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The recently completed ground floor refurbishment of 'an Cafe Glas' and 'Ceathrú Poillí' has transformed the
previously cellular spaces of an Chultúrlann located on the Falls Road in Belfast, into an open plan, free-flowing single space with a lively exchange between the bookshop and the café.
The windows have been replaced and the cill heights lowered to allow light to flood
the simple stripped aesthetic and to intimately link the café with the shrub and tree planting that almost touches the glass on the South-Western side of the building.
Although an Chultúrlann has been an inspirational and energising resource for the
growing Irish language community it has had to 'make-do' within the spatial limitations of the 1980s refurbishment of the former Presbyterian Church.
The earlier building construction work ignored the volume of the church building and
ignored the potential of the rose window, to the street, to light the interior spaces by the insertion of the intermediate floor slabs and beams that crudely abutted both the rose window to the Falls
Road and the lancet windows to the side streets.
A key component of the recent architectural/building project was to open the foyer
space to a full three-storey volume, to flood the space with light and to allow a direct visual connection to be made from café to foyer to street by the use of large glazed screens and glazed doors, and
by re-glazing the rose windows to give a view to the Black Mountain from the upper level balconies.
Importantly this spatial device will allow maximum light from the new foyer into
subsequent phases of works at an Chultúrlann. It will also provide an open and bright promenade from street to the first floor and theatre/performance space which will be envied by other arts
centre venues.
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