A Day at the Museum

My first visit to the Ulster Museum must have been some time in 1987 or ’88 as a primary one pupil, a sort of ‘rite of passage’ for many Belfast primary school children. From that trip not much is remembered – the vastness of the Machine Hall, the T-Rex skull and for some reason, the water feature in the central courtyard. There were many subsequent visits during my teenage years and later as a student of architecture, when the sheer brilliance of the building began to become more apparent: how the sequence of spaces actually worked (the ‘promenade architecturale’), the references to Le Corbusier in the form of the balconies and the fenestration patterns, and just how skilfully and successfully this Brutalist monolith had been married into a reserved and pretty stuffy 1920s neoclassical building (consider what was happening on the Continent at the time). Here was a world-class piece of architecture, and it was right on your own doorstep.

Upon approaching the new ‘‘visually stunning’’ [sic] version I was struck immediately by how unbalanced the front façade appeared. The new entrance opening punched in the centre of the elevation looks lost and the glazing of the café on the eastern side gives the impression the whole structure might just keel over into the park, or that the left side will collapse, the weight of the concrete boxes above becoming too much to take. The position of the entrance in relation to the new foyer beyond - previously the central courtyard - is slightly odd, requiring one to veer to the right in order to avoid walking into a wall instead of the foyer. The café, off to the left, feels claustrophobic and relies heavily upon artificial lighting due to the low ceiling and its location on the north side of the building. Ironically, it was this same claustrophobia in the old entrance foyer that made the Machine Hall such a delight to walk into, making its scale even more impressive.
Previously, the Machine Hall acted like an introduction of what was to come, providing the visitor with views of other levels and begging the question of how to reach these vantage points. It wouldn’t be until later stages of the journey, when walking out onto the different platforms, that the Hall could be looked upon from a whole new perspective, at the same time enabling you to orientate yourself within the building – but not completely, which for me was such a major part of the building’s charm. Not quite knowing exactly where you were within the structure meant the building retained an element of surprise that never seemed to wane, despite numerous visits.

The new foyer feels somewhat over scaled and is poorly handled. The huge blank walls make the space seem larger than it is and along with the finishes creates a cold, clinical appearance. As in the café, there is too much reliance on artificial lighting, the result of the new roof. To the rear of the foyer there is a new circulation system (core doesn’t seem the appropriate word, it would suggest something that is organised and considered), which serves both the old building and the extension. Instead of using this I opted for my preferred route through the building and headed left, across the afore mentioned water feature (via an incredibly tiresome access ramp) and into what was once the Machine Hall, now housing a large exhibition ‘stand’ of sorts boasting rather dubious displays that bear no meaningful relation to one another. This proved difficult. The once seamless journey felt laboured. Previously clearly defined spaces have been subdivided and cluttered with rather gauchely handled exhibits.

One of the criticisms of the old building was that it was hard to navigate and to be fair the new circulation system has made the building a lot more open. However this creates confusion to the visitor and is to the detriment of the overall experience. There was no need to ‘navigate’ the old building, the architect - one Francis Pym - had already worked that out, leading you from one space to another on a route through the building and leaving you back in the entrance foyer where you’d started any number of hours earlier. All that was required of the visitor was to look at the exhibits and walk from one room to the next. With the new system there was more than one occasion when I found myself wandering into an exhibition I had already seen, and on others, I missed rooms out entirely. This is something that would not have happened previously. The elements of surprise and mystery referred to earlier have also been lost, so much of the building now on view upon entering the foyer - I thought of Mussolini’s escapades on the Via della Conciliazione.

The gallery spaces at the top of the building appear to be the least interfered with, and there are opportunities to venture onto the balconies overlooking the foyer. It’s just a shame that there’s not much to see. Looking down, the glass and steel balustrades of the walkways give the impression of being in an airport rather than a museum and are at odds with the weight, presence and solidity of the extension, and indeed the whole building in its previous incarnation. The treatment of the balconies too detracts from the intended character of the place, now covered in white render where they were once exposed cast concrete, the continuum between exterior and interior disrupted. It was on the upper levels where I also noticed that windows had been given PVC window boards.

The result of the various interventions is the total loss off spatial hierarchy and flow that was integral to how the building functioned as a museum. There is a feeling that the exhibition spaces have been pushed outward to make way for the central foyer, robbing individual spaces of their relationship with one another and of each to the whole. The ‘opening up’ has made the whole museum feel a lot smaller than it did previously, another part of the genius of the design that is only becoming clear to me now – just how well Pym had utilised what is in fact not that much space in such a way as to make the building seem enormous. There was a Tardis-like quality to the place. Now interior spaces no longer relate to the exterior form and there are a number of areas where the plan feels unresolved, a failed attempt perhaps, at making little nooks and crannies to keep the younger visitor excited and interested. Crucially though, I would question whether the issues of disabled access have been successfully resolved.

Upon leaving the building it was overcast and raining quite heavily, summing up my experience really. But I was unable to take cover under the beautiful sailing concrete canopy that marked the original entrance – a meaningful gesture from the architect considering our wet climate – as it has been rendered completely useless. It now houses part of the café behind a glazed wall, more than robbing the feature of its significance and potency.

Public reaction to the building however has generally been positive; although it wouldn’t make sense to publish any negative press would it? The only gripe people have had was the fact that the museum was closed the Monday of the autumn mid-term break. At the very least it might have been expected that the museum’s board of trustees and the curators would have been aware of the building’s importance, let alone the planners, (as if). The controversy surrounding the refurbishment never really seemed to go beyond architectural circles. In another country, say Germany or the Netherlands for instance, this would have been considered a news worthy item, but here BBC Newsline seem more concerned about reports letting viewers know the shops in Ballycastle will now be open on Wednesday afternoons when they were traditionally closed, and UTV even went as far as awarding the architects responsible their ‘Architect of the Year’ award. They did also win BD’s Carbuncle of the Year award for Liverpool Ferry Terminal, although this is hardly compensation for the act of thoughtless vandalism inflicted on the Museum.

Again Northern Ireland has shown itself to be in the dark ages when it comes to dealing with architectural matters, the scandal over the Giant’s Causeway competition springing to mind. Belfast has been robbed of arguably its one true Modernist gem… and now I have to think of a new favourite building.

Jordan McIlroy - Graduated from the UU masters program 2yrs ago
- written Nov '09

[home]