Magherafelt Town Centre Public Realm

Magherafelt is a small historic Plantation town in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland; its layout reflects this, with four streets radiating out from a central Diamond.  

We provided multi-disciplinary services for the design and implementation of the public realm scheme in Magherafelt's busy town centre, working collaboratively to develop the client's brief through all the design stages of the project.

Challenge

The design and implementation for the high-quality public realm scheme included new civic spaces with bespoke design features. As well as accommodation for events and activities that may have affected the streets within the commission. 

Our consultant team agreed on the phasing of the work with the employer, traders, stakeholders and end users to ensure minimised disruption and allow the town to be ‘open for business’ at all times during the construction phase.

Solution

Magherafelt is historically known as the “Three Spires” due to three local landmark churches. We designed three bespoke lighting spires as key features in a new high quality civic/event space at its core, along with significant landmark artwork sculpture. The lighting spires have computer controlled small lights along the sides that can change colours for certain events/times of the year. As well as creating a large, central multi-use shared space with segregated vehicular and pedestrian areas and pop-up power supplies.

Working with local artist Maurice Harron, we integrated a focal point sculpture – ‘Our Story’. The spherical centre piece uses over 200 designs submitted by community groups, schools, and members of the public. The sculpture was the finishing touch to the £2m scheme, funded by Mid Ulster District Council and the Department for Communities (DfC).

We worked closely with the client’s initial brief and prepared the scheme design and detailed drawings to allow the relevant planning consents to be secured. We then advised the client on the appropriate procurement strategy and prepared the relevant documents (NEC3 Option A contract documents) to allow Contractors to be appointed.

Successfully implementing the scheme on behalf of the client, we ensured the Employer's Requirements were achieved on site. The scheme also involved extensive public and statutory consultation.

We applied strict cost management procedures to ensure adherence to the client's and the DfC budget expenditure requirements.