Sound Yard pavilion secures Tourism NI funding

The winner of the 2019 RSUA / JPCorry City Play Design Competition, Sound Yard, which is a collaborative effort designed by Hannah Wilson in collaboration with Matthew McKernan and Eunan Deeney of TODD Architects has received funding of £150,000 from Tourism NI in order to deliver the project.

The project was announced at Architecture Night 2019 and challenged Early Career Architects to generate ideas for the integration of play into the landscape of Belfast city centre, specifically along the Martime Mile. There were 13 entries which were assessed by an independent judging panel consisting of architects from the RSUA Peer-Approved Design Quality Panel, JP Corry, Titanic Foundation and Belfast City Council.

The competition sought to explore the opportunities to introduce play right throughout the broader city centre landscape. The aim was to instigate a project that can be delivered relatively quickly to help test out the concept, get public feedback and inform the longer-term plans for the city centre. The competition seeks to encapsulate the ambition set out in The Belfast Agenda of a city re-imagined, beautiful, culturally vibrant and a place of innovation and creativity.

The project picked up momentum in January 2020 with a view to delivery by June 2020, however with Covid-19, progress was stalled due to other pressures on the design team, client and the construction sector. However as lockdown has eased, the team have re-emerged, determined to deliver the project by the end of March 2021