Continuing peace means that Belfast can turn its attention to the quality of its buildings. Now a centre dedicated to promoting better design has just opened. Emma Cullinan reports

It's difficult to put your hand up in the middle of a war and ask whether anyone's concerned about the poor quality of architecture, but bad design has been a by-product of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Now that the political situation is improving, the state of the environment is being addressed.

In most parts of the British Isles, planning comes under the auspices of local authorities and so has input from people who have been elected by locals. That hasn't always been a recipe for success but it does, to some extent, involve the community in the planning process.

At the beginning of the 1970s this changed in the North: in Belfast, for instance, the planning process was taken from Belfast City Council and put under the control of the Department of the Environment.

"I don't want to decry the DoE," says Gerry Millar, head of urban design at Belfast City Council, "but they went through the motions of planning, seeing if schemes met the necessary requirements, and passed them on that basis. The DoE is part of the civil service reporting to ministers. These were elected by people who didn't live in Northern Ireland so any feelings of passion about our city were not necessarily voiced."

Now a new centre for architecture and the built environment recently opened in Belfast seeks to involve the public in the design of their city and the North as a whole.

"PLACE has been developed with the objective of creating public awareness and promoting higher standards of design and building within our urban landscapes," said Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Tom Ekin, at the centre's launch.

PLACE (planning, landscape, architecture, community and environment) has been passionately pursued by past president of the Royal Society of Ulster Architects, Barrie Todd of Todd Architects, who began campaigning for the centre around three years ago.

"Engaging the public has been shown to be a good way of improving the built environment, and one of the best ways of doing this is through an architecture centre," he says.

The Belfast centre now joins similar facilities worldwide, including 23 throughout Continental Europe, and it comes under the auspices of the Architecture Centre network which has 21 such outlets in England and Scotland.

These were helped along by architect Richard Rogers' Urban White Paper?? (for the UK government?) in 2001, which reported on the state of British???? towns and cities and looked at regeneration opportunities. One result of the findings was increased funding for this network of architecture and design centres.

Each centre has its own profile - some addressing mainly the design profession, while others seek to engage the public, and that's what Barrie wanted from the Belfast centre, whose full title is the Built Environment Centre for Northern Ireland.

"Calling it an architecture centre would make it sound like an architects' centre, and that's not what we want," says Barrie, who is keen to steer clear of architecture's reputation as an elite occupation. He also stresses that the centre caters for the whole of the North, not just Belfast.

The centre's work could have been carried out in the RSUA's office near Queen's University but Barrie says that this is in an "aloof" area of the city which many people don't visit.

He wanted a city centre premises that would be accessible to the public and he got it, right between Boots and Waterstones in a former Ulster Bank building on Fountain Street.

The building was given to PLACE initially rent-free for three years by Belfast City Council. Barrie had found an ally in Gerry Millar who agreed, along with many others, that "the quality of the built environment in this part of the world falls well below the standards of other cities.

"Post-ceasefire we were happy with any development, we were just pleased that people were taking an interest," says Gerry. "Nice bespoke buildings weren't really at the top of the agenda but now we want to encourage more than just standard boxes. We are commissioning architects who will design innovative buildings and not just cheap and nasty concrete structures. We've suffered from a defensive style of building with the bunker mentality."

While it still doesn't control the planning process, the city council has had more say since the setting up of a development department in the 1990s and, because the council owns land, it is commissioning major new buildings: the Waterfront Hall was one such scheme.

The Ulster Bank building was converted into the design centre by BDP (Building Design Partnership) who won the job in a competition. It's a neat, chic fit-out which has created a flexible internal space that uses wire-free technology to keep the floor clear of cables.

Bare walls provide the exhibition space, while a huge screen is used for presentations. Events will also be sent out to the wider world via a webcam. The front door has an expressive timber overhang which mirrors the hood of the bank machine beside it, so the relic of the former Ulster Bank talks to the newcomer. People in the ATM queue are already taking a great interest in the building next door, and attracting passersby is what the new building is about.

PLACE hopes to engage the public by holding exhibitions and workshops on architecture and good design; having lectures by architects and designers from home and abroad; displaying plans for the built environment in Northern Ireland (for instance Belfast's new master plan); and selling books on architecture and the environment. Members of the RSUA will also be available to help people in rundown areas re-plan and rebuild their neighbourhoods.

There's a planned talk on the use of glass in architecture, something that Gerry has found opposition to in some areas: "People have even said we shouldn't bother with glass buildings in certain areas because they'll be smashed, but this centre is about people taking civic responsibility and buying into their own neighbourhood."

The opening event at PLACE is a children's photographic exhibition which has been a revelation, says curator Grainne McClean (whose job is funded by the Arts Council).

The PLACE gave 51 disposable cameras to children - through community and leisure groups - and asked them to take photographs of good and bad things in Belfast. "The quality of their observations and the lateral thinking that went on was amazing, they'd really thought about it.

"Even family and friends became involved. One girl talked about how she and her dad walked around the city centre and looked at the buildings above the shops for the first time. She said she would appreciate buildings in a different way from now on."

Eleven-year-old Aine McKay from west Belfast won with a picture of a subway, contrasting the dark interior with the light at the end of the tunnel - perhaps a metaphor for the built environment in Northern Ireland.