Vibrant Business Destinations
The Supporting Vibrant Business Destinations (SVBD) programme is a pilot initiative led by Belfast City Council in partnership with the Department for Communities. Focused on areas outside the city centre and existing Business Improvement Districts, the programme aims to support local Business and Traders Associations to enhance their streets, strengthen competitiveness, and foster more vibrant local business environments.
-
Collaborative Project with Department for Infrastructure & Belfast City Council.
-
Wood Award Winner
Small Project Award
The Supporting Vibrant Business Destinations (SVBD) programme is a key urban regeneration initiative in Belfast, developed by Belfast City Council and the Department for Communities. As lead consultant, OGU Architects played a vital role in delivering design-led placemaking solutions for ten newly constituted Business and Trader Associations. This pilot programme focused on business-led regeneration, supporting local businesses in improving the attractiveness and economic resilience of their high streets through targeted interventions.
OGU Architects provided strategic urban design expertise, helping trader groups develop shopfront improvements, public realm enhancements, and street activation strategies. Our team worked and engaged closely with business groups to produce tailored design guides, cost plans, procurement schedules, and technical and project management support to help them maximise the impact of their funding. There were a multitude of projects delivered as part of the work from street research leading to temporary and trial studies to small scale public realm improvements.
The work also provided each group with strategies for long term development of their individual businesses as well as
Through a collaborative and co-designed approach, OGU helped local business groups strengthen their commercial districts, drive increased footfall, and create a more inviting streetscape. By integrating sustainable urban design principles and understanding statutory planning and procurement frameworks in Northern Ireland, OGU ensured that trader groups could implement long-term improvements efficiently. The project successfully demonstrated the power of community-led urban regeneration in fostering more vibrant, economically resilient business destinations.
Map of 10 Traders & Business Associations:
Ballyhackamore
XXXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
Case Study: Ballyhackamore Business Association
The Ballyhackamore Traders Association work outlines a strategic approach to revitalising Ballyhackamore’s central streetscape to create a more vibrant, people-focused urban village environment.
Approach
Historical & Contextual Analysis:
Examined the evolution of Ballyhackamore’s streetscape to understand its past civic qualities and guide sensitive redevelopment.
Identified key spatial and architectural features, including the Kirkpatrick Memorial Church and the library, that form a natural village centre.
Urban Analysis:
Assessed existing constraints such as traffic dominance, poor pedestrian experience, dereliction, and lack of connection to the nearby Greenway.
Highlighted opportunities including mature trees, spill-out space from cafes, and potential to reconfigure underused roadways and parking areas.The Ballyhackamore Traders Association report (dated 30th November) outlines a strategic approach to revitalising Ballyhackamore’s central streetscape to create a more vibrant, people-focused urban village environment. The work is part of Belfast City Council’s Supporting Vibrant Business Destination programme.
Community & Stakeholder Engagement:
Held meetings with the local traders, design consultants, and council representatives to gather feedback and shape proposals.
Findings and Recommendations
Short-Term Initiatives (Option A)
Use of Events and Temporary Structures:
Introduce marquees, gazebos or stretch tents for events (e.g., food or children’s festivals) to repurpose space and drive footfall.
Promote Ballyhackamore’s food scene, test ideas like “Ballyhackamore Forest” with portable trees, and use events to shift perception from car space to civic space.
Medium-Term Vision
Create a Permanent Focal Point (Option B):
Install a small, demountable architectural structure (e.g., shelter with seating, water refill station) as a civic landmark.
Optional extension (Option B(i)): Add a temporary canopy or awning for occasional use during festivals or gatherings.
The design should be distinct, locally fabricated, and multifunctional (shelter, signage, interaction point).
Long-Term Strategy
Transform the Streetscape:
Reconfigure the space into a high-quality shared surface prioritising pedestrians and cyclists.
Improve shopfronts, planting, seating, and lighting to enhance experience and retail success.
Better connect the Greenway to encourage foot and bike traffic.
