St Comgall's, Belfast

by Hall Black Douglas Architects

Client Belfast City Council / Falls Community Council

Awards RIBA Northern Ireland Award 2024 and shortlisted for RIBA Client of the Year 2024.

Located in a central Belfast neighbourhood that has experienced many troubled times, St Comgall’s exemplifies architecture in the service of a community. The project was primarily concerned with the challenging conservation of a derelict 1930s school in order to create a home for a vital and active community group.

The architects have diligently re-imagined and then painstakingly remade the building, from reconstructing façades and reusing salvaged brick, to upgrading its thermal performance and roofing over the courtyard. The new St Comgall’s creates a shared, flexible, light filled complex of spaces to host social, educational, economic, and cultural initiatives at varying scales. Both the conservation works and the new interventions are assured and appropriately modest, enabling the work of the Falls Community Council to take centre stage.

Read the full citation from the RIBA Awards Jury on RIBA Journal.

Contractor P&K McKaigue Ltd

Quantity Surveyor / Cost Consultant Naylor & Devlin

Environmental / M&E Engineer Tetra Tech

Structural Engineer Tetra Tech

Heritage Consultant Alastair Coey Architects

Gross internal area in m² 3073.41