Re/Form

Cookery School

Education, Cultural, Student

Belfast, 2025

View a PDF of the full work here.

An adaptive re-use project at the heart of Belfast, Re-Form, our studio for the first semester of my third year in QUB asked us to adapt the former Ulster Bank building on Shaftesbury Square.

We were each issued two words, a theme and a building use to design for. I was given learning and cooking. Hence I chose to design a cookery school, using it as a catalyst to redesign the area through food.

The site punctures Shaftesbury Square, a really important area of the city historically but currently more defined by what it lies between than by what it is. The square is a thoroughfare for movement between QUB and the city centre.

From my reading of the area it has the potential to be a really vibrant cultural corridor through the city with the Dublin Road and Botanic Avenue filled with bars, restaurants, cafés and a number of speciality shops. The cookery school on the upper floors of the building and in the basement and the existing and new retail units provided on the ground floor offer and opportunity, alongside a design of the square, to revitalise the area with food/drink at it’s core.

Collaborators

The students, teachers and external parties that influenced this work, in no particular order;

Niek Turner (Studio lead), Aoife McGee (Studio Lead), Oliver Hopkinson, Mitch Conlon, Ashab Arif Ahmed, Void Art Centre team, Jasna Mariotti (Interim Review), Rachel Delargy, Emmet Scanlon (Final Review), Colm Moore (Final Review), Rachel O’Grady (Final Review).