Making a Statement

Centre-piece of the Titanic Quarter development and a focus for major 2012 events, the new ‘Signature’ is central to Belfast’s economic growth and societal renaissance.

Even half-built the 'signature' project's 'Titanic Belfast' building already looks stunning. It looks to the future as much as the past – and, long after critics have exhausted the iceberg jokes, the glass that you’ll see and the glass hidden inside will provide new windows on the world. The iconic Signature, now emerging from the muddy foundations of Queen’s Island, is above all else a ‘digital Signature’.

Iconic projects often have a troubled birth. Sometimes they push at the boundaries of science – Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower, London’s Gherkin and even the Angel of the North all posed structural challenges that stretched engineering imaginations.

Sometimes they struggle to justify their existence – the St Louis Arch (‘Gateway to the West’?) gets by with a view of the mighty Mississippi plus a museum apologising for the way the West was won and a tourist show about how the thing was built.

Some iconic projects are functional – great (sometimes wobbly) bridges or magnificent churches like Gaudi’s la Sagrada Familia – but others seem purely decorative and, unless artistically inspirational, they fail to find a sustainable purpose.

But when did Belfast not have a purposeful agenda?   The Signature of these times is that of a digital future. Northern Ireland, seen from many viewpoints as remote, cut off and a world apart is, in reality, at the hub of a global digital revolution.

Signature shares its Titanic Quarter plot with an international creative media campus, the new metropolitan college, the Northern Ireland Science Park, Queen’s University’s high-tech faculty and centres for software engineering serving the global financial services sectors.

Not only is Signature set in this determinedly digital ‘high definition’ landscape but, inside and out, it is connected by ‘super-fit’ fibre – the optical networks of the future that are fit for purpose in ways that consign last generation copper connections to the recycling bin of history.

And this Titanic Quarter fibre network is itself intimately connected to the new international connections that have shattered transatlantic transaction speed records – and that, in turn, has made Belfast and Northern Ireland the best connected European location for digital hosting sites and new secure data centres.

It may be difficult to imagine. The challenge to explain all this to the good folk of Belfast may be almost as difficult as that faced by Victorian pioneers intent on reshaping the world of ship-building.

It may not yet be obvious to the skilled folk who will one day work their magic in the film studios, or those of us who will help create great events in this space, or those who will find work in new industries yet to be invented, or those who choose to work, live and play in this digital domain.

But there is no doubt that our children and grandchildren will have every reason to thank the day that the people of Belfast made a statement - and set their Signature upon it.

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Picture (C) Donal McCann