‘Building Initiative’ in Belfast

‘Building Initiative’ is both the name adopted by a collaborative group of architects, urbanists and artists, and also the term they use to describe the ‘mode of agency’ chosen to inform and realise citizen-led urban regeneration in Belfast [1]. The necessity and forms of this praxis evolved in response to the city's spatial, social and policy environment, and the inability of conventional mechanisms of architectural practice to engage adequately with this context. Building Initiative explored and pursued specific modes of agency, which it termed ‘initiatives’, within a variety of sectors including architectural, planning, educational, academic and media, and at a range of scales from local to international. This created the opportunity to work with a diversity of partner organisations and to develop a correspondingly wide range of strategies. We will look briefly at the context of Belfast and Building Initiative's response to it, focusing specifically on the methods of working that were developed, before concentrating on one project to illustrate these methodologies and processes in application.