Hall McKnight (formerly Hackett Hall McKnight) is an architectural firm based in

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

, Northern Ireland. In 2008 it won the Young Architect of the Year Award sponsored by

Building Design Building design, also called architectural design, refers to the broadly based architectural, engineering and technical applications to the design of buildings. All building projects require the services of a building designer, typically a licen ...

magazine and

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

Background

The firm was created in 2008 by Mark Hackett, Alastair Hall and Ian McKnight, and named Hackett Hall McKnight but renamed Hall McKnight after Mark Hackett retired in 2010. Hackett went on to lead the Forum for Alternative Belfast. Rather than aim to create an 'Irish' architecture, Hall McKnight bases its work on what methods and skills the local construction industry can do well. The company's first major public project was the Belfast MAC (Metropolitan Arts Centre), which opened in 2012. The six-storey building, located behind St Anne's Cathedral, includes two performance spaces and a tower clad in black

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...

. ''The Telegraph'' described it as one of the "most stunning new British buildings of the century". Expressing the idea of 'architecture as collage', the Belfast MAC was described by ''Architectural Review'' as "at once pragmatic and ambitious, perhaps even romantic in its trust in material, light, volume and the resolution of detail". With extensive use of brick inside and out, the MAC won the 2012 Brick Award for Best Public Building. Hall McKnight won an international competition to redesign

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

's Vartov Square. The square, formerly a carpark, was created with a grove of cherry trees and a variety of seating using concrete and granite. ''Politiken'' described the square as over-detailed and "looking like a liquidation sale for a quarry". In January 2014 the company won the bid to design a £3.5 million tower to be built in front of the town hall in the centre of

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in Suffolk, England. It is the county town, and largest in Suffolk, followed by Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, ...

, Suffolk.

References

External links

* {{authority control Architecture firms of Northern Ireland Design companies established in 2008 2008 establishments in Northern Ireland