Via Building Design:

Belfast-firm Hackett Hall McKnight have topped a strong shortlist to win the Young Architect of the Year 2008 award.

In the course of their studies, Mark Hackett, Alastair Hall and Ian McKnight each decamped from their native Northern Ireland and found work in Berlin, Dublin and London respectively.

Their decision in 2003 to form a partnership thus represented a commitment to return to Belfast.

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The judges were struck by the sense that the practice had not only established a highly impressive portfolio of projects in the last five years, but had also demonstrated a determination to foster a re-energised building culture in a city that has not been the most receptive of environments to modern architecture in the past.

Two of the partners were joint authors of the first comprehensive survey of post-war Ulster architecture, published in 2006, and the practice has also found success in steering discussion about Belfast’s public space provision.

In particular, its plea that planning policies developed in response to long abandoned road-building proposals be jettisoned has made a strong impact.

Its architectural work is characterised by an exceptional sensitivity to issues of urban continuity while also demonstrating a strong interest in rigorously geometrical methods of construction and spatial ordering.

These qualities are evident in the practice’s largest built project, Dowling House. Its elevations comprise a parade of rendered piers which expand and contract in response both to aspect and to a highly sophisticated internal section.

Next March will see construction begin on the practice’s first public building, the £14.2 million Museum Arts Centre in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter.

Won in open competition last year, the building incorporates 1,000sq m of galleries, a dance studio and two auditoriums. These spaces are configured in three volumes, between which the architect has woven a soaring foyer. The proportions of this space and the robust materiality of the walls that line it recall the character of the narrow streets that make up this part of Belfast.

The judges found the relationship between this architectural proposal and the practice’s investigations of Belfast at an urban scale particularly compelling.

“This is a practice making work that will be listed in years to come,” said Glenn Howells, chairman of the jury.

Hackett McKnight Hall was the unanimous choice to win BD’s 2008 Young Architect of the Year Award.

Runners-up for the YAYA 2008 were Serie Architects, Kraus Schönberg, McChesney Architects, Feix & Merlin, and AOC.

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