Publications

FURNITURE COLLEGE, LETTERFRACK
O’Donnell + Tuomey Architects

Assessors’ Comments

TODD – This building, in spite of its industrial nature, respects its context extremely well indeed. I like the very overt manner in which the architects employ the timber structure, how the timber structure informs the architectural form, and how it connects with the ground, via the concrete, to rock. I think it’s a very, very good building.
HUTCHINSON – I have seen this in Letterfrack – not completed, but it was under construction – and as you say, it fitted very happily in the context. There’s a slightly strange relationship between the new buildings and the old, but not an unhappy one. It really struck me as we passed, and we actually stopped to look at it. It did seem an exciting kind of building to have in the west of Ireland, in a place with a very reduced population base. It was very pleasing to see something as ambitious as this, and as well realised in that context.
STEINER – It has the impression of a pastoral campus. I looked long and hard at this project, and at the end I was really positive about this way of doing it, in all aspects – the relationship to the old building, the relationship to the landscape, and to this special site. It looks a bit like a campus of the early utopian socialists of the 18th century. And from what we see of the interior, it’s really well done, without any great experiments.
HENEGHAN – I also like the way that they use the structural elements. They are integrated into the design and generate the forms, and yet it moves beyond structure. I like the way that the rooflights make something unexpected of these workshop spaces.
JENSEN – I agree with what Dietmar says. I could also add that this kind of programme might, in this case, be integrated or mixed or expressed in a strange way, but in

TODD – For me it is head and shoulders above the rest, and the only contender for the medal. It’s the first building that hit me as I walked around this morning.
HENEGHAN – This project seems to be in a different league.
JENSEN – I think we can make a distinction with this project. The medal means we are telling the public that, in our opinion, this is outstanding.
HUTCHINSON – The highest quality. This is the obvious candidate for the medal

Assessors’ comments taken from New Irish Architecture 17 – AAI Awards 2002
John O’Regan (ed.) .

(Gandon Editions / AAI, 2002) ISBN 0946846 812

has taken place, and even if it is not discernible for us yet, it might be in the future with new individually designed additions.
STEINER – What I see here in this project is an unexpected answer in contemporary architecture to this programme and on this site. It has tried to open up the language of architecture when building in landscapes, in building and making architecture on such sites. It is not a box. It is very literally referring to a kind of industrial ground, an industrial site. That is also a question in the future. We have to deal with industrial sites, with the lost spaces. Also, in the actual architectonic production, we have to recognise, maybe in a metaphoric sense, this vocabulary which will never come back again. We see office parks in the entries, but, in this high-tech economy, no more industrial architectural history. So, in this way it has a metaphoric sense.
HUTCHINSON – Yes, you’re right. And it’s great to see something as good at that in a context of that kind, outside of Dublin in a very beautiful part of the countryside, where, if anything, it adds to the landscape as opposed to detracting from it, and that’s something really to be encouraged.
TODD – An industrial building in a sensitive landscape is a very difficult problem, but this makes it look so natural.
HENEGHAN – It’s not quite an industrial building though. It’s more a workshop.
STEINER – It’s a workshop, but it refers to an industrial heritage ... maybe there could have been a mine, or something like that, before on this site. For me, it’s a very poetic way of building. I have no problem giving it the medal.

a positive sense. This is a school, but at the same time it definitely gives the impression of being some kind of industry. It is a small factory or workshop building as well as a school, and that kind of conveyed ambiguity interests me. Maybe it was important when designing it, maybe not, but the quality is there anyway.
TODD – The shape is informed by the structure, because the trusses are spanning, so this seemingly complex but really quite simple structural form does inform the shape, and this is an added bonus.
JENSEN – I didn’t mention it when we first discussed this project, but I think that while the site plan is interesting, it is not the best part of the project, even though some of these pictures are very strong or intriguing. It actually makes me wonder how these buildings are placed. Is there a reading of the topography, or is there this slightly formalistic attitude that the buildings are placed according to some preconceived compositional rules? Is there a wish to create a whole by adding these new buildings, or is it simply a result of diehard pragmatism?
I think that the element of necessity, of limited choice that one often finds in vernacular architecture is a very interesting architectural generator. Modern architecture almost completely lacks recognition of this element, other than when budgetary restrictions dictate. Seemingly we can build almost anything anywhere. Discovering such clues at a site might make a great difference.
The apparently relaxed pragmatism and focused attention that each individual building has been designed with here seems to suggest that a corresponding reading of the site