Very sad to be saying a final farewell to Bob Hannan, Senior Architects at Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council Architects Dept. A dear friend and colleague he has been front and central in our collaborating practice on a daily basis this past eight years. We learnt in incalculable amount from him and we won’t be forgetting him. He will be very sorely missed. RIP Bob
Honoured to be asked to give this year’s annual architecture lecture at Clifden Arts Festival, kindly sponsored by Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey of O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects
‘Saturation Point – Clifden, 2 September 2020′ – a 1.8m x 1.8m hand-drawn cartography of rock, subsoil, figure-ground, river, sea and rainfall in blue and graphite lead pencil. This is a drawing of a day of catastrophic flooding in Clifden that will not be forgotten that was commissioned by Architecture At The Edge as part of ‘Re-Mapped’, an ambitious public exhibition at The Printworks, Market Street, Galway until 8th October.
A2 close this year with our shortlisted two-stage competition entry for Grangegorman FOCAS Research Hub for TU Dublin.
Compact in form thereby minimising embodied carbon, close attention was paid to space planning to optimise orientation for different uses. The façade was environmentally responsive aimed at reducing energy demand and consumption and by extension operational carbon. Each elevation responded to its environment including solar gain and overshadowing from its surroundings. Daylight was maximised as both beneficial to health and wellbeing as well as energy use. Solar gains were minimised through use of shading for glazed elements and balancing glazed and solid elements in the façade. The planting strategy provided a degree of shading, both acoustic and thermal, as well as natural air cleansing.
The rigour of both plan and cross section enabled differing configurations on each floor, to meet the current and future needs of FOCAS, and presented opportunities for external garden terraces that enhanced the health and well-being of users and softened and animated the architecture as they moved playfully around the form to capitalise on available views. Through passive design measures building services systems were minimised.
The setting out of the grid of Limerick’s Georgian Newtown Pery – south- west to northeast – established the orientation of our shortlisted competition proposal for a pavilion for Ted Russell Park in Limerick City. Its precise placement in Ted Russell Park is anchored in a clearing of one tree along a double row of mature trees on the original embankment prior to Fr. Condell Road being added in the 1980s. The location speaks of the passing of time, of the forces of man against nature, and of the power of the River Shannon.
The material we chose is Limerick Georgian Brick, which is finite. It will not be made again. Therefore we need to value it as a precious commodity. Ted Russell Park sits between Newtown Pery and the Brick Fields of Coonagh, one of the sources of brick for Georgian Limerick. This soft, subtle, multi-coloured brick is unfortunately readily available from the various construction sites in Limerick’s Georgian Core, notably Project Opera. Given its availability, we wished to mark this moment in Limerick’s history with a pavilion that speaks to a material history. The curving forms – sometimes made to be prow-like while at other times made to be accommodating for solitude or performance – acknowledge the great cellars and doorways of Limerick, and indeed Limerick’s greatest urban formation, The Crescent.
We proposed to make an eroded brick form that sits as an erratic on the old embankment the splits the park. It is eroded to allow for two curving brick benches – one that faces the southwest, the other northeast in order to maximise interaction with its curving form. Two vertical walls offer further opportunity to speak to our initial concerns – one wall that is given a rat trap bond to allow for plants and wildlife to grow, the other is given a recessed brick mark every 500mm to mark out the predicted rising sea levels over the coming 100 years. The form is then filled with alluvial soil from the riverbank and it is planted with reeds and river planting. It is also our intention to demonstrate that this proposal can be constructed to a zero-carbon footprint, given that all the raw materials are all to be salvaged and sourced locally.
This proposal attempted to speak to the vulnerability of our time, our city fabric, our river, and indeed our park benches and our material culture. We need to look after all of our concerns simultaneously. It was hoped that our pavilion would both shine a light on each concern and chart a more responsible way forward into the vulnerable future of the great city of Limerick.
A cruciform ground floor plan beneath a circular mezzanine first floor beneath a pyramidal roof with central zenithal rooflight at Beechville, Co, Meath.
Red oxide corrugated sheeting nears completion to pyramidal roof of Beechville Gate Lodge, Co. Meath. An external covered terrace beneath the roof is made to each of the four corners of the lodge.
A2 are invited by Open House Limerick to contribute two 30-minute films to the forthcoming Open House Limerick Festival produced by Shane Serrano of Crude Media – one on St. Mary’s Girls Primary School in King’s Island and the other on Limerick City’s physical underbelly – the cellars, vaults and culverts of Newtown Pery. The Festival will be launching in late October 2021.
The timber tented shell of Beechville Gate Lodge, Co. Meath is completed. A central square oculus is placed over a circular void to the mezzanine level over a cruciform plan layout beneath.
Five up-lit pinwheel tables made of oriented strand board and painted in a multi-coloured triangular pattern makes the stage for ‘Jellyburbs’ as part of South and Proud festival for young children aged 3 years old to 6 years old in Southill Limerick City. Children are invited to reimagine the future of public space and living space in Southill through jelly. The festival was sponsored by The Gaff, Limerick and The Arts Council. Opalescent perspex kindly sponsored by GBM Limerick. Manufacture by Michael McLaughlin of Limodo. Big thanks to Dáire English, Anna Fagan and David Cooney for their energy and enthusiasm throughout the installation and childrens’ workshops.
