NEWS
Lifestyle destination opens in Belfast
Dungannon brothers Charlie and Edward Conroy have transformed a former office building on Boucher Road in Belfast into new lifestyle destination FEAT4. Opening in mid-October, FEAT4 is a social space combining tour-standard padel courts with Pilates, physiotherapy, ice baths, saunas, recovery services and hospitality spaces. Designed as an all-weather venue, it features a dedicated heating and cooling system to ensure comfortable playing conditions year-round. A key feature of the development, and a first for Northern Ireland, is the scale of the playing environment. The venue boasts 12m-high court ceilings, providing ample space for lobs and overhead shots while creating a premium playing experience for both recreational and competitive players. The team behind the multi-million-pound project includes developer Crock Partnerships Ltd, RPP Architects, TSA Planning and environmental consultant RSK Group. The venture has already attracted the support of corporate partners Padel Mates, Agnew Belfast Volvo and KPMG, highlighting confidence in the concept. www.feat4.com
L-R: Paddy Anderson, QUB, Ciaran Leahy, GRAHAM, Professor Sir Ian Greer, QUB, and Nadine Curtis, QUB Student Union.
GRAHAM completes QUB Weavers’ Hall
Weavers’ Hall, the island of Ireland’s largest Passivhaus student accommodation, has been handed over by GRAHAM. The 459-bedroom development for Queen’s University Belfast is the first student accommodation in the city built to the Passivhaus standard and the largest Passivhaus student scheme on the island of Ireland. At 16 storeys, it sits above the 35m tall-building threshold, making high-rise Passivhaus delivery the project’s central technical challenge. The team adopted an external self-adhesive airtight membrane and treated the steel frame system as part of a service zone,
so the continuous airtightness layer sat beyond the SFS line. A semi-centralised ventilation strategy let individual mechanical ventilation with heat recovery units serve apartments stacked vertically, reducing supply and extract penetrations through the external façade. The building is fully electric with no fossil fuels, using air source heat pumps for heating and hot water. Switching to a CEM II cement with limestone fines cut embodied carbon by 166 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, and the scheme targets a BREEAM Excellent rating. www.graham.co.uk
FEAT4, Belfast.
Gilbert Ash secures £40m RIBA overhaul
Gilbert-Ash has been appointed as main contractor for a £40m project refurbishing the headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. The Northern Ireland firm has been involved in the project at 66 Portland Place under a pre-construction services agreement prior
to securing the contract for main works. The refurbishment, which will serve as a pilot project for the Net Zero Carbon Building Standard, is due to complete in September 2027. It will revamp and restore the Grade II-listed building, removing and replacing ageing building services, improving its energy efficiency and installing accessibility, fire-safety, environmental and health-and-safety upgrades. Plans include a new step-free entrance into a café, a new shop, permanent exhibition space, improved events facilities and larger lifts providing wheelchair access. Benedetti Architects completed concept designs, with the project team also including executive architect Purcell, project manager Gardiner & Theobald, quantity surveyor Jackson Coles, structural engineer Eckersley O’Callaghan and services engineer Harley Haddow. www.gilbert-ash.com
RIBA, London.
www.nibuilder.co.uk
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