TITANIC BELFASTIconic Evolution

1st Evolution: Water Crystal Cluster

The icy conditions in the North Atlantic provided the point of departure for the design process. These delicate clusters of feathery facets, clinging to deck handrails and cable stays were translated into a jostling mass of flat planes and hard edges.

2nd Evolution: Amorphous Iceberg

Exploring crystal structures led inevitably to solid ice, and the berg that played the fateful part in Titanic’s story. The early models shared the irregular, amorphous mass of these floating giants, their eroded profiles sculpted along their natural fissures.

3rd Evolution: White Star

The five sharp points of the White Star Line’s logo became the next anchor point in the design process. As it evolved, fifth point became a glass shard, pointing

purposefully down the former slipways between the lines of Olymoic and Titanic.

4th Evolution: Dynamic Shards

Two design avenues were then explored in tandem, one exaggerating the crystal shards to create a dynamic composition that conveyed some of the colossal energy

of the ship’s impact with the ice.

5th Evolution: FOUR AGES of Shipyard Prows

Capturing the FOUR AGES of SHIPBUILDING in Belfast: TIMBER, IRON, STEEL, & ALUMINIUM ... this line of exploration transformed this archive image of diverging hulls laid upon the North Yard’s slipways, shrouded in their wooden scaffolds. The star’s fifth

point slowly drew back into the centre, protected by four hulls that radiated like a compass rose.

6th Evolution: Plated Bows

Titanic Belfast is built on the PLATING WORKS of Harland & Wolff ’s Shipyard. Here cantilevered from their central atrium, the star’s points soon took on another guise. Applying a skin metal plates to their surfaces transformed them into liners’

bows, raised up upon their keel blocks within the cradle of the Arrol Gantry.

Final Evolution: Four Hulls, One Crystal

Four plated hulls now ring a crystal atrium, clothed in their faceted plates of aluminium echoing waves and ice. The final form encompasses all that that went before: crystal, iceberg, star and bow, embedding multiple metaphors within this

finished building.