Urban Quality

Architectural Review, The, Oct, 2000 by Peggy Campbell

A dramatic bar and restaurant in Belfast which uses an untidy inner-city site with ingenuity, and shows a sensitive understanding of materials, space and light.

A new and quietly dramatic elevation has emerged on Belfast's mediocre Lisburn Road. The glass wall reveals an elegant, calm interior topped by an austere, beautifully figured plane of dark wood. This is surrounded by slots from which daylight pours down the walls. A silvery zinc canopy, a projection of the dark walnut plane, hovers over the glass wall, uplit at night by lamps in the deck which stretches across the whole facade -- including the opaque bit, an iroko screen which carries a simple logo. You go in through a zinc box, the porch, which mediates between street and the lofty (9m high) front bar. To the right is a smooth and chastely detailed plane of the same dark walnut as the ceiling. It is articulated by ventilation slots and specially designed light fittings, in which stainless-steel brackets suspend luminous cylinders of sandblasted glass over long walnut tables that stretch out into the room.

The aim is to create a relatively quiet area, in contrast to the other side of the space, where a 25m long bar is based on a massive concrete plinth that runs the whole length of the room and links it to the smaller volume at the back. A light slot in the floor shines upwards against the front of the concrete, illuminating the nether portions of the drinkers who sit and stand and chat against the bar. Further light comes from sandblasted glass lamps set in the bar top, and from spots that replace daylight in the slots at night. Projectors above the bar hurl circles of light onto what the architects call 'the walnut cloud', bringing out the warmth and pattern of the veneer.

From the white wall above the bar protrude adjustable nozzles projecting conditioned air down towards people below. Return air goes into the slots in the walnut wall opposite.

You get to the back bar down a few steps through a white wall studded with stainless-steel rods which project 50mm from the vertical plane and are set in a 750mm grid, Changing angles and qualities of light from above cause remarkable alterations in the patterns and shadows of these silver pins.

At the other end of the back bar is a wall of translucent glass which allows what would otherwise be a gloomy, cellar-like space to be cheerful and luminous in daylight. (At night, artificial light takes over, just as it does in the slots round the walnut cloud in the upper room.) The existing concrete structure of the back bar is exposed, but modified by a gentle curve of walnut veneered ply which encloses a long quiet volume. This is raised from the general floor level so that along the bar that divides the two levels, people can drink standing up on the main floor, while others can sit on cubic stools at the higher level and chat over the division. Further in, under the curve, the space becomes intimate, with low walnut tables, and more cream alcantara stools. Most of the lower level is devoted to the restaurant, where big, brightly coloured leather sofas and armchairs are arranged round walnut tables which incorporate their own specially designed lighting.

Tatu is a triumph. It shows splendid command of space, light and materials. And, more importantly, of atmosphere and human feelings.

Architect

Box Architects, Belfast

Photographs

Todd watson