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A South Derry building firm has won a major industry award for building an art gallery suspended over the Provençal landscape, designed by the renowned late architect Richard Rogers.

Setanta Construction Ltd picked up the accolade at the Federation of Master Builders’s 2023 Northern Ireland Master Builder Awards, held at the Malone Hotel in Belfast last Friday.

The awards recognise excellence in Northern Ireland’s small and medium-sized construction companies and are run by the FMB, the largest trade association in the UK construction sector.

Setanta Construction are serial winners at the awards, and were named Northern Ireland’s Building Company of the Year in 2021.

Pictured are Setanta Construction Director Niall Gribbin; Steven Oldham of Northstone Materials, the Northern Ireland Master Builder Awards sponsor; and Setanta Construction Director Mark Gribbin. Credit: Federation of Master Builders

The firm scooped the Commercial or Public Sector Project award for their work on Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery, sited in the vineyard of Château La Coste outside Aix-en-Provence.

The gallery was Rogers’s final project, begun before he retired in 2020 and completed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP). Rogers is best known as the architect of Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Lloyd’s building and Leadenhall Building (the ‘Cheesegrater’) in London. He passed away in 2021, aged 88.

Setanta Construction is a second-generation family timber-frame business based in Magherafelt, founded by brothers Mark and Niall Gribbin in 2000. Mark and Niall are both carpenters and previously worked as joiners for the family business Gribbin Construction.

They were asked to build the enclosure for the 120-square-metre art gallery, which is encased in a bright orange steel structure and soars dramatically over a hillside.

The building is only attached to the ground by four small feet and tension rods cantilever the structure eighteen metres above the forest floor. Visitors walk a historic Roman track before crossing a lightweight bridge to enter the gallery, where they are greeted by sweeping views of the ancient ruin of La Quille castle and the mountains of Luberon National Park.

The complex, modern design required Setanta to collaborate with specialist engineers, steel workers and architects. The project team had to use bridge-type engineering and construction techniques to account for seismic activity and climate conditions in the region, with the cables at the entrance designed to expand and contract in response to changing temperatures.

The firm manufactured the enclosure at their Magherafelt workshop in modular form so that it could be shipped to France and assembled on-site.

Magherafelt Master Builders win award for sky-high Provence Art Gallery