A ‘toolkit’ approach to interventions is a starting point for designing
custom solutions to enhance each character area along Belfast’s waterfront. Some interventions should be incorporated in all character areas, like SuDS, while others are only suitable in some locations, such as boardwalk extensions and playgrounds. All interventions differ in terms of complexity of delivery, planning and cost. Each intervention is supported by best practice examples.
Toolkit Interventions
People want to spend time in waterfront areas as such good waterfront design should include a variety of places to stop, dwell, and relax. Activated waterfronts provide places to sit, eat, and drink and can extend the cultural and social fabric of an urban centre.
Cafes and concessions are built into the hillside leading to Darling Harbour. Visitors can enjoy dipping a toe in the water feature, exploring the playground, or getting out of the sun under the overpass.
Reffen in Copenhagen sits on a post industrial site and west facing piece of harbour-side. With a community style of architecture, the pop-up feel is a popular place for locals to eat and drink.
Canning Dock in Liverpool blends heritage with art as it becomes the stage for architectural and artist instalments.
Toolkit Interventions
Sustainable drainage systems (SuDs) are an important element for urban developments. Areas of connected soil creates a resilient network of street trees and native planting that filters stormwater, reduces flood risk, increases habitat, and creates a welcoming environment.
Tanner Springs successfully reconnects a post industrial site to its former natural wetland character. Combining surface water, art, and wetland planting, the landscape acts as a natural attenuation system, conveying stormwater run-off from neighbouring streets to feed the lake.
The Aurora Bridge Bio-swale is a retrofitted landscape which captures polluted surface run-off from the bridge and filters the water through a series of rain gardens before discharging the water back into the lake. The project now treats almost two million gallons of stormwater a year.
Toolkit Interventions
Bridges connect different geographical areas and the wider transit network, but they also serve as important social and cultural connectors and can help support active travel. Best practice bridge designs are welcoming, accessible, safe, well located and beautiful. Depending on location swing bridge designs will be necessary to maintain sailboat access to the marina.
Raised above the ground plane, the cycle network in Copenhagen is connected with the Cykelslangen —a striking and functional piece of cycle infrastructure.
Circular platforms topped by tall masts make up a bridge for pedestrians and cyclists that spans Copenhagen’s Christianshavns Kanal. Thin steel cables extend from the top of the masts – the highest of which rises up twenty-five metres – to the platform’s circular railings. Accessible via ramps at each end, the five steel platforms vary in diameter from ten to fourteen metres and are arranged to create a staggered, zigzag path that inspires uncertainty and pause. Cirkelbroen is lit at night, and one section rotates to allow large boats to pass into and out of the canal.
Millenium Bridge at St Paul’s is a key piece of active travel infrastructure in central London, providing a safe and attractive route for people walking and cycling across the Thames. Linking the City of London with the South Bank, the bridge prioritises pedestrians and cyclists while offering seamless connections to surrounding streets, cultural destinations, and public transport. Its design supports healthier, more sustainable journeys, reduces reliance on motor vehicles, and enhances access to St Paul’s Cathedral and the wider river corridor.
Toolkit Interventions
Waterfronts can offer some of the most historic spaces and privileged development locations in a city. Belfast’s unique maritime heritage provides an opportunity to reflect and celebrate our maritime stories, blending with contemporary developments to achieve an iconic waterfront destination that transforms the future of our city, whilst embracing the past.
Toolkit Interventions
Soft living shorelines reintroduce native flora and fauna to waterfronts, providing an environmentally functional and resilient edge condition. Rewilding where possible will increase overall biodiversity, improve air and water quality whilst affording increased access to the water’s edge and wildlife viewing opportunities.
Previously the site of the campus police station, Fritz Hedges Park recreated a natural shoreline loved by students, which includes a beach, pier, and boat launch
Toolkit Interventions
Through a range of recreational options, a diverse group of users are attracted, and thereby a well-functioning urban setting occurs. These options could involve much needed play provision for children and families, supported with opportunities for people to sit and relax.
This massive playground invites people of all ages to play and have fun together
At Konditaget Lüders, high up above the harbourfront in Nordhavn, you can work out and play with a view of the city and harbour on the roof of a multi-storey car park.
Public table tennis and other games draw a crowd during lunch and on weekends.
Toolkit Interventions
Hard edges are an integral part of waterfront design but require careful consideration of proportions and planning. A more creative stepped approach would facilitate a playful and graceful interaction with the water’s edge while addressing people’s desire to be close to the water.
Toolkit Interventions
Access to water-based transport for commuting, tourism, and recreation greatly expands the public realm. Investment in public floating pontoons and jetties with boat docking capabilities can be employed to soften and animate the water’s edge. With cultural programming and safe access, the water’s edge can be an active and vibrant extension of the public realm, animated by water taxis, small boats, canoes, and other floating structures.
Toolkit Interventions
With pressure on urban land increasing, extending the waterfront and building out can be an option to ensure that a generous and proportionate amount of space is afforded to the public realm. Interventions may include widening the promenade with a cantilevered or piled linear deck providing opportunities for meandering and seating.
Toolkit Interventions
Floating boardwalks can be used to soften and animate the water’s edge adding an immersive and playful waterfront experience. Designed to move with the Lagan’s tidal range visitors can experience a stable and enjoyable pathway that gets them closer to the water enabling a greater connection with nature.
Toolkit Interventions
Floating wetlands have been successfully implemented into ecological rehabilitation projects in many ports and harbours worldwide. Such interventions provide visual interest, a softening of the water’s edge with minimal hard engineering works required and improve the biodiversity of what typically is a harsh environment.
Toolkit Interventions
Good waterfront design encourages activity on the water for both recreation and business purposes. The introduction of floating elements would provide opportunities for unique architectures and structures that could house floating businesses such as restaurants and cafes as well as community hubs, saunas and kayak clubs.
