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Titanic Belfast entrance

An appropriately breath-taking building – this month we are delighted to share Titanic Belfast with our followers.

The world’s largest ever Titanic-themed visitor attraction and Northern Ireland’s largest tourism project, Titanic Belfast is the result of a successful collaboration between the Concept Design Architects CivicArts/Eric R Kuhne & Associates and the Lead Consultant/Architect Todd Architects.

Courtesy of Christopher Heaney - Titanic Building

Located in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on the site where the famous ship was designed and built, Titanic Belfast’s six-floors feature nine interpretive and interactive galleries designed by Event Communications that explore the sights, sounds, smells and stories of Titanic, as well as the city and people who crafted her, the passengers who sailed on her and the scientists who found her. 

My colleague, Julia had watched the edition of The One Show that featured Titanic Belfast, on March 7th and was keen for us to feature it and we discussed coinciding with the opening date.  However the additional time was actually fortunate as I was lucky enough to connect with Titanic Belfast on Twitter (@TitanicBelfast).  They  put me in touch with TODD Architects, who kindly sent me the motherload of  information, diagrams, pictures and plans for the astonishing building that is Titanic Belfast. I then heard from the Stakeholder Group and thanks to them and Harcourt, got the opportunity to look at even more stunning photos of this unique venture.

Julia and I spent a while going through each picture ‘ooohing and ‘aaahing’ and trying to come up with excuses for why we absolutely have to go and visit, purely for business reasons of course….ahem.

RMS Titanic spent almost her entire life in Belfast. She was designed, built, launched, and fitted out on Queen’s Island by the Belfast workforce of Harland & Wolff. The keel was laid in March 1909, and the ship completed exactly three years later. Just two weeks after she left the port she was at the bottom of the North Atlantic.

Interestingly, the Titanic Belfast building took three years to complete the 14,000 sq m building, the same length of time as the famous White Star vessel’s construction. It is the jewel of the Titanic Quarter which has transformed 75 hectares of former industrial brownfield lands to the South of the River Lagan in Belfast City Centre -  Queens Island, into a vibrant 21st Century centrepiece for Belfast, that comprises retail, residential, business and cultural elements. This is spliced with walkways, public parks and gardens. The Titanic Belfast building itself is to be found adjacent to the slipways where the luxury liner and her sister, Olympic were born and opened on March 31st this year.

NW to SW Cross Section - Concept courtesy of Civic Arts

NW to SE Cross Section - concept. Courtesy CivicArts

These are the concept models from CivicArts, who along with Eric R Kuhne & Associates,  were engaged by Harcourt Developments as master planners.Having gone through options for recreating Titanic at various scales,  it was eventually decided to design an entirely original structure that would convey the wider narrative of Belfast, its industries and its people.

In August 2008, TODD Architects were commissioned to begin work on the project and oversaw one of the most ambitious and challenging construction programs in the UK and Ireland. The concrete pour for the car park slab and foundations alone, took around 700 concrete lorry deliveries – one every two minutes for almost 24 hours. The project required 900 individual Production Information Drawings from TODD Architects, excluding sketches , some of which have been issued with over thirty revisions.

The building has a complicated geometry and challenging construction programme as well as using groundbreaking construction techniques. It includes a range of sustainable strategies, including Combined Heat and Power micro generation, 56k litre rainwater harvesting and intelligent lighting, is on target for BREEAM Excellent accreditation.

Aluminium shards - photo courtesy of Christopher Heaney

Paul Crowe, Managing Director - TODD Architects,

Paul Crowe - MD of TODD Architects

“Titanic Belfast also incorporates the best design and technology available.  For instance, the building adopted an integrated design approach in line with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III Guide Lines and is on course for a BREEAM Excellent status. Plus, like Titanic, the project was completed on budget and to a strenuous time constraint which demanded completion in advance of the forthcoming centenary of the Titanic’s maiden voyage in April 2012.

 He goes on to say,

“This is a landmark development for Northern Ireland which we believe will demonstrate the ability of iconic architecture to shape internal and external perceptions.  Belfast has come far in the past 15-years and a statement building such as Titanic Belfast reflects and reinforces the city’s renewed sense of civic pride and cohesion.”

“The exterior facade replicates four 90 ft high hulls, clad in 3,000 individual silver anodised aluminium shards, of which two-thirds are unique in design. The resolution of the geometrics involved required the use of sophisticated 3D-modelling, completed by TODDS in-house, in a process of ‘virtual prototyping’ which we developed specifically for the project”

The building is 14,000sqm excluding the basement underground car park of 500 spaces. You enter at ground floor level into the ‘Welcome Hall’ a dramatic space which includes a 60ft high wall covered in folded steel panels of the same size to those that would have been used on Titanic’s hull.

