. Additionally they were assigned an animal and human user to design for. My team took charge of area 2 along Queen’s Quay, the second most northerly site. We were asked to consider butterflies and people with limited mobility in our proposal. We proposed “a strategic combination of urban design interventions including parks, aquaponics and accessible planting” centred around a ‘butterfly tunnel’ or habitat running across the Lagan Weir pedestrian bridge.

Our team included Maya Marron, Siobhán Coakley, Alexis Payot, Natalie Anderson, Diviya Kaarthick Ravichandran, Suman Miah, Philipa Koh, Yangtao Jiang, Annabeth Tzong Lim and Evonne Alexander alongside myself. You can access the full research booklet here.