Final Approach
Option B was agreed as the preferred way forward by the Traders Association, contingent on landowner approval.
Emphasis was placed on creating a demountable structure to reduce the need for invasive groundwork and ease the planning process.
Main Street: Ballyhackamore 1944
Case Study: Cave Hill
Approach
Strategic Urban Design Support:
The team provided both a broad urban context and specific design options to guide short, medium, and long-term improvements.
Multiple site visits and meetings with traders helped to assess needs and shape priorities.
Community Engagement:
Input from the Cavehill Road Business Association was key to identifying funding priorities and shaping interventions.
Site and Streetscape Analysis:
Cavehill Road has evolved from rural outskirts to a suburban residential area with a mix of independent shops, cafes, and services.
The streetscape is walkable but lacks greenery, cohesion, and people-focused public spaces.
Findings & Recommendations
Short-Term Actions
Street Art Focus (Primary Use of Funding):
Murals proposed for multiple key locations (e.g. UPS gable, Ben Madigans, Today’s Express, Wholistic Works) to improve vibrancy and visual identity.
Artworks must be well-curated and locally relevant. A quality-led process is critical.
Street Furniture and Greening:
Simple, cost-effective interventions such as planters, benches, and community tables outside key businesses (e.g. Works Coffee) to foster interaction and comfort.
Bike stands proposed near businesses to support cycling footfall.
Children’s Festival/Event Ideas:
Proposed family-oriented events (e.g. a “Festival of the Hills”) to use outdoor spaces creatively and build community engagement.
Medium-Term Vision
Public Realm Enhancement:
Encourage permanent outdoor seating via pavement café licenses, especially for eateries with existing private space.
Improve street life through tree planting, signage, better cycling infrastructure, and subtle branding/graphics.
Design Identity:
Establish a more cohesive streetscape identity using coordinated shopfronts, murals, signage, and outdoor space treatments.
Consider branding Cavehill Road with its natural assets (Cavehill, Waterworks) to create a distinctive destination.
Long-Term Strategy
Advocacy and Infrastructure Improvements:
Lobby for improved road design to balance car access with safe, pedestrian-friendly environments.
Explore further street trees, car charging stations, cycle lanes, and lighting upgrades in partnership with DfI and BCC.
Position Cavehill Road as a model neighbourhood hub, leveraging its family-friendly appeal.
Next Steps
Traders to prioritise between street art and physical interventions based on budget.
Begin obtaining permissions, quotes, and coordinating with artists and fabricators.
Use temporary events and light-touch interventions to test ideas before committing to more permanent changes.
Image Above: Belfast Trusses speaking to each other across Time
Despite its small size it uses some of the most advanced manufacturing capability in Northern Ireland, with its sustainable pink-hued concrete, laser cut metal roof and CNC timber cut trusses. It links the modern manufacturing industry with the heritage of East Belfast - the subject of a socially distanced outdoor exhibition we curated with Queen’ University Belfast and which was recently displayed under the pavilion. Since the opening of the pavilion, it has also been used for bike workshops, playing music, children’s art classes, a sheltered picnic area as well as a place for walkers and cyclists to take shelter avoiding the rain. We are particularly proud of the way the pavilion is an accessible modern space which tells a story of East Belfast’s past.
Exploring how the pavilion was made has allowed us to research and work with some of the best craftspeople and manufacturers in Northern Ireland - these connections have allowed us to work with and develop and protoype the bespoke elements of our Parklet on Ormeau Road. It has also allowed us to engage with how one makes safe, good quality accessible outdoor space in a Northern Irish context. Despite its small scale it has allowed local people to tell their heritage stories through the associated exhibition. The design also allowed us to explore negotiating public space which flowed and avoided pedestrian, cycling and vehicular conflicts at the road crossing. Its unusual design has acted as a marker along the road and Greenway, drawing people to a disadvantaged part of Belfast and along with the visitor and C.S. Lewis Square helped the area regenerate. It is a good example of how good quality architecture and urban design can have impact despite its small scale.