Interior upper balconies & First floor escalator with starry skies - concept. Courtesy of CivicArts

From the central atrium, a series of escalators, each in excess of 20 metres long, stretch up through a jagged central void.

On the first floor, a wide bridge gives access to the start of the Titanic story whilst the bridge on second floor provides access to the temporary gallery, the first exhibition being shown here will tell the story of the construction of this remarkable building.

The business plan was originally based on a figure of 250,000 visitors per annum. In the three months prior to completion, Titanic Belfast sold in excess of 80,000 tickets. The aspiration is to achieve 1,000,000 visitors per annum which would make it the biggest visitor attraction in Ireland.

The building is located immediately adjacent to both the Grade A listed Nineteenth Century drawing offices where the Titanic was designed and the Scheduled slipways where the Titanic and Olympic were built.  The drawing offices and slipways, which have been designated an Historic Monument, define the edge of a new public piazza with the Titanic Building centred on both axis through the Piazza.

The proximity of the Titanic and Olympic slipway, the Harland and Wolff drawing offices and Hamilton Graving Dock, where the SS Nomadic is now berthed, have all been central considerations during the design, planning and construction of the project. These heritage elements are more than just scheduled monuments and listed buildings – they represent a cornerstone of Belfast’s folk memory and identity.

Titanic Belfast taking shape

More about the Exhibition Galleries

They were designed by Event Communications whose previous projects include the Victoria & Albert Museum, Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre (opening summer 2012), Guinness Storehouse, Roman Baths (Bath), Imperial War Museum, National Maritime Museum Greenwich and State Polytechnic Museum Moscow.

Some of the Galleries - Titanic Belfast

Gallery 1: Boomtown Belfast

In Gallery 1, visitors step back into Edwardian Belfast. To appreciate the achievement Titanic represented, visitors are immersed in the Belfast of the early 1900s and become acquainted with the people who lived there. Set pieces, artefacts, photographs, soundscapes, oral testimony, archive material and film set the context for the birth of the Titanic and her sister ships, providing visitors with insights into the wealth, confidence and industrial might of the city. Visitors will walk through Belfast’s ‘streets’ towards Queen’s Island with a rising sense of expectation, eventually passing through a set of original Harland & Wolff gates into the yard itself.

Technical highlights:

To facilitate members of the public feeling part of the street scenes of Edwardian Belfast, new short throw zoom lenses were used on the video projectors, enabling the projectors to be positioned as close to the screen as possible and high in the ceiling with an extreme offset so visitors shadows became part of the screen displays.

Gallery 2: The Arrol Gantry and Shipyard Ride

Visitors take a 20m journey in a metal elevator up the Arrol Gantry, the enormous steel structure built to facilitate the construction of Titanic and her sister ships, Olympic and Britannic. They then join Harland & Wolff’s workers on a ‘shipyard ride’.  Believed to be the first of its kind, the ride is a five-minute journey in a six-seater car that rotates and moves up and down along a circuit accompanied by CGI, audio and special effects.  Full-size replicas, including riveting machines and Titanic’s rudder, give a scale perspective into working life in the shipyard. The original Arrol Gantry was 840 ft long, 240 ft wide and 228 ft high, and was in use until the 1960s.

Gallery 3: The Launch of Titanic

Having seen the Titanic being built, Gallery 3 celebrates her launch. Visitors now have a view down the slips where this momentous occasion took place, using innovative glazing that transposes original imagery of Titanic’s onto the glass, demonstrating the sheer scale of the vessel.

Gallery 4: The Fit-Out

Gallery Four tells of the skill and craftsmanship that went into Titanic, from the fitting of its enormous boilers and engines to the fine joinery and upholstery work of its linens, carpets and cabins.  Visitors will experience the reality of the ship’s interiors in a ‘3D cave’ that recreates the engine rooms, third class saloons, first class corridors, grand staircase, a la carte restaurant and navigation bridge, allowing visitors to ‘walk’ the ship’s length.  There are also detailed, full-scale reconstructions of 1st, 2nd and 3rd class cabins.

Technical highlights:

The 3-sided avatar cave (a virtual environment) takes visitors on a journey through the ship using a custom designed CGI show. Three sides of the virtual space are represented by special rear projection screens on a huge scale, using projection rigs with mirrors to reduce the space taken up by the projectors. The cave screens were designed and constructed to minimise the gaps between screens, with a special corner and frame, in order to give the full perspective of being on the ship.

