Category Archives: News

‘House of Commons’, published in The Irish Times, is an invited response to the Outdoor Public Space Scheme from the Arts Department, offers up to €250,000 each to local authorities to create spaces where outdoor events can take place. Our proposal chooses to spread the budget across up to 20 sites across each local authority so that the message is diffused as widely as possible into communities. Our response is a call to hands, arms and legs for local authorities and communities to mutually think about performance – environmental performance as well as community performance. The proposed setting is any green communal space in a housing estate. By not cutting grass in the communal area of a housing estate this spring and summer, the community can create clearings of varying sizes and uses by then mowing shapes and paths. Paired with this larger scale of selective grass clearing, we propose a compact, cost-effective pod named ‘House of Commons’ to be located at the edge of grass clearing and accessible to all in the housing estate. Entrusted by the local authority to the local community, a 4metre x 4metre timber pod in four equal quadrants of varying heights. The pod offers a combination of uses and functions: a community bench area at 450mm height, a raised planter box at 900mm height, composting lidded bins for organic waste / cut grass at 1500mm height topped with a beehive and lastly a sedum-roofed tool shed powered by a solar panel that is linked to a storage battery to charge a community-owned strimming machine and lawnmower at 2100mm in height.

A2 are delighted to be appointed by The National Monuments of Ireland as architects for the proposed enclosure for the Turoe Stone, Co. Galway. Dating from the period 100B.C to 100 A.D., the Turoe Stone is a glacial erratic (H 1.2m) shaped into a flattened cylinder
with a domed top. Its upper body is covered with a well-preserved quadripartite arrangement of three-plane curvilinear ornament of La Tène style and bounded below by a horizontal band of incised step-pattern. The proposed glazed enclosure is sheltered by a table-like corten steel structure of three piers supporting a circular roof disc with an oculus at its centre.

A courtyard house in Kilkenny nears completion. A fair-faced concrete ring beam rests on a long stone wall that leads to an entrance courtyard. From here one enters a central roof-lit hall space that pinwheels in four directions towards glazed living areas with external terraces that look onto walled garden spaces. A stairs leads to the first floor and bathroom that enjoy distant views beyond.

A2 are delighted to be nominated for the EU Mies Award 2022 for House at Sky Road, Clifden Co. Galway. This is our third time being nominated for this international award, previously for Folding House, Mardyke, Cork City in 2017 and for Pulp Press, Kistefos, Norway in 2015.

A2 are delighted to have won this year’s Best House Award at the RIAI Irish Architecture Awards 2020 for Sky Road, Clifden, Co. Galway. A2 wish to acknowledge and thank the distinguished jury of the RIAI, our client and contractor in receiving this award. This is the third time that A2 have won this prestigious award – in 2017 for Mardyke House, Cork City and again in 2010 for Seaside House, Port Oriel, Co. Louth.

A2 and indeed our clients are delighted with the leading image of our house at Sky Road in the latest edition of House + Design. Thank you kindly to ⁦the RIAI and Editor ⁦Sandra O’Connell for the coverage.

A refurbished bookend at the entrance to Tralee Garda Station that A2 handed over on behalf of the OPW this month – a mannerly and modest three bay facade with its original window openings, solid cut stone external stairs, wrought iron railings and over-slated concrete roof barge cappings.

Catherine Martin TD, Minister for Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht, congratulated the successful applicants who have been shortlisted in the selection process for Ireland’s representation at the 2022 Venice Art Biennale.

Speaking today, Minister Martin said:

“The impressive list of shortlisted parties is an indicator of the strength of Ireland’s visual arts sector and the platform of the Venice Biennale offers a key opportunity to raise the global visibility of our artists. My congratulation to the artists and curators selected, this is a true recognition and validation of the impact of your work to date as well as your vision for the Venice Biennale”.

The successful artists and curators, who were selected following an open call by Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council are artist Elaine Byrne with curator Helen Carey; artist Marianne Keating with curator Miguel Amado; artist Niamh McCann with architect Peter Carroll and curators Belinda Quirke and Hugh Mulholland; artist Bea McMahon with curator Matt Packer; artist Ailbhe Ní Bhriain and curators Mary Hickson and Francis McKee; artist Niamh O’Malley and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios curatorial team.

These shortlisted teams will present their detailed proposals to a panel comprising representatives of Culture Ireland, The Arts Council and international experts in Autumn 2020 when final selection for Ireland’s representation will be made. Ireland’s representation at the Venice Biennale is an initiative of Culture Ireland, in partnership with the Arts Council. Exhibiting at the Biennale provides a high profile platform for the international art world to engage with Irish contemporary art practice and to showcase the strength of Irish visual arts and the financial support of €300,000, awarded for the selected project reflects this.

A2 are granted full planning permission for a garden cafe overlooking East Pier at Haddington House, Dún Laoghaire. Tiered insitu concrete walls with exposed granite aggregate anchor the site while a bronze roof plane topped with sedum is elevated above.