Cregagh Road
Image Above: Belfast Trusses speaking to each other across Time
Impact
Overall Small Project Winner 2022 – Judge David Morley
“The project deserves recognition for how it uses timber to positively engage the community as a flexible place to move through, meet, mend bicycles or, initially, to hold an exhibition to remind the community of its heritage.”
Built:East is sited at the entrance to an extremely popular public square and therefore thousands of people have experienced the pavilion since its construction. Built: East was constructed as the gateway to C.S. Lewis Square. This is a high profile and significant location in the city: the newly constructed square is the focal point of celebrated regeneration project Connswater Community Greenway, a £40 million scheme including a new 9km linear park, wildlife corridor and flood alleviation works funded by Big Lottery Fund, Belfast City Council, the Department for Communities and Department for Infrastructure. .
Design Competition: Built: East was the winning design of the RSUA Belfast Flare pavilion competition, and the first temporary pavilion for Belfast commissioned by the RSUA and constructed in the city. It successfully established the construction of a pavilion as a biannual programme to showcase early career architects in northern Ireland (the next pavilion is due for completion summer 2021).
Exhibition: To provide opportunities for deeper engagement, OGU Architects worked with the client team’s heritage officer at the client’s request to conduct an oral histories project, talking to local residents about their memories of working in nearby factories. Exhibitiion XXX 2022. An interactive virtual tour of the pavilion and exhibition has now been permanently added to the Visitor Centre’s website.
Journal Articles
RIBA Journal (including Front Cover). The structure was visited and reviewed by the RIBA Journal editor Hugh Pearman, and appeared on the front cover of the September Issue, as well as the front cover of the RSUA Journal Perspective. It was also reviewed online by the Architects’ Journal. The accompanying exhibition was the subject of a news feature and short film by news service Belfast Live, and during the pandemic lockdown, hundreds viewed the exhibition video (filmed inside the pavilion) posted by its client EastSide Visitor Centre on social media.
Perspective Magazine
Lectures
Xxxxxx Queens University Belfast
Timber Development Association Lecture 2022
The pavilion was the topic of two invited talks at Belfast Design Week 2019.
Sustainability
Xxxxx xxxx xxxxxxx
Process
From the creation of some of the world’s most famous ships to the invention of ejector seats, Northern Ireland innovates and sends ideas out into the world. We wish to celebrate and advertise this with reference to the industrial architecture that has made such achievements possible. In particular, we reference an architectural innovation originating in the city: the Belfast Truss. We were inspired by the barrel-vaulted industrial and station architectures of the 19th century, whose exquisite ceilings far surpass their basic duty to provide shelter. The warmth of the timber combined with the delicacy of the structural elements create spaces that are incredibly beautiful. On top of this formal beauty is an elegant attitude to resources: the Belfast trusses were made from the leftover wood from the boat-building industry as they only required short timber sections. At the time this made economic sense as timber was largely imported to Belfast from overseas. Now of course it resonates with an ethical attitude to the earth’s finite resources as we look to find ways of building that contribute to reducing the industry’s carbon footprint. By using the same latticed structure made up of short sections, Built: East could largely be made from the timber offcuts of the construction and furniture industries, reducing the environmental impact and cost of the build.
The ad-hoc flexibility at ground level of Built: East combined with its tall and open volume invites continual rearrangement and adjustment to suit the requirements of the school trips, street food festivals, theatre groups, craft workshops, musical performances, yoga classes, film screenings and as yet unimagined happenings that we hope will occupy the pavilion. The proposed structure incorporates timber elements that require various levels of skill to create. While the undulating floor plane can be put together by a relatively unskilled team of enthusiastic participants, the frame requires a higher level of building expertise, and the truss roof demands the involvement of skilled craftsmen. For this reason it is hoped that the structure can result from the collaboration of community and student groups without taking away work from professional craftspeople. Creating an opportunity for enthusiasts to learn from Belfast’s most skilled makers puts into action the core principle of Built: East to elevate and advertise the city’s creativity.