Gallery 5: The Maiden Voyage

Visitors are now swept up in the celebratory atmosphere as Titanic leaves Belfast and then sets sail from Southampton on her maiden voyage. The gallery features the extraordinary photographs of Father Frank Browne, the young Irish Jesuit who was given a gift of a ticket to travel on Titanic from Southampton to Queenstown and photographed the journey. His images provide a unique chronicle of Titanic’s first and only voyage.

Gallery 6: The Sinking

The atmosphere of the exhibition now changes radically into a dramatic sensory experience, as visitors enter a darkened tunnel where the temperature, soundtrack and images all evoke the tragedy of Titanic’s collision with an iceberg and subsequent sinking, with the loss of 1,500 lives.

Visitors will sense the tragedy and the ending of the dream which led to Titanic’s creation. They then move into an area where the narrative follows the stories of survivors and victims, and the worldwide press coverage of the tragedy, with particular attention devoted to Belfast and to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the bodies of some of Titanic’s victims were buried.

Technical highlights:

The spaces make great use of short throw lenses with an offset so projections beam onto the path of visitors. The gallery features a range of narrative and general sound effects and spot effects with Meyer directional loudspeakers.

Gallery 7: The Aftermath

A poignant wall of 400 life vests leads into Gallery Seven.  Interactive visual and audio displays centred round a 25ft replica of a Titanic lifeboat interpret the aftermath of the sinking, the British and American inquiries into the disaster and the ongoing question of whom – if anyone – was to blame, as well as the important changes to safety at sea legislation, from which we still benefit.  Visitors can also explore Titanic’s passenger and crew database, and follow the parallel lives of her sister ships, Olympic and Britannic, and the story of Harland & Wolff after the sinking.

Gallery 8: Myths and Legends

After the disaster, Titanic’s story fragments as legends and cultural representations of the ship become increasingly different from the reality. An interactive table enables visitors to explore some of the films, books, plays and poetry which Titanic has inspired, while elsewhere in the gallery, the myths and legends that surround the ship are examined, and in many cases debunked. To contrast the fictional Titanic with the real ship, the gallery also begins to introduce visitors to the difficulties of locating Titanic’s wreck, two and a half miles below the surface of the North Atlantic.

Technical highlights:

The interactive table features a combination of five large 4-inch LCD monitors, built into a display with capacitive touch foils. Each table display works independently, whilst the whole exhibit utilises the responses to all interactive screens with a large projection behind.

Gallery 9: Titanic Beneath

Gallery 9 is the culmination of the visitors’ journey, as they meet Dr Robert Ballard and explore with him the wreck of the Titanic.  Viewing huge projection screens, they feel as if they are flying over the wreck in a submersible. They then descend to appreciate a bird’s-eye view of the wreck, made from a mosaic of thousands of Ballard’s photographs, which brings you as close as is possible to walking the deck of the ship as she lies on the ocean floor. As the visitors’ view narrows down they are presented with the opportunity to explore Titanic’s debris field, looking at some of the thousands of items which lie around the wreck, ranging from huge boilers to small personal items which remind us once again of the scale of human loss which the disaster represents.

Visitors are left with a lasting impression of the splendour and grandeur of Titanic and of Belfast’s achievement in building the ship, but also with an important reminder that this is a story about individual lives, about achievements and losses.

The narrative ends not with the disaster, but with an examination of how the spirit of Titanic has lived on, in the Ocean Exploration Centre. Here footage from Ballard’s ongoing exploration of our seas and oceans is shown alongside more local endeavours, as Irish universities explore the marine environment around Ireland.

Technical highlights:

The Immersive theatre utilises a large, 3-chip high-definition (HD) video projector on a 12-metre wide-screen with a 5.1 multi-channel sound system. The bird’s eye view of the wreck of the Titanic was achieved with multiple video projectors, projecting down into the pit and soft edge blended using the in-built projector processing.

The OEC theatre has been designed to accept live 3 channel high-definition transmissions from on-board a ship as it carries out an ocean exploration, as well as playing back a multi-channel sequence recorded from a previous expedition. The various video channels include camera views as well as data from radar and other systems, all complete with an overall sound mix of the team working on the seabed along with comments from the control room.

The Banqueting Suite

Stairs into Banqueting Suite

With sincere thanks to TODD Architects, the Stakeholder Group, CivicArts,  Christopher Heaney, @TitanicBelfast, Eric R Kuhne & Associates and Harcourt Developments.

http://www.titanicbelfast.com/Home.aspx